Daily life of farming and supporting a family on the ancient Loess Plateau

Chapter 622 The Divine Physician Who Protects the Nation

Seeing that Ji Yongling was as stubborn as a mule in resisting marriage, Yang and Jia Ronghua took turns putting on a show of being pitiful, hoping to move Ji Yongling. Unfortunately, they underestimated Ji Yongling's determination.

Left with no other option, Ji Manchuan and his wife had to settle for second best, suggesting that Ji Yongling marry out herself and that Ji Yong'an find a husband for himself at home. As soon as this topic was brought up, Guowa immediately expressed his willingness to become a son-in-law of the Ji family.

Ji Manchuan immediately refused. He knew it was Guowa's good intention, but marriage was a serious matter and could not be taken lightly. Besides, Ji Yong'an and Guowa were both still young, so this matter could not be taken seriously.

However, Guowa said that he had no parents and had already taken Ji Manchuan and Jia Ronghua as his parents. He wanted to stay in the Ji family for the rest of his life and be a true member of the Ji family.

Ji Manchuan said that they would discuss this matter again after Guowa turned sixteen. If he and Ji Yong'an were both willing at that time, they would bring it up again.

.....

Ningping County was peaceful and serene, while the distant capital was gripped by panic due to a smallpox epidemic.

Shortly after the Lunar New Year this year, a smallpox epidemic broke out in the capital, and even the emperor's favorite concubine succumbed to the disease. People were in a panic, and the news spread quickly through the streets and alleys. Every household kept their doors tightly shut, afraid to go out.

In response to this crisis, the emperor ordered all city dwellers who had not yet contracted smallpox, as well as strangers without travel permits to the capital, to be moved twenty li outside the city to avoid the plague. The emperor himself, along with his harem, fled the capital to the Southern Garden outside the city to avoid the smallpox outbreak. The noble families, meanwhile, remained secluded in their residences, anxiously awaiting the end of the smallpox epidemic.

The once vast capital city was utterly desolate, with not a soul in sight on the streets. Yet, there were always those who, undeterred by death, tirelessly traveled far and wide.

As early as when large-scale smallpox vaccination began in Ningping County, Huo Zhiyuan received a letter from Huo Zhenglian. In the letter, his father explained the background and consequences of Ji Yongling's vaccination to prevent "smallpox". At that time, he also became interested and wrote a letter to inquire about Ji Yongling's specific methods.

Ji Yongling also shared his knowledge in detail, explaining the specific process and precautions for smallpox vaccination.

After receiving the letter, Huo Zhiyuan bought a cow with smallpox at the livestock market to test the inoculation, just as Ji Yongling had written. Sure enough, as Ji Yongling had said, about three days after the inoculation, red papules appeared on his upper arm, which later formed pustules. Half a month later, the scabs fell off, leaving only a small scar.

Although he successfully received the vaccination, he was met with scorn and abuse when he told the imperial physicians at the Imperial Hospital in the capital about the method. The physicians accused him of trying to harm people.

There was no other reason than that a doctor from Jiangnan once brought the technique of smallpox vaccination to the capital, saying that babies who had been vaccinated would not get smallpox again. However, many children died because of smallpox, which caused freckles to appear on their limbs and faces.

Huo Zhiyuan didn't believe it, because he knew that since smallpox vaccination began in Ningping County, almost no children had developed smallpox. This showed that smallpox was indeed effective in preventing it. So where exactly did the doctor from Jiangnan go wrong with his smallpox vaccination technique?

After much inquiry, he learned that the Jiangnan doctor's method of introducing smallpox involved first finding the scabs of smallpox infants, then soaking them in cow's milk, and finally inoculating them at specific acupoints. It sounded similar to Ji Yongling's method, except for the extra step of soaking the smallpox seedlings in cow's milk.

Unfortunately, what he didn't know was that although the smallpox vaccine was soaked in milk, it was still human smallpox vaccine. The so-called smallpox inoculation was actually a man-made way to spread smallpox.

Although Huo Zhiyuan was rejected by the Imperial Medical Academy, he was deeply saddened to see dozens of infant corpses being dumped outside the city every day by donkey carts used by the government. He volunteered to go and isolate the houses of children with smallpox and personally care for those children who were sent away to fend for themselves because of smallpox, in order to prove that Ji Yongling's method could prevent smallpox.

Ten days or so passed, and Huo Zhiyuan ate and lived with the children who had contracted smallpox every day, taking meticulous care of them, and no problems arose. Seeing this, the imperial physicians of the Imperial Hospital gradually began to believe what Huo Zhiyuan said, so they discussed trying this method of smallpox vaccination.

Huo Zhiyuan donated the smallpox-infected ox he had bought to the Imperial Medical Academy. The physicians of the Imperial Medical Academy, with trepidation, first conducted experiments on a group of prisoners.

Unexpectedly, after the wounds on these prisoners were treated with cowpox granulation, they did not develop smallpox. Instead, like Huo Zhiyuan, they only had a small scar on their arm.

To confirm that these prisoners were indeed immune to smallpox, they made long cuts on the bandits and applied the pus from children with smallpox to the prisoners' wounds. Several days passed, and the prisoners' wounds had healed, but there was not a single sign of smallpox infection.

Only then did the imperial physicians of the Imperial Medical Academy fully believe Huo Zhiyuan's words.

With this preventative method in place, the Imperial Medical Academy quickly reported it to the Emperor. The Emperor was overjoyed upon learning of this and immediately ordered its widespread adoption throughout the capital. As the method was implemented, the smallpox epidemic gradually came under control, and the people no longer feared the disease.

Huo Zhiyuan was also summoned and commended by the emperor, but he believed that all the credit should go to Ji Yongling. He reported to the emperor in detail how he learned that the cowpox vaccination method could prevent smallpox.

The emperor was puzzled. Why had Ningping County developed a method to prevent smallpox so early on, but hadn't reported it? What was Huo Zhenglian thinking?

When Huo Zhiyuan saw the emperor's doubts, he hurriedly said that his father had written a memorial to the emperor after confirming the effectiveness of the law. At that time, the letter also asked him whether the law was being implemented in the capital.

Upon hearing this, the emperor immediately realized that someone must have been interfering and concealing Huo Zhenglian's memorials. He promptly ordered a thorough investigation, which revealed that some officials, for their own personal gain, had deliberately hidden Huo Zhenglian's memorials, concealing all of Huo Zhenglian's achievements in the Northwest over the years.

The emperor was furious and immediately investigated and dismissed a number of officials, some of whom were even exiled to the frontier as a form of punishment.

With the smallpox epidemic in the capital subsided, Ji Yongling, far away in Ningping County, was also commended. Ji Yongling was awarded the title of "National Protector Physician," a second-rank official, and was bestowed with gold, silver, brocade, and silk as a reward.

Although the title of "National Protector Physician" is just an empty title, and Ji Yongling doesn't need to go to the capital or care about anything, at least she won't have to bow to ordinary officials in the future, and she can use this title to protect the people of the region, which is a good thing.

The Ji family's reputation soared because of this incident, and now Jia Ronghua and Yang Shi didn't even know how to urge the marriage anymore.

After all, with such a prestigious title attached to Ji Yongling, who in ordinary families would dare to marry her? Even prominent and influential families hesitated because of her reputation and status. After all, marrying her would not only mean facing her domineering nature, but also potentially being gossiped about as "climbing the social ladder."

As for a son-in-law who marries into the family, he is even harder to find. In the eyes of the Ji family, Ji Yongling's reputation and talent are unmatched by any other boy, let alone finding a suitable son to marry into the family with the title of a second-rank official.

Although Jia Ronghua and Yang Shi were anxious, they had no choice but to put the matter aside for the time being.