My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 346: After two years of absence, one should look at others with new eyes

Guan Yu and Zhuge Jin chatted briefly along the way and soon returned to Xiaxiang City.

Xiaxiang is just an ordinary small county and also the hometown of Xiang Yu. There is only a county government office in the city and no other government offices.

Fortunately, Zhuge Jin was not a person who was particular about etiquette and was not picky about the place, so Guan Yu welcomed him in the county government office without any hesitation.

Since Sun Ce was defeated and Guan Yu was transferred north to Xuzhou, the living conditions of the civil and military officials in Xuzhou have improved a lot in the past year and a half.

Although Zhuge Jin had never been to Xuzhou during that period, all the little tricks that he came up with on a whim in daily life and the little inventions that improved the quality of life had to be tinkered with in Yangzhou first, and then slowly spread to Xuzhou and Jingzhou.

But Xuzhou also has a unique benefit.

That is, since the legendary doctor Hua Tuo was recruited by Chen Deng more than two years ago and was promised to set up a laboratory for microbiology research in Guangling County and provide supporting medical research conditions, Hua Tuo, who was already over 50 years old, finally changed from traveling around to practice medicine to sitting in a clinic and doing research all year round.

Even if he occasionally traveled, it was mostly within the three counties of Guangling, Donghai, and Xiapi. He would only be invited to cross the river occasionally when a high-ranking official in Danyang County or Wu County on the other side of the river was seriously ill and he had to see the doctor.

If it was a minor illness, at most Hua Tuo's disciples Wu Pu and Fan A would be enough to treat it. Once, when Zhuge Jin's child had a minor illness, he personally set an example by not asking Hua Tuo to make the trip, but asking Fan A, who was the best at pediatrics among Hua Tuo's disciples, to cross the river and cure the child quickly.

After that, when the civil and military officials in Yangzhou saw that Zhuge Jin did not force Hua Tuo to cross the river when his family members were sick, they became more restrained. Unless they encountered extremely difficult and serious illnesses, they did not dare to squeeze Hua Tuo's medical resources.

In the end, Fan A was left to open a branch in Moling City, and Hua Tuo's new disciples who had been taught in the past two years were allowed to gradually spread to Danyang, Wujun and other major cities, set up schools and improve the level of public health.

After Hua Tuo had trained more disciples, he could devote himself to the research work at the "Guangling Institute of Microbiology".

Although Hua Tuo initially just followed the projects left by Zhuge Liang, such as "how to isolate and cultivate koji strains for brewing wine, how to cultivate lactic acid bacteria/yeast for fermenting yogurt and old noodles",

With the help of Hua Tuo's rich medical experience, he quickly combined his newly learned theories and operations with decades of medical experience, revealing some discoveries that Zhuge Liang had never thought of before.

For example, when Zhuge Liang was conducting research on koji and yogurt lactic acid bacteria, he only discovered that "high temperature can kill bacteria, remove the interfering bacteria in dough, brewing grains and milk, and purify the culture environment", and then Zhuge Liang did not think about it further.

But Hua Tuo was different. He had been dealing with traditional medical theories all his life. He soon discovered that not only high temperature can kill bacteria, but also slight changes in temperature and humidity can affect the speed and inhibition of bacterial reproduction.

Then, he combined the Zhuge family's knowledge of microbial science with the three poisons of "wind, cold and dampness" in traditional medicine, and deduced that "the reason why wind, cold and dampness can cause disease is because wind represents dry cold and dry heat, while cold and dampness represent damp cold. The combination of changes in temperature and humidity can inhibit or promote pathogens."

This discovery opened the door to a new world, and Hua Tuo spent a whole year and a half studying the relationship between the reproduction of various microorganisms and changes in temperature and humidity. Even so, he only studied a tiny part of the problem.

But the product brought by this tiny amount is extraordinary and has a silent and effective effect.

For example, if Guan Yu wants to drink wine or milk like the Zhuge family, he has to get a Donghai County crystal-polished wine thermometer and insert it into the water bath pot for warming milk or boiling wine.

Strictly follow the temperature standard discussed by Zhuge Jin and Hua Tuo: "Dairy products should not be heated above 50 degrees to avoid killing lactic acid bacteria. The maximum temperature when cooking wine should not be lower than 60 degrees. This will preserve the flavor of the wine to the greatest extent while preventing hands from shaking or dizziness after drinking."

As for where the crystal thermometer came from... Actually, Hua Tuo encountered a bottleneck in related experiments last year, so he asked for advice and discussion from the Zhuge family, and then Zhuge Jin helped him come up with an idea.

Zhuge Jin was a gold medal lecturer in science in his previous life, so he was well aware of the principle of thermometers. He knew that a simple and easy-to-use thermometer was nothing more than two media: mercury and alcohol.

But in ancient times, it was difficult to evacuate a hollow glass tube or crystal tube. The air in the tube had to be squeezed out by the steam from the expansion fluid. Therefore, Zhuge Jin gave up the mercury thermometer and used alcohol instead.

Of course, it was not easy to distill high-proof alcohol in the Han Dynasty. Zhuge Jin had spent more than a year optimizing the distiller and making some alcohol, but it was too expensive to drink or even use for medical purposes. It was only used for scientific research experiments.

So in the end, they could only use a mixture of alcohol and water with a little colorant, pour it into a hollow crystal tube that had been drilled and polished by a skilled craftsman, and then seal the bottom to make a thermometer.

When filling, after filling the liquid part, an additional portion of alcohol vapor should be added to drive out the original air in the tube. In this way, after sealing, condensation will occur and the alcohol will re-liquefy, forming a partial vacuum in the crystal tube.

Because alcohol contains more water, the temperature measurement range is limited. Modern alcohol thermometers can measure temperatures as low as nearly 100 degrees below zero, because the freezing point of pure alcohol is very low. The mixture of low-alcohol and water distilled by Zhuge Jin using a simple distillation method will freeze and be damaged at around 20 degrees below zero, so it is usually measured at room temperature.

As for the high temperature part, alcohol evaporates at 80 degrees Celsius, and higher temperatures cannot be measured.

After these thermometers were made, most of them remained in Hua Tuo's laboratory and research institute. The Zhuge brothers each got a few, and high-level officials such as Liu, Guan, and Zhang also took some. However, they were not for people's enjoyment, but were used for some control experiments in life and to collect clinical feedback.

Especially for those who love drinking like Zhang Fei, they were strictly required to "boil the wine until it is above 65 degrees and below 80 degrees before drinking it to avoid poisoning."

... "Ha, ever since I had the maid strictly follow the instructions of Tzuyu and Mr. Yuanhua, and put a thermometer in the pot to heat the wine and milk, I feel that the wine, milk and cheese have become much more delicious, and I don't get a headache even if I drink too much.

Tzuyu's ingenious ideas are truly magical. Every detail can benefit life. I have to admit it. It's just a bit extravagant. I made these crystal tubes just for the mellow and subtle taste of the wine."

At the welcoming banquet, Guan Yu and Zhuge Jin drank three rounds of wine. When he was slightly drunk, Guan Yu could not help but touch the beard silk bag and praised it proudly. In the past year, he felt more and more comfortable drinking and never got drunk. Although Guan Yu did not know the principle, he enjoyed such days.

Zhuge Jin originally wanted to talk directly about military affairs, but he also understood that Guan Yu had not seen him for a year and a half, so he must have many new things to express his feelings. Anyway, there was no rush at the moment, so Zhuge Jin chatted with Guan Yu for a while longer.

So he used a long bamboo chopstick wrapped with linen to pick up the thermometer in the wine-boiling water bath, gently placed it on the table beside him, and showed off to Guan Yu in a serious manner:

"Ancient people often say that drinking cold wine makes your hands tremble and your eyes dizzy. This actually makes sense, but it is too general. In ordinary winemaking, fermentation produces not only 'full wine', but also a lot of other 'miscellaneous alcohols', some of which are poisonous.

In the past two years, Mr. Yuanhua has conducted in-depth research on his brother's experiment on 'cultivation of brewing koji strains', and with the help of the 'rheumatism and cold' three methods of comparison, he has screened out some strains that produce an increasingly higher proportion of beneficial alcohol during fermentation, while producing a lower and lower proportion of toxic fusel alcohols.

After having this thermometer, Mr. Yuanhua conducted repeated experiments and found that the beneficial alcohol would boil at 80 degrees, while the toxic alcohol would boil at 65 degrees. Therefore, the ancients boiled wine to evaporate the toxic alcohol first and leave the beneficial alcohol.

But the ancients didn’t have thermometers, so they couldn’t accurately ensure that the wine was mellow and non-toxic. Often, it was either overcooked and lost its wine flavor, or undercooked and still had some toxicity. Unlike us, we can accurately control the temperature, between 65 and 80, and cook it quickly.

As Zhuge Jin spoke, he drank another glass thoughtfully. The wine was over 60 degrees, and after it cooled down a little, it tasted very good.

For a moment, a thought even popped into his mind:
If we brew a strong liquor in the future and spread it out as a finished product, so that everyone in Cao Cao's camp knows that "there is a good liquor in the world, which is extremely strong and can be drunk directly without boiling, and it will not make you drunk, dizzy or trembling", I wonder if we can seduce the high-ranking officials of Cao Wei...

Then, he leaked the tampered distiller and concealed the key technical details: "In order to drink distilled liquor without boiling, the head of the liquor must be discarded in advance during distillation"...

I don’t know if it is possible that the top leaders of Cao Wei were collectively poisoned by methanol.

However, this kind of thing is still too difficult to control. It is difficult to cultivate user habits in itself, and it is easy to hurt innocent people and lead to the spread of technology. Zhuge Jin only had a flash of thought in his mind, but it was then denied.

But it can also be seen from this that for a person who does not have solid scientific knowledge, it is actually very risky if he rashly follows the examples in time-travel novels and goes back to ancient times to make a fortune by brewing distilled liquor.

First of all, he needs to have some basic knowledge of chemistry, know the boiling points of methanol and ethanol, know that methanol is poisonous, and also know that the first part of distilled liquor has a very high methanol content in the head and has to be thrown away.

Otherwise, just a small mistake of "not knowing to throw away the wine residue" may cause the time traveler to be poisoned to death.

You still have to be cautious when climbing up the technology ladder.

……

Zhuge Jin briefly reviewed with Guan Yu the most basic common sense about the various alcohols in wine, and soon Guan Yu became confused and drowsy.

Guan Yu also clearly realized again that he should not bring up such a topic. With his common sense, he should just drink. As long as he knew that strictly following the health-preserving experience summarized by the Zhuge brothers could prolong his life, that would be enough.

As for the principle, how can I possibly understand it?

The most important thing is to keep awe! No matter what Brother Zhuge says, whether you can understand it or not, you have to do it! There will definitely be benefits!
Shaking his head forcefully to drive away the sleepiness from his mind, Guan Yu quickly changed the subject back to military affairs and asked Zhuge Jin:
"Let's talk business first. Why don't you tell me how you, while in Yangzhou, could see that the promotion of Zang Ba, Sun Guan, and Chang Xi would increase the threat of Cao's army to Xuzhou?"

Zhuge Jin immediately stopped his impulse to teach others and started analyzing the situation with Guan Yu.

This is not because Zhuge Jin has strong self-control, but since we are talking about military affairs, he can also be a teacher.

"What's so difficult about this? I don't actually know the details of Cao's military deployment, but Cao Cao promoted Zang Ba and the other two, especially when they had not achieved any success and were only losing. The promotion was so big.

I guess Cao Cao must want to learn from us, and expand the war under the banner of Taishan bandits. In this way, victory can be recognized retroactively, and defeat can be stopped. Langya County is located in the Yimeng Mountain area. Cao's army was exhausted for two months and must have suffered terribly.

If they still want to fight, they must target the Huaibei Plain in Donghai County, which is where they can show their strengths. I am afraid that the Donghai garrison commander will be careless and the situation will be dark, so I came here to give him some advice. "

Guan Yu stroked his beard and nodded, "I actually saw some clues, so I think we have the same view, but I am still far behind you - at least I don't have the ability to see so many clues just from the promotion orders of Zang Ba and others.

However, I have never relaxed my discipline on the defense of Donghai County. With Wenyuan guarding Donghai, Chen Gongtai is also an old partner of Wenyuan. Even if the troops are small, they will definitely be able to withstand Xiahou Yuan's first wave of southward offensive. Later, Yuanlong and I will naturally provide support with a large army. "

(End of this chapter)