The low-key prince summons trainees from the Imperial Household Department at the start of the game.

In June, the sun in Beijing is scorching.

In the alleyway in front of Zhongjingtang in the south of the city, there was a queue of moderate length.

Most of the people queuing were dressed in coarse cloth shorts and twills; some were dockworkers carrying bags, some were street vendors, and some were shop assistants from nearby shops.

Their faces were sallow and their lips were pale. Several of them were squatting against the wall, clutching their stomachs, with beads of sweat streaming down their faces.

Zhongjing Hall has a small storefront, consisting of two combined facades, with an old wooden plaque hanging at the entrance.

The words "Zhongjing Hall" are written in neat, upright regular script on it.

Two young apprentices stood beneath the plaque.

A person is distributing free herbal tea to patients in line.

Another person was calling out numbers in order, working up a sweat but doing everything in an orderly fashion.

Inside the clinic, Zhang Zhongjing was sitting at the consultation table, taking the pulse of a dockworker.

He placed his fingers on the other person's sweaty wrist, closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment, then looked at the tongue coating and asked a few questions.

When did you start having diarrhea? How many times a day? Do you have abdominal pain? What did you eat?

The porter replied weakly, "It started three days ago. At first, I thought it was just an upset stomach and didn't take it seriously. But these past two days, I just couldn't take it anymore. My legs are weak, and I can't carry the goods anymore."

"There are twenty or thirty people like this at our dock, some of them are so dehydrated from all the labor."

Zhang Zhongjing frowned slightly, picked up his brush and wrote a few lines on the medical record, then looked up and instructed the apprentice beside him: "Prepare the medicine according to this prescription, boil five bowls of water down to one bowl, take two doses a day for three consecutive days."

"Tell the patient that they can only drink rice water for the next few days and cannot eat raw, cold, or greasy food, especially the cold jelly stall next to the dock, they can no longer eat there."

He paused, then added, "Also, have someone go to the docks and inform everyone who has diarrhea, whether it's mild or severe, to come to Zhongjingtang for free treatment, and put the cost of the medicine on their tab."

The apprentice took the prescription, responded, and jogged off to get the medicine.

Among the patients in line, some who knew Zhang Zhongjing whispered among themselves, saying that Dr. Zhang was truly kind-hearted.

The person next to him chimed in, "It's not just Dr. Zhang; Dr. Hua from Yuanhua Hall in the west of the city and Dr. Bian from Bian's Medical Clinic in the east of the city have also been providing free medical treatment to dockworkers these past few days."

They are reportedly investigating what is causing this diarrhea.

Another person chimed in, saying that since several clinics had failed to cure the illness completely, they could cure it instantly with their medicine.

At this moment, Zhang Zhongjing raised his head and said something.

It's not about having the heart of a bodhisattva, it's about a doctor's duty.

He now suspects that this diarrhea is not just a common case of acclimatization problems.

Rather, it is an early symptom of some kind of epidemic. If we don't control it now, it will be too late when it spreads to the military camp.

So if you know anyone who is also having diarrhea, please be sure to call them over. Whether they have money or not, getting them medical attention is the priority.

Meanwhile, under the old locust tree in the backyard of Yuanhua Hall in Xicheng, Hua Tuo was doing something that left the onlookers dumbfounded.

Lying in front of him was a dockworker with a three-inch-long wound on his right arm.

It was torn open by the metal sheet on the cargo box three days ago when I was carrying the goods.

The wound has become infected, red, swollen, and shiny; in Western medicine terms, this is a severe purulent infection.

In the Imperial Medical Academy, the treatment for this type of wound usually involved applying ointment externally and taking decoction internally; whether it healed or not depended entirely on the patient's own fate.

But Hua Tuo's approach was different.

He gave the patient a bowl of anesthetic powder, and after the patient fell into a deep sleep...

He took out a set of gleaming surgical instruments from the medicine box, first rinsed the wound with strong liquor, and then used the knife to cut open the suppurating area.

The rotten flesh was scraped away frame by frame, then sewed up with mulberry bark thread, and finally a special wound ointment was applied and the wound was properly bandaged with clean cotton cloth.

The whole process took less than half an hour.

Several colleagues were standing nearby to watch the spectacle while he was performing surgery.

Some people stared in disbelief, some shook their heads and said, "That's too daring," and some whispered among themselves, wondering how someone could scrape a festering wound with a knife.

Hua Tuo didn't even look up, but said calmly as he stitched up the wound, "If the rotten flesh isn't removed, new flesh won't grow; if the pus isn't scraped off, the poison will attack the heart."

After the surgery, he got up and went to the water tank to wash his hands. He told the onlookers that those who were interested could come back tomorrow.

He will perform a much larger operation, scraping the bone to remove the poison.

It's not that it's actually poisonous; it's that an old soldier had bone fragments in his old arrow wound that hadn't been removed, and he needed surgery to remove them.

When the news reached Qianjin Pharmacy in the North City, Sun Simiao was squatting in his herb garden tending to his precious medicinal herbs.

His herb garden wasn't large; it was located in the backyard of the clinic, with a row of ceramic pots against the wall filled with various herbs transplanted from the northern mountains.

One of the plants, with its tender green leaves, was growing particularly lush.

He personally went to Beishan to pick it a few days ago. People in this world call it "hemostatic herb," ​​and in his previous life it was called "Sanguisorba officinalis." When dried and ground into powder, it can be applied externally to stop bleeding and taken internally to clear lung heat.

The people of this world actually use it to feed livestock.

He carefully loosened the soil around the burnet shrub, watered it, and then stood up.

Just then, a servant boy returned from outside, carrying several bags of freshly picked medicinal herbs and bringing back a message.

It is said that Dr. Hua of Yuanhuatang in Xicheng performed another surgery to scrape away necrotic tissue today.

The crowd filled half the alley, all saying that Dr. Hua was a miracle doctor, but Dr. Li from the Imperial Medical Academy said that his magic was evil.

Sun Simiao took the medicinal herbs from the servant, slowly examined their quality, picked out a few leaves that hadn't dried properly and set them aside, and then spoke.

He asked who Physician Li was, and the servant replied that he was a renowned surgeon from the Imperial Medical Academy.

They were specifically there to treat the emperor and the empresses.

Sun Simiao gave an "oh," spread the selected medicinal herbs out in a winnowing basket to dry, and slowly said while wiping his hands, "What Physician Li said isn't entirely wrong."

"Hua Tuo's methods were indeed not the way of the Imperial Medical Academy, but if they could cure patients, they were good medical skills."

"Our Qianjin Pharmacy takes a different path. We don't compete with the Imperial Hospital to see who has the fastest scalpel, nor do we compete with Hua Tuo to see who has the boldest technique."

"We treat chronic diseases, heal hidden injuries, and prepare health-preserving medicinal cuisine. There are many retired veterans living in the northern part of the city, and they all have old injuries and hidden ailments."

"The wounds they sustained on the battlefield when they were young are so painful that they can't get out of bed on rainy days."

"These illnesses are not treated by the Imperial Hospital because they are not life-threatening, and it is also inconvenient for Hua Tuo to treat them because they are not emergencies. We will treat them ourselves."

He paused, then added a sentence.

Spread the word: Qianjin Pharmacy specializes in treating old injuries and will offer free consultations for the first month.

In the Bian family clinic in Dongcheng, Bian Que was sitting at the consultation table taking the pulse of an old woman who was coughing incessantly.

He closed his eyes, placed three fingers on the old woman's radial artery pulse, applying slight pressure with his fingertips and then releasing them slightly, as if playing an extremely slow piece of music.

A moment later, he opened his eyes, and without asking about the illness, said directly, "Grandma, your cough isn't a lung problem, it's caused by stomach upset. Do you experience acid reflux after meals every day?"

The old woman slapped her thigh and exclaimed, "Amazing! I've seen five or six doctors, and they all said it's a cough caused by lung heat!"

Bian Que smiled slightly and said that stomach qi rising upwards can also cause coughing, with symptoms similar to those of coughing due to lung heat.

However, the pulse patterns are different. The pulse pattern for lung heat cough is slippery and rapid, while the old lady's pulse pattern is wiry and slippery.

Then he took a silver needle from his needle pouch and had the old woman roll up her sleeves above her elbows.

A needle was inserted into the Neiguan and Zusanli acupoints on both arms, and the needles were left in for a short while before being removed.

He prescribed another prescription, instructing her to take it for seven consecutive days and avoid raw, cold, and spicy foods.

The old woman left, expressing her deepest gratitude.

The patients waiting nearby were stunned. Some whispered that Dr. Bian's diagnoses were too accurate; he knew everything just by feeling the pulse.

Bian Que shook his head. It wasn't that he was accurate; it was that the pulse itself spoke, and he simply understood it.

He added that starting today, the Chen family clinic will offer free clinics for three days each month, charging only for medicine and no consultation fees.

In addition, if any other medical clinics in the capital want to learn acupuncture, he can teach them for free.

Acupuncture is not a secret technique of any one school; it is a treasure shared by all doctors. The more people who learn it, the more patients can be cured.

The number of diarrhea patients queuing up outside Zhongjingtang is increasing.

Moreover, it wasn't just dockworkers; residents in several nearby streets also began to experience the same symptoms.

Zhang Zhongjing keenly sensed that something was amiss.

Diarrhea, dehydration, rapid spread, and concentration in the area surrounding the dock.

This is not a common case of acclimatization sickness; it is an epidemic.

He recalled his previous life when he wrote the Treatise on Febrile Diseases, including his discussions on seasonal epidemics.

Immediately instruct the apprentices to categorize and compile the patients' conditions into booklets, and register them day by day, street by street.

He then sent two quick-footed apprentices to Yuanhua Hall and Bian's Medical Clinic respectively to deliver messages to Hua Tuo and Bian Que, inviting them to come over.

At the same time, someone was sent to the government office to report the matter.

There is a suspected outbreak of disease in the pier area. We request the government's assistance in isolating patients and cleaning water sources.

He lit the oil lamp, spread out paper and pen, and began to organize the medical records from the past few days in preparation for the upcoming consultation.