Chapter 124 - The Plight of the Pharmaceutical Factory

Just thinking about the subtropical climate, the jungle, and the water network terrain, Shi Niaoren believed that this damn place could find more than half of the world’s pathogens. His mentor in the United States would definitely have a soft spot for this place. It was a pity that he hadn’t tricked him into coming at the time. This old American was as strong as an ox and would be a good laborer for the Ministry of Health. At least he could be made to examine poop.

Looking at the pile of poop sample jars in front of him, the indignation in Shi Niaoren’s heart was hard for others to imagine—he, a dignified professor, was naturally sent here to deal with feces.

What was worse was that Shi Niaoren found that the infection rate was beginning to rise. He had detected more than ten kinds of parasite eggs, such as Clonorchis sinensis and Taenia solium, from asymptomatic people. There might be more bacterial carriers, but because the complexity of bacterial testing was much greater, many could not be diagnosed yet. In short, no one realized the complexity of modern medical testing.

And the ignorance and indifference of the ordinary transmigrators to various parasites and infectious diseases gave him a headache. Those who ate wild fruits indiscriminately, those who hunted privately, and those who fooled around with local women…

When he reported to the Executive Committee, they always just hummed and hawed without any specific countermeasures, not paying any attention at all!

Perhaps a major epidemic would clear the heads of Chief Wen and Viceroy Ma? Shi Niaoren placed the petri dish under the microscope and looked at it carefully.

Fortunately, there were no Vibrio cholerae in the sample, nor were there any other virulent infectious disease bacteria. However, a large number of Salmonella were detected. On the whole, this unlucky person died of acute enteritis. In theory, for general acute enteritis, as long as the patient is kept from dehydration and electrolyte imbalance, and supplemented with simple antidiarrheal drugs, they can recover.

“If there were some antidiarrheal drugs in the quarantine camp, and some saline solution, this person wouldn’t have died,” Shi Niaoren felt a little regretful. Just a few tablets of belladonna and a few bottles of saline solution could have saved him.

Thinking that the weather was getting hotter and gastrointestinal diseases were more common, he had to immediately find cheap and readily available antidiarrheal drugs. Suddenly, he thought of the opium in the Ministry of Health’s warehouse. It had been left in the warehouse since it was bought from Macau. Although opium was a drug, it had a strong effect on relieving pain, cough, and diarrhea. It was a universal medicine that was urgently needed now.

Shi Niaoren disposed of the specimen, washed his hands, lit a cigarette, and called Wu De to tell him that the yellow disease warning in the quarantine camp could be lifted. Then he called Wu Nanhai again to remind him to pay attention to the hygiene of the cafeteria and food processing plant.

“…Tomorrow,” Shi Niaoren looked at his schedule, “I’ll personally come to inspect and help you make a list of precautions for summer hygiene.”

“Alright, welcome, welcome,” Wu Nanhai’s voice sounded a little nervous on the phone.

“Don’t be nervous. I’m not from the health bureau coming to fine you,” Shi Niaoren said. “Don’t do a surprise cleanup. Let me see the real situation so I can prescribe the right medicine. If you just whitewash everything, I won’t be able to see the problems, and there will be big trouble in the future.”

After instructing Wu Nanhai about the hygiene inspection, Shi Niaoren wanted to call the pharmaceutical factory again, but on second thought, it would be better to go there himself to relax—he had been smelling poop since 5 a.m., and it was almost noon. Going to the pharmaceutical factory would also allow him to get a free meal at the farm.

The pharmaceutical and medical equipment factory was located inside the farm, a composite building with a reinforced concrete frame. A chimney was spewing smoke into the air. It was equipped with a dedicated boiler room, geothermal air conditioning, a self-contained purified water source, and a dedicated garbage incinerator. The overall infrastructure was first-class. However, this was the first time Shi Niaoren had come here since the pharmaceutical factory was completed and put into production—after all, he was not in this profession.

The pharmaceutical and medical equipment factory was a first-level unit with strict access control. The iron-clad gate of the courtyard was tightly closed. He rang the doorbell for a long time before a face appeared in the small window on the door—it startled Shi Niaoren. It was a burned face.

Then he remembered. This was a disabled veteran. These people were now basically serving as guards in key departments.

“Director!” The guard saw that it was the director of the hospital and the director of this factory, and quickly opened the door.

Although Shi Niaoren had the impression that he had treated this person, he could not remember his name. He just nodded politely, “Is Zhao Yanmei here?”

“Yes, yes,” the guard answered repeatedly. “Please go to the office first. I’ll go and inform—”

“No need. Where is she? I’ll go and find her myself.”

“Director Zhao said,” the guard thought for a moment, “no one can go in when she’s working. I’d better go and inform her.”

The room number starting with 0 indicated that it was in the basement. It was probably the strain laboratory. Although Shi Niaoren was not in biochemistry, he knew a little about the principle—she was probably doing something like strain cultivation and didn’t want anyone to come in and out and bring in miscellaneous bacteria.

“How will you inform her?” Shi Niaoren was curious. Although there was a telephone here, there was no internal telephone.

“With this,” the guard led him into the guard room with a limp. There was a shelf along the wall, divided into several rows, with small nameplates nailed to them. Above the nameplates were small bells and pull cords.

The guard very seriously wrote down the date and the visitor’s name in the registration book in a crooked handwriting, then pulled the cord under a certain nameplate a few times. After a while, the small bell on the nameplate also rang.

“Director Zhao knows. She’ll be out soon.”

“This system is not bad,” Shi Niaoren thought to himself that this was similar to the electric bell in the inpatient department of a hospital. Although it couldn’t be used for communication, it could at least convey simple information. This system could also be used in the hospital. He would have to ask Zhao Yanmei about it later.

Zhao Yanmei’s office was separate. Shi Niaoren sat for a while before he saw her return.

It turned out that Zhao Yanmei was inoculating kasugamycin in the strain laboratory. This antibiotic was mainly used in agriculture to prevent crop diseases and had little medical value—it was used to treat mild infections that were not serious. Shi Niaoren was somewhat dissatisfied—in his opinion, this was the result of co-founding it with the Agricultural Committee. Their needs were met first.

Zhao Yanmei saw that the leader’s expression was not very lively and guessed his thoughts.

“This is also practice!” she explained. “The native method of cultivating kasugamycin is relatively simple, and the environmental requirements are not high. If we can get this done, it will be easier to cultivate other strains in the future.”

Shi Niaoren quickly asked, “What strains are you going to cultivate next? Can penicillin be done?”

“It’s not difficult to cultivate penicillin, but the purification is troublesome,” Zhao Yanmei frowned. “We’ll wait until the conditions are better. For medical use, we can cultivate oxytetracycline first. This is relatively simpler.”

It was not bad to have oxytetracycline. The effect of this thing was almost the same as tetracycline, a very broad-spectrum antibiotic.

“It’s good to have oxytetracycline,” Shi Niaoren’s expression improved a lot.

Zhao Yanmei’s next sentence made Shi Niaoren very unhappy again: “It’s also good for fattening pigs.”

“Fattening pigs?”

“Yes, that’s what Old Yang said,” Old Yang was naturally Yang Baogui.

“I’m afraid there won’t be enough medicine for people then. We are very short of antibiotics now!” Shi Niaoren said with a pained expression.

“No matter how urgent it is, it won’t work,” Zhao Yanmei said. “The antibiotics produced have not been tested on animals. With our conditions, the antibiotics produced will not have few impurities. People might get into trouble if they take them…”

“We can’t worry about that much now,” Shi Niaoren said. “Let’s first solve the problem of having or not having.”

Zhao Yanmei came from a regular pharmaceutical factory and was not used to such a simple and crude, native method of doing things. She was silent for a moment.

“It’s not that urgent, is it?” Zhao Yanmei said. “The acid and alkali plant will be put into production soon. After it’s put into production, the coal chemical complex will also be put into production. It will be fine after it’s put into production.”

“I saw it in the newspaper,” Shi Niaoren was not interested in coal chemical enterprises. “There are many coal chemical products, probably synthetic ammonia? But they are all for industrial use. Can they still produce antibiotics?”

“Sulfonamides!” Zhao Yanmei said. “Ji Situi said that once this coal chemical complex is put into production, one of its by-products will be the raw material for sulfonamides.”

Shi Niaoren certainly knew what sulfonamides meant. This chemical compound was first discovered in dyes and was the most effective anti-infective drug before penicillin-type antibiotics. In this time and space where bacteria had not yet developed drug resistance, this thing alone could save countless lives!

“Really?!” Shi Niaoren was both surprised and happy. He almost stood up. This was great news.

“Ji Situi said so. He’s an expert, he wouldn’t talk nonsense, would he?”

“Yes, yes, we must follow up on this! Follow up!”

“Don’t worry, the acid and alkali plant won’t be ignited until the day after tomorrow. The coal chemical plant will have to wait a few more days. According to Ji Situi, they haven’t even transported enough coal yet.”

“Alright, let’s not talk about this for now,” Shi Niaoren remembered that his main business was not to find antibiotics. He told Zhao Yanmei about some of the current hygiene conditions and proposed that the pharmaceutical factory should preferably produce some commonly used drugs in the near future.

“…Antidiarrheals, saline solution, glucose solution, and bleaching powder.”

Zhao Yanmei said, “To be honest, the only things that can be delivered immediately are distilled water for injection, a dozen or so Chinese patent medicines, saline solution, and alcohol. Even making glucose is difficult…”

“There’s still a problem with saline solution,” she continued. “First, the purity of the sodium chloride in the salt transported from the first salt farm is not high enough, and there are too many impurities. Second, there is not enough sulfuric acid. We don’t dare to make saline solution for infusion, so let’s make some for oral administration first.”

“What else do you need? I’ll apply to the Planning Committee again!”

“There are too many things we need. I’m afraid the Planning Committee can’t do anything about it—Commissioner Ma doesn’t have the ability to create something out of nothing, right?” Zhao Yanmei smiled wryly. “Doctor Shi, you should know that modern pharmacology is actually chemistry.”

“What you mean is—” Shi Niaoren understood what she meant. “Not enough chemical products?”

“It’s not just not enough, it’s a severe shortage. Take the glucose solution you want, for example. The process for making glucose is very simple. Starch plus acidification is easy to make, but I don’t have acid: no hydrochloric acid, no sulfuric acid. So I have to use the enzymatic method, which is time-consuming and laborious, and the pH value of the glucose produced cannot be adjusted—there is no alkali.”

Shi Niaoren nodded.

“Also, gauze and absorbent cotton. They should be degreased first—that requires caustic soda. But caustic soda is very scarce now. There are not enough disinfectants that can be used, and the products produced can only be said to be makeshift. Fortunately, there are not many large-scale external injuries,” she stopped. “At present, apart from cultivating strains and Chinese patent medicines, the pharmaceutical factory really can’t produce anything particularly effective.”

“Don’t worry, these will be resolved in a few days. The chemical plant in Bopu will be put into production soon. I’ll tell the Planning Committee to give the pharmaceutical factory priority,” Shi Niaoren encouraged her.

“That would be great. With the three acids and two caustic sodas, we can make many things,” she stood up and took a piece of paper from the drawer of her desk. “These are some things that need to be coordinated and urgently needed materials.”

Shi Niaoren took it and looked at it. There were many items listed on it: a request for the machinery department to provide a special specification knitting machine for weaving gauze; a full set of cutting equipment and workers who knew how to cut—this was for making masks; various oversized pots, clay pots, iron pots… The order for the glass factory had the most requirements: a large number of utensils, pipes, and alcohol burners.

“And small injection vials,” Zhao Yanmei said. “This is very difficult to make. The glass factory probably isn’t interested. The Planning Committee has to directly issue a research and development order.”

“Are you planning to make injections, oxytetracycline injections?”

“For now, let’s make traditional Chinese medicine injections first. We’re preparing to make some honeysuckle and isatis root injections, as well as cardiac glycosides—extracting atropine should be possible.”

“This stuff—” Shi Niaoren still had some impression of the deaths caused by traditional Chinese medicine injections in the past. “Is it safe?”

“It’s not safe enough. The components of traditional Chinese medicine extracts are miscellaneous, and the pharmacological principles are not clear enough. However, traditional Chinese medicine injections such as honeysuckle, isatis root, and Shuanghuanglian have been used for decades, and the mortality rate is acceptable. It’s not a very dangerous thing. As for atropine, it’s a very dangerous thing in the first place. But atropine is an important rescue drug, very useful. Let’s make it and try it out first.”

“Alright,” Shi Niaoren knew this was also a last resort.

“I have another request,” Zhao Yanmei continued. “All the empty bottles used in the hospital, such as injection vials, infusion bottles, and medicine bottles, should preferably be kept and handed over to the pharmaceutical factory. We can recycle them.”

These things were indeed kept. According to the regulations of the Planning Committee, no modern products could be discarded at will. Even those that were temporarily useless had to be stored first.

“These are kept. And they have all been cleaned and disinfected. But they are all on the Planning Committee’s books. I’ll talk to the Planning Committee and have them all approved for you.”

“There’s another request—” Zhao Yanmei probably felt that this request was a bit excessive. “Can you give us an X-ray machine?”

Shi Niaoren was startled. An X-ray machine! This was a special-grade controlled equipment. Because it involved a radiation source, the transmigrators had gone to great lengths to get only three of them. They would have to rely on them for at least a few decades. What did the pharmaceutical factory want this for?