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Not much for us to do, Maomao thought. The three physicians didn’t foist any random chores on her, so it was all too easy for her to find herself with time to kill. She filled some of it by taking a good look around.
The place looked like it had been an ordinary residence that had been hurriedly converted into a clinic. It was full of familiar tools: mortars and pestles, sifters and dispensing spoons.
Are they making medicine here too? Maomao sniffed. It doesn’t smell much like medicine. It smells...almost sweet.
Still sniffing, she stepped down to the area where the floor was made of exposed dirt. She saw a stove, on top of which sat a pot with dark, viscous liquid inside.
Refined honey?
This was honey with the water removed, and it would be formed into pills—except that she didn’t see any of the herbs with which it would normally be mixed. Instead she saw wheat flour and buckwheat flour, perfectly ordinary baking supplies.
“Buckwheat flour...”
Maomao stepped gingerly away from the bag full of flour and put a handkerchief over her nose. She had difficulty breathing whenever she ate something with buckwheat in it; she certainly didn’t want to inhale the stuff.
“Maomao! Don’t go fiddling with things. Come back over here,” Luomen said.
“Yes, sir,” Maomao answered. Her father sounded a touch panicked, maybe because he knew there was buckwheat flour around. When he saw the handkerchief over her mouth, his face showed that he realized he was too late.
There were a lot of other odd things as well. For example, the two medicine cabinets had exactly the same shape and arrangement. Each had the names of the medicines written on the drawers, but every drawer in both cabinets appeared to contain exactly the same things.
So why would they bother to have two cabinets?
Just as Maomao was wondering about this, one of the men in an apron came up.
“It’s almost time to give them their medicine,” he said.
“Of course; I see,” Luomen replied and stepped away from the cabinets. The man took five doses of the medicine they had just replenished. Then he took five more from the other cabinet—of exactly the same thing.
Maomao wasn’t the only one who found this strange. “Dr. Kan,” said Tall Senior, raising his hand. “May I inspect the contents of the other cabinet?”
“Go ahead,” Luomen said.
With his approval, Tall Senior took a packet from the second cabinet and opened it. Maomao and the other physicians crowded around to look.
“You keep your distance, Maomao,” Luomen said, and she backed off. The pills in the packet were of a brown color; if she squinted, she could see black specks in them. “Is that...buckwheat flour?” she asked.
“One presumes that’s one of the ingredients.”
The pill was made of wheat and buckwheat flours and dyed to make it look like medicine—but it wasn’t.
“So this cabinet has fake medicine that doesn’t do anything?” Middle-Height Peer said in some distress.
“Keep your voice down,” Luomen warned him.
“But sir! Why would you do such a thing?!”
“Think it through and see if you can’t tell me.”
When Luomen told you to think, there was nothing for you to do but think. He only asked questions that could be answered, with enough consideration. If you couldn’t come up with the response, it only meant that you had missed some information somewhere.
Earlier, that man took five packets out of each cabinet. There are ten patients, which means the medicine is being divided in half.
The patients were shown a certain level of hospitality while being treated here. They were probably getting decent food, for one thing.
You make sure everyone is in the same environment to judge the effect of the medicine.
It was always possible that the medicine wasn’t what was helping, but simply being in a clean environment and getting proper nutrition. In that case, you couldn’t always be sure the medicine was working, and that was no good. So it was necessary to prepare two separate groups.
“You’ve figured it out, Maomao?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what do you think?”
The three physicians all turned to hear her answer.
“I think you’ve divided them into two groups to ascertain the effect of the medicine while ruling out the effect of changes in environment or diet. You want to see if people in the same environment with the same illness will show different results based on whether they receive medicine or not.”
Luomen was smiling, but he didn’t look quite convinced.
“Further, the reason you deliberately prepared some medicine that will presumably work and some placebos is—”
“Thank you, that’s enough. There’s someone else who looks like they can give us an answer. Let’s hear it from them.”
Maomao looked over, feeling a touch of mental indigestion. Short Senior was looking especially engaged.
“It’s in order to equalize not just their basic needs, but their feelings as well,” he said. “It’s said that illness begins with the spirit, but so can treatment. The relief provided by the sense that they’re taking medicine can lead a patient to feel that they’ve been cured.”
“Correct. Strangely enough, the very feeling that one is taking medicine can cause the body to produce the illusion that the medicine is working. These pills are to help account for that.” Luomen picked up one of the fake pills. It was quite a piece of work, designed so that even the color was believable. “In addition to your usual production of medicine, I want you to take shifts to record the condition of the patients here. Is that all right?”
“Yes, sir,” Maomao and the others answered in unison.
At least we finally know what we’ll be doing, she thought. But she still hadn’t had a chance to ask why.