AS soon as the medicines they were working on were prepared, the other doctors followed Rudolf in hurrying out of the room. Mia was left all alone.
Feeling confused and lost, Mia opened up the notebook containing the preparation methodology.
She decided to start by doing something she was familiar with, refining the Naustica and Amurense. She rubbed the skins off the Naustica berries in the mortar bowl. Then she boiled the seeds to make a concentrated syrup. This would make a fine cough medicine.
Then it was time for the Amurense. Mia crushed up the leaves and steeped them in alcohol, then strained away the leaves, retaining only the liquid. This made an antipyretic analgesic, a painkiller that would lower fevers, too. Both of these were common medicines that had been used for centuries.
Now…next up is…
With trembling hands, she moved onto the next task.
The main effects of the aforementioned high-grade medicine were written down, along with the refinement method.
“…Huh?”
The effects struck Mia as oddly familiar. She leaned in closer to the page.
Motana made a cough syrup similar to the one she’d just made with Naustica. And Efdora made another antipyretic analgesic, just like the Amurense.
What the heck?!
Mia flipped the page. It seemed the effects provided by the high-grade medicines were no different from those of the traditional medicines she was used to. They were interchangeable. And none of them seemed to have any special ability to treat currently incurable diseases.
What does it all mean?
Why bother making different varieties of drugs that had the same effects? The clinic where Mia had worked only had one type of drug for each condition. They would just adjust the dose depending on patient needs.
Mia assumed the existence of different drugs for aristocrats and commoners had to be because the more expensive one had different effects. But that didn’t seem to be true at all. They were just made of rarer ingredients that did the exact same thing.
“What’s wrong?”
Henrik walked in, interrupting her from her thoughts.
“Ah! Perfect timing!”
Mia quickly told Henrik what she’d just learned.
As soon as she mentioned his father, Henrik began frowning, but once she told him about the drug effects being identical, he quickly went pale.
“…Henrik?”
Henrik turned around and walked right down the hall into the examination room, interrupting Rudolf, who was in the middle of seeing a patient. It was a young boy with a fever, and he was lying on the bed. His parents were standing nearby, looking very worried.
From their basic attire, it was obvious they were commoners.
“Doctor, please. Can’t you give him any drugs that work better?”
“Just relax. The usual treatment will be just fine.”
“We’ve all heard about how you save the good stuff for the rich folk! The cutting-edge medicines! Please, doctor, we need some of that!”
Rudolf heaved a sigh.
“This nonsense again? As I’ve said, this is perfectly functional medicine.”
“But…the sickness just keeps coming back! If it’s money you want, we’ll pay!”
“It’s not a question of money. If you’ve got money, then feed the boy a more nutritious diet, and let him rest. And remember to give him his meds regularly. There’s no more effective medicine than what I’ve already given you. Now, please take care.”
Rudolf handed the bag of medicine to the parents and shooed them all out of the room.
Then he turned to Mia and Henrik, standing mutely in the corner.
“Word of the new drugs has spread too far, it seems… That’s a big problem for us.”
“Is it true that there’s no difference in effects between the drugs?”
“Oh, has my obstinate son finally decided to listen to reason?” Rudolf laughed as Henrik blinked.
“But why would you do that? When it’s so easy for your actions to be misinterpreted?”
“Because, of course, I want to make new drugs.”
“What are you talking about?”
As Henrik frowned and Mia blinked uncomprehendingly, Rudolf sat down on his chair heavily and sighed.
“Every year, patients die because we don’t have the right medicine. And I’m not just talking about the incurable diseases. Radius Fever’s a good example. There are plenty of well-known sicknesses we still don’t have effective drugs for.”
Mia frowned, thinking back to her pharmacology classes. Radius Fever was a feared disease, but it couldn’t be called incurable. Despite its high infection rate, it came around rarely, causing devastating seasonal outbreaks.
“Do you have any idea how many die from that? When the body lacks strength, the patient dies. Wealth disparity has nothing to do with it. When it comes down to it, it’s strength you’ll wish you’d had more of, not money.”
Rudolf sighed again, a weary grimace on his face.
“All sickness is to be feared. Even the most commonplace illnesses can take lives.”
Like Demon Claw. Mia felt ashamed, as if she was being told not to think of illnesses differently based on the treatment methods that did or didn’t exist.
Mia had always felt that her mother’s illness was different because there was no treatment. But even when a treatment method is known, people still die. In that respect, there was no difference.
Mia fell silent, feeling that her narrow-minded way of thinking had been called out.
Henrik’s lips were pressed tightly together, as if he too had felt the same sting as Mia.
Ending his lecture there, Rudolf fetched an old binder from the shelf and placed it down on the desk. It was crammed with a large amount of paper.
Mia looked on with interest, wondering what it was. Noticing this, Rudolf chuckled.
“In prehistoric times, people would chew on the nearby leaves and tree roots when they got sick. That’s how we discovered medicines and learned to heal disease. Even now, with all our advancements in science and technology, we still make medicines in much the same way. We test a staggering amount of different substances and see which ones are effective or not. That’s the only way to do it. After last year, I think you kids ought to have realized—it takes a colossal amount of time and money to create a new drug. If you haven’t got the money, you haven’t got a chance.”
“…”
Mia fell silent, nodding. That was why Demon Claw patients, including her mother, had been overlooked all this time.
But where was this conversation leading? Mia went back over it in her mind, trying to piece things together.
Hmm…? It takes money to make drugs…so that’s why Rudolf’s selling different drugs to the commoners and the aristocrats?
Rudolf started speaking again, as if reading Mia’s thoughts.
“In this world, there’s two kinds of people. Those who have money and those who don’t. That’s all there is to it.”
Rudolf’s true motivations were completely different from what Mia had been expecting, but they made sense all of a sudden. Mia sighed. She was both horrified by the ethical ramifications of all this and filled with a sense of begrudging respect at the same time. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so conflicted.
Henrik seemed to share her sentiments.
“So you’re ripping off the rich, is that it? For the sake of funding new drug research?”
Mia smiled dryly over Henrik’s frank choice of phrasing.
“They want the fancy new expensive drugs, and they’re willing to pay. It’s their money, after all. Besides, the more expensive variety is harder to source and produce. The cheap and expensive ingredients just happen to have the same effect. Not my fault if the rich want imported ingredients farmed in expensive-to-maintain greenhouses versus what we can collect locally.”
Rudolf gave them both a twinkling smile.