I Can Meet with Dead Scientists

Chapter 119: Do You Know the Value of Antibiotics? (Major Chapter)


"Garlic?"

Beside the kitchen.

Hearing Xu Yun's words, Fatty Meng was slightly stunned.

Then he thought of something and pointed to the basket beside him, saying:

"Little brother, are you talking about hu? That's the thing over there?"

Xu Yun turned his head in the direction he pointed, and found that the basket in the corner of the kitchen was indeed filled with garlic.

These garlic cloves looked consistent with those in later generations, but generally much larger, clearly selected from the finest garlic.

He quickly walked to the basket, picked up a head of six cloves, examined it, and nodded repeatedly:

"That's right, this is it!"

Fatty Meng, hearing this, couldn't help but have a smug smile:

"This little brother, garlic is what they call it in Deng Prefecture. We in Bianjing all call this thing hu or hu garlic.

If it weren't for my in-laws being from Deng Prefecture, I wouldn't have understood what you were saying!"

Xu Yun returned a polite smile to Fatty Meng:

"Thank you, Brother Meng,"

Not being a botanist by profession, he only knew that garlic was introduced to China in the Han Dynasty, and he wasn't really familiar with its other names.

In fact.

In ancient China, garlic had many different names.

The larger ones were generally called hu, while the smaller ones were called mountain garlic, and it wasn't until the mid-Ming Dynasty that they were formally unified under one name.

Then Xu Yun turned to Mr. Xie and said:

"Old Chief Steward, could you prepare a stone mortar for me and scald it with hot water... ahem, hot soup first.

Also, please prepare a bag of salt for me, the finer the better, oh, and a bottle shaped like a gall bladder made of boli."

Mr. Xie nodded:

"No problem."

A short while later.

The old chief steward came over with several items and handed them to Xu Yun:

"Stone mortar, salt, and a boli bottle, everything's here."

Xu Yun thanked him and then chose a relatively clean room.

He asked the old chief steward to wait outside the door while he took the prepared items into the room.

Once inside.

Xu Yun placed the stone mortar, peeled garlic, salt, his small bottle, a boli bottle shaped like a gall bladder, and a pot similar to a clay pot sourced from Fatty Meng on the table.

The boli in the gall bladder-shaped boli bottle refers to glass.

That's correct.

In this era now, glass technology had already emerged.

A famous piece of evidence is a poem by the Song Dynasty poet Yang Wanli, which includes the line "Knocked as jade chimes across the forest, suddenly pretends to glass's shattering sound on the ground" in the work 'A Child Plays with Ice'.

Besides.

Emperor Zhenzong of Song also once had tin craftsmen coat glass bottles with mercury and drank from them, licking it before bed every night.

Yes, you read correctly—drinking from mercury-coated glass, which is a part of the reason for the high mortality rate in the Zhao family.

All in all.

The current glass technology is still far from that of later generations, but the practicality or functionality is already very close.

After preparing everything.

Xu Yun first put the peeled garlic into the stone mortar and began crushing it forcefully.

Thump thump thump—

After five or six minutes.

A large amount of crushed garlic was ready.

Xu Yun poured it all into the glass bottle in order, and covered it with a lid.

He then filled the clay pot with salt, placed the glass bottle into the salt, and lifted the pot in a way similar to hanging roasting.

He then lit a fire, adjusted the amount and height of the firewood to control the temperature to about 40 degrees, and began heating.

Another half hour passed.

Seeing that the timing was almost right, Xu Yun gave a 'pop', removing the lid of the small bottle.

Immediately.

The room was filled with an extremely intense alcohol scent.

Yes.

Alcohol.

At this point, clever students must have understood Xu Yun's thought process.

Yes, what Xu Yun was preparing was allicin.

Don't judge by how common garlic seems, sounding somewhat lowly compared to penicillin or willow branches.

In reality.

This is a black tech of time-travel on a godlike level!

To say without exaggeration.

Things like cement, papermaking, taro, are like younger brothers in front of allicin.

When it comes to hard comparisons, only black gunpowder and potatoes barely match its divine level.

Because it is a type of antibiotic, and extremely easy to make.

When talking about antibiotics, most people probably think of penicillin, erythromycin, or tetracycline.

But actually, allicin is also a very powerful antibiotic.

Its antibacterial capability is no worse than penicillin, and it combats a wider spectrum of microorganisms—penicillin is only effective against bacteria but powerless against fungi, whereas allicin is one of the few types that can deal with both bacteria and fungi.

The main reason allicin is hard to popularize in later generations is its difficulty in storage, existing for only one to two hours at room temperature, and antibiotic resistance is also a big issue.

But after time traveling, its advantages are fully showcased:

Compared to the preparation process of penicillin, making allicin is too simple.

As long as you time travel to any year after the Han Dynasty, you can make allicin with just your hands.

Because to prepare allicin, you only need garlic and high-concentration alcohol.

First, crush the garlic and let it sit for an hour.

Then soak and extract with high-concentration alcohol, and then...

Step away from the operation table, and it's done!

That's right.

Just this simple, you can gingerly make a low-concentration alcohol solution of allicin.

What?

You ask how to get high concentration alcohol in ancient times?

Those with a chemistry background can use distillation, while those who flunked chemistry can directly remove the water from spirits using lime to make it.

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