The Ming Dynasty’s Prodigal Son - Chapter 636

[636. Chapter 615 Miracle Medicine]

“Ahem…” At this point, Ma Wensheng was actually desperate inside.

Ping Xihou, you are so sick that your life is almost gone, and you are still thinking about this.

But… obviously, this move is very effective.

Even Liu Jian was moved. This great hero who guarded the border town had a wish before he died. What happened?

Ma Wensheng thought for a while and then continued: “He also said that if Your Majesty is willing to approve this marriage, he will be able to rest in peace even if he dies. He would rather have the title of Marquis of Pingxi taken away by His Majesty Guo. He also said, The southwest will definitely be uneasy due to this epidemic. As long as he has a breath left and is suffering from this serious illness, he will continue to patrol the guards. If he dies, his wife Liu will inherit his legacy and control the situation for Your Majesty. Guizhou, Guizhou is determined, and the southwest is determined, and the Ming Dynasty is prosperous. He understands this truth. “

There is also Liu’s personal note in this report…”

Ma Wensheng sighed and continued: “Liu. He said that since she married into the Fang family, she was a member of the Fang family for one day, and even if she died, she was also a ghost of the Fang family. If something unexpected happened to her husband, please ask the court to send an imperial envoy to prevent unexpected events. Although she was a female, she was still willing to Serve the imperial envoy and die for the imperial court.”

Speaking of this…

Emperor Hongzhi fell silent. Needless to say, Fang Jinglong’s loyalty was indeed admirable even for the Liu family.

Emperor Hongzhi naturally understood what Ping Xihou meant, but at the same time, he couldn’t help but worry about Ping Xihou’s physical condition.

He immediately said: “Immediately order the imperial doctor to go to Guizhou immediately and try every means to treat Ping Xihou. But the most urgent task now is to cure the disease.”

Emperor Hongzhi couldn’t help but sigh: “There is no one in the Fang family who is not loyal. He dedicated his life to the imperial court and died. If Fang Jifan knew about this, he would be worried.”

He found that he actually started to miss the feelings of that guy Fang Jifan.

What should obviously be more concerned about is the corrupt situation in Yunnan and Guizhou.

The outbreak of such a big plague now means the death of countless people. The Ming Dynasty’s dominance in Yunnan and Guizhou will be weak. Coupled with the current conflict with Annan, it is difficult for Annan to take this opportunity to add insult to injury.

Emperor Hongzhi stood up and walked back and forth in the palace with his hands behind his back, feeling very anxious.

Every malaria outbreak in the Yunnan-Guizhou area in the past meant military failure or the occurrence of rebellion.

I hope this time, I can get through it safely.

Moreover, every time malaria causes the greatest harm to the military guards in the field, this means that with a large number of casualties among the Han people, the Ming Dynasty’s rule over the southwest will fall into an extremely weak state. By then…

Emperor Hongzhi sighed, and then He stopped, looked at Liu Jian and others with a pair of bright eyes, and said word by word: “I want the princess to marry Fang Jifan, the prince of Pingxi. What do you think?”

Liu Jian and others were silent.

It is not appropriate for a princess to marry a meritorious person. In the eyes of many people, this will increase the risk of relatives interfering in politics.

But now…

Ping Xihou is infected with the disease, and death is imminent.

When a person is about to die, if the princess marries, the title of Ping Xihou will naturally be taken away by Guo.

At this point, it would be a bit unjustifiable to object.

This is a family full of loyalty. Didn’t Ming Dynasty always advocate loyalty and filial piety?

Fang Jinglong is getting older. Although malaria is not an incurable disease, the mortality rate is extremely high. Once infected, a person of Fang Jinglong’s age is almost like having one foot on the coffin board.

Moreover, the situation in the southwest was critical, and the imperial court needed to rely on Liu and her tribe to try their best to maintain the situation.

Otherwise, once the Southwest is corrupted, the consequences will be disastrous.

Emperor Hongzhi added another sentence: “I think back to the time when the Duke of Guizhou was ordered to control Yunnan when he was in danger. Emperor Wen married the princess to the son of the Duke of Guizhou as his wife. There is a precedent for me to do this. I only have one daughter. To show the loyalty of the Fang family, why not marry the princess? There are tens of thousands of Han troops in the southwest, hundreds of thousands of family members, and countless immigrants. At this moment, I am thinking about it. Their safety, at the same time, they also hope that they can take advantage of the joy of the princess’s marriage to dilute the worries about the crisis in the southwest. Liu Qing’s family, Li Qing’s family, and Xie Qing’s family, not to mention that according to the ancestral law, the princess’s marriage is There is nothing wrong with Xunchen. But even if there is no precedent in the ancestral law, there is still love outside the law. Fang Jifan’s father is dying. Come to think of it, he is like a stick in his throat. Is it not right for me to reward loyalty by giving him a marriage? “

Liu Jian calmed down and said, His Majesty’s words really made him unable to refuse: “If Your Majesty makes a decree, I have nothing to say.”

Emperor Hongzhi breathed a sigh of relief and looked at Xie Qian and Li Dongyang.

Xie Qian smiled bitterly and said: “Your Majesty is right. Being outside the law is nothing more than human kindness. I have nothing to say.”

Li Dongyang hesitated for a moment and nodded.

Emperor Hongzhi said: “In that case, let me make an edict. What happened today is both joy and sorrow. I wish the country to be peaceful and the country and the people to be safe. Now my daughter Zhu Xiurong is staying in the boudoir. Now that I have heard of Fang’s loyalty, I will let her go. In the middle, he married Fang Jifan, the son of the Fang family…”

…

Xishan.

Fang Jifan has received a letter from home.

Fang Jifan frowned as he read the letter home.

This is more like a will than a family letter. I hope that Fang Jifan can protect the family business in the future. From now on, he must not be ridiculous. He must look forward and backward when doing things. He must not be as willful as before and take good care of his sister. So much.

Dad…has malaria.

Moreover… since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, the ninth malaria outbreak has completely broken out in Yunnan and Guizhou.

Malaria has swept through the three provinces, and military guards almost everywhere have experienced epidemics. In severe cases, the entire military camp has been wailing.

Panic has spread, a large number of officers and soldiers have begun to flee, and people have begun to bring their families with them, hoping to stay as far away from the origin of the epidemic as possible.

The originally stable Yunnan-Guizhou frontline is beginning to stir again.

After reading this family letter, Fang Jifan couldn’t help but feel melancholy and felt very uncomfortable.

My dad… it was an afterthought.

It was only after he proposed marriage that he proposed the marriage between the princess and himself to the palace at this time.

Although he was complaining in his heart, Fang Jifan knew that this epidemic was like a raging fire. Once it could not be controlled, many people would die, including his own father.

Fang Jifan was a little anxious. Malaria was considered a difficult disease in this era. Now was the critical moment to control the disease and treat the disease to save lives.

He hurriedly found Zhang Xin.

Cinchona trees have been cultivated since Xu Jing brought back saplings and seeds the year before last. It has high environmental requirements. Zhang Xin has probably understood their habits, so he has started to cultivate them in the greenhouse. Large-scale planting.

Planting cinchona trees requires extremely high costs. When we were stationed in Tiantianwei, there were too many tree species and crops that needed to be cultivated, and we were unwilling to invest too much cost. If Fang Jifan had not paid attention to it, Zhang Xin would not have been interested in the cinchona trees. .

In the past two years, contiguous greenhouses have been erected throughout the northern foothills of the Western Mountains, and cinchona trees have been extensively planted. However, the vast majority of cinchona trees today are not yet ‘adult’ and are not tall and strong. At the moment, the living beings are no more than as tall as a human being, and the tree trunk is only as thick as a water glass.

The original growth cycle of this tree takes six years to mature. In terms of economic benefits, if you start to scrape their bark now, the profit will not be high, and it will easily lead to necrosis of the cinchona tree.

Zhang Xin heard that Fang Jifan wanted to take the bark of the cinchona tree, and he was immediately unhappy: “Qianhu, in order to plant these trees, hundreds of manpower were used in the field. This tree has extremely high requirements for temperature and soil. It also requires a lot of water for irrigation, and it is very pampering. It is not easy to build a greenhouse and it costs a lot of money.”

What he didn’t say was that this cinchona tree cost him countless efforts.

Although he didn’t say it, his reluctance could be heard in Zhang Xin’s voice.

At this time, Fang Jifan couldn’t control so much, and saving people was the most important thing, so he said to Zhang Xin very solemnly: “At this time, saving people is the most important thing. There is an urgent need for bark medicine at the moment. Compared with human life, no matter how much this tree costs, it will not matter. How much money is it worth?”

Fang Jifan suddenly felt that when he said this sentence, his back was very straight. What does it mean to have a correct outlook on life and serve the country and the people? This is what Fang Jifan does.

“Harvest the bark immediately, as much as you can harvest.”

Fang Jifan personally visited the continuous cinchona tree cultivation base in the northern foothills. Here, thousands of cinchona trees occupy hundreds of acres. Land, in order to create a tropical rainforest environment, this large area of land has been specially transformed.

Fang Jifan gave the order, and even Zhang Xin could only reluctantly pass on the order.

Hundreds of farmers, holding knives specially designed to remove bark, began to scrape off the bark of the cinchona tree carefully. Then, they packed it with dustpans. The next day, dozens of baskets of cinchona bark were shipped. Entered a specialized pharmaceutical workshop.

In the previous life, people extracted cinchona cream from the bark of the cinchona tree, which became the first generation of anti-malarial medicine. Since then, with the development of the pharmaceutical industry, people have extracted the ingredients of cinchona cream. Among them, quinine was produced.

This specific drug is extremely effective against malaria and is a rapid blood schizont killer.

It is actually not easy to make quinine, but…with cinchona bark, this primitive quinine, it is much easier.

In South America, the rainforest environment there is similar to that of Yunnan, Guizhou and the Western Regions in the tropics and subtropics. Therefore, the Indians discovered the cinchona tree. The bark of the cinchona tree was dried and ground into powder to cure the disease. malaria.

But just like this, for the other side’s successor, it was obviously more than that. He ordered people to collect more bark, even if he did not care about the survival of the cinchona tree, he could collect as much as he could. At the same time, he ordered people to start preparations. Pharmaceuticals.

(End of chapter)