Sengoku Komachi Kuroutan: Noukou Giga - Vol. 3 Ch. 13 - Nursing

[Ironclad]

The author or translator made a mistake. The common cold is caused by rhinovirus while the common flu is caused by influenza. They share the same cardinal symptoms along with a handful of other common viruses in their respective families. Unless a patient's condition worsens dramatically, no one really bothers with identifying the exact pathogen because the treatment is largely just the same supportive care. In modern times it's strange for a respiratory infection to persist for a month, but children often have trouble clearing their airways and this can be exacerbated by other conditions such as malnutrition, chronic allergies, anatomically narrow airways like a deviated septum, or genetic conditions like karatagener's syndrome, cystic fibrosis; AAT deficiency. Even after the initial viral infection resolves, an overlying bacterial infection can occur while the patient is compromised. We'd all be helpless without antibiotics.

Considering that even eating meat was banned in Japan during this era, even nobility and royalty could be malnourished I imagine. Also throughout history nobility and royalty have been known for consanguinous marriages which greatly increases the risks of genetic disorders occurring and worsening from generation to generation. It's even theorized that vampire mythology and rumors of nobles drinking blood in many cultures is actually based on inherited porphyria which could theoretically be treated by consuming the hemoglobin you can't make yourself.

 

[manshiro]

@ Ironclad In this case the translator did a mistake, and it should be just the common cold and not the flu

 

[criver]

@Alseif Medical knowledge related to common ailments was actually pretty good in the past, and relied on natural medicine. If anything our MC didn't provide any herbal tea for the kid, nor steam therapy, nor honey & lemon - which she could do, and which would have been better than just providing air humidifiers and food.

@sssr I can believe that, "modern" medicine denied many tried and tested methods, before reinventing them years later. Do you have the source for the child mortality stats? I want to enlighten myself.

 

[viewtiful]

She prevented the deadliest disease known to man, the Japanese cold

Truly, the most overpowered isekai MC

 

[alacaelum]

Man, it never ceases to amaze me how knowledgable the people in this comment section are.

 

[Animaeline]

@criver Lemons as we know them were introduced by the Spaniards later in history when the closed off Japan started receiving exports, but around nobunaga's time there would have been yuzu which is a lemon-like citrus that was originally found in china and introduced to Japan around 720. Despite the fact that yuzu was definitely around it wasn't really cultivated until much later and the fruit was often simply used for it's aroma especially in baths and hot springs so Shizuku probably wouldn't have been able to procure any on such quick notice so she simply dealt with what she had around her with the resources available.

 

[criver]

@Animaeline What about the rest of the things I mentioned?

 

[Panino]

@criver
There was an Emperor that, because he was will, he almost stopped eating and die of malnutrition.
Something like that.
Diseases and how they work may seem obvious today but this is actually very recent and Japan was out of the western loop.

 

[IceVoidSoldier]

hooohooo they are surely not the first or the last that will fall for our main character. xD

 

[criver]

@Panino Please provide the source for this - it's not that I don't trust you, I just want to read up on it.

 

[KAFi]

@alacaelum ikr, some of other thread are even more detail.So many ppl asking amazing questions and so many ppl answering those questions in great details.

 

[Panino]

@criver
Heard in a podcast.
But it's know, people knew and registered what the emperor was eating. He tried to be pious to overcome some crises and made a mistake. you can't survive from just a few grains of plain rice alone.

 

[criver]

@Panino The context is missing without further details. Assuming that an emperor was indeed eating a few grains of rice, I doubt that his kids did, or that people didn't know how to deal with a cold.

 

[miyako19]

@Archomp Pickling food is nothing new. It has been used for 2000 years. And the name "tsukemono" was created in 1336, 200 years before the time period in this manga. Tadakatsu just became emotional because the food made him feel nostalgic.

 

[miyako19]

@criver There is no cure for common cold though even in the modern days. Just eating well, rest well and let the immune system do its job. However, Japanese in this time period are malnourished due to the Emperor banned eating meat since Heian period (the ban was lifted in Meiji Restoration 1868) so their immune systems aren't good to fight illness and a lot of people still believe illness are caused by evil spirits so they did a lot of unnecessary things like praying and drinking home-made remedies that made from silly things like ashes of animals, etc. that make the illness becomes worse.
My Asian country was the same just 100 years ago, before WWI. People preferred bringing the sick to a shaman to ask the gods to cure the illness rather than bringing them to a doctor. That brought a lot of headaches to the doctors who tried to convince them that was not the right way to cure the sick.

 

[criver]

@miyako19 Have you heard of thyme, elder, chamomille, lemon, honey? You surely must have. It's called symptomatic treatment. It's just unrealistic when they present our MC as the only one having a brain - and she did almost nothing in this case to boot.
Everything around our MC is being dumbed down, so she can apply the knowledge she has from the future. A good example were the crossbows, which weren't unknown. And now we are made to believe that nobody knows how to treat a cold. What's next? People don't know how to eat, breathe, and shit?

 

[EaterOfBooks]

@criver

Medical knowledge related to common ailments was actually pretty good in the past, and relied on natural medicine.

One of the largest problems with historical medicine across multiple cultures and time periods was misdiagnosis and subsequent administration of treatments that didn't treat the disease but put additional stress on the body. (Bloodletting is a prime example, and a number of natural remedies can do far more harm than good unless the condition they're meant to treat is actually present.)

Even today, for viral infections like the common cold, influenza, and Epstein-Barr mononucleosis, there aren't good options for directly treating the disease, only for alleviating the symptoms and fighting any opportunistic bacterial infections (say, a bacterial sinus infection) that decide to move into the environments they create in the body. (This is why vaccinations are so important for viral illnesses, when available.) The 'cure' for the common cold is still "rest and hope it gets better".

If anything our MC didn't provide any herbal tea for the kid, nor steam therapy, nor honey & lemon - which she could do, and which would have been better than just providing air humidifiers and food.

Honey would have been pretty rare and quite expensive, the kid was probably already drinking tea, lemons weren't around, the humidification (as well as the hot soup) is sort of a substitute for steam therapy, and if the kid's had a cold for an entire month, there is obviously something wrong with their diet/nutrition.

I can't really fault her approach, given what she's got to work with. (And this isn't Jin - she's not a medical professional.)

@miyako19

British and French monarchs were still using "The Royal Touch" to 'cure' scrofula up until the mid 1800s. (Scrofula will often clear up on its own after a while, so the treatment would appear to be effective.)

On your other point, it's also worth noting that beri-beri (caused by vitamin B-1 deficiency) was actually called "Edo sickness" at points in Japan's history, due to the upper-class' reliance on polished/white rice as a staple food, without a diet that included other sources of vitamin B-1.

 

[criver]

@EaterOfBooks
I am talking about a cold and natural medicine like herbs, there's nothing natural about bloodletting. It's typical pseudoscience born out of philosophical musings and no empirical evidence (except for very specific cases).

The cure for the common cold is a strong immune system. However there are symptomatic treatments as already mentioned. Also vaccines haven't been shown to help against the common cold.

The kid's cold going on for so long is due to his weak immune system and possibly no treatment for his symptoms. This isn't always a result of a bad diet - otherwise you'd never get sick or stay sick for long on a good diet, which is objectively untrue.
Additionally there have been records of beekeeping in Japan dating back to the 7th century. Surely Oda Nobunaga could procure some.

The whole point is that this is oversimplified and dumbed down in order to emphasize how "amazing" the MC is.

 

[Rayster]

Wait, wow, Honda's really cute and seems like a pretty decent husbando-looking character. Male lead? IDK but Yes please! (anything could happen at this point because it's not actual history already anyway) 😏

By the way, introducing so many foreign future scientific terms/concepts like virus and nutrients... if it's recorded in history for this timeline, Shizuko might even be seen as a goddess/vessel possessed by divinity (Nobunaga: "even illnesses bend to her will") in their future when they found out that her knowledge was too advanced and out of nowhere in that era. Which is great because I like that~

@alacaelum , same, so many knowledgeable and intelligent readers here for this series (especially when compared to many other mangas' comment section) know their stuff so well (debating or not), while here I am can't even remember most of stuff I studied many years ago and the names and terms used in this series, basically just here for the time-travelling territory-management simulation fantasy lol.

 

[Noggin]

That's Honda on the cover art, right?