Translator: CadmarLegend

Sponsored by: Alvin

Chapter 155 - Clinical Trials

"Oh, by the way, what were you talking about earlier with Mimu-san, Barca-sama?"

"What were you referring to?"

"You two were talking about experimenting to see the effects of the treatment, weren't you?"

"I'm sure you're not thinking of using living people as experimental subjects. I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

"Wow. Are you two planning to go that far? As expected, I can't help you with that. Human experimentation is a terrible thing."

"That's a bad way of putting it. It's a clinical trial. All we're doing is reducing the cost of treatment in exchange for data on the treatment of actual sick people. I think it's a win-win situation because you get the treatment at a reasonable price."

."..... Is it true? You don't mix up dubious medicines at night and force people who don't like them to take them, do you, Barca-sama?"

"I'm not going to do that, painter-san. Mimu aside, I'm a real human being with decent senses."

"...... Well, let's put it that way. So you're saying that you're actually going to treat patients with diseases, and then you're going to study whether they're cured or not, and make data. If that's the case, I won't need to draw pictures, so it doesn't sound like it's relevant to me."

"Etto, right. I'll ask you to participate in the clinical trial, too. I think some diseases cause characteristic physical changes, so I'll ask you to draw them."

".....Oh, no. It was a bush snake... Barca-sama, I only want to paint!"

"Don't worry, I'll let you draw as much as you want~!"

"I really don't know how I ended up like this. My dream life as a painter turned into this..."

"I'm glad you're so happy that you're crying! Oh, and about the clinical trial, you're not just going to draw the cured people. You'll be asked to collect data as well, so keep that in mind."

"What are you going to do in this, Barca-sama?"

"I've already explained it to Mimu, but I'm thinking of doing a comparative study, so we can better understand the effects of the treatment."

　The human anatomy diagrams are not yet complete.

　However, Painter-san seems to be interested in the clinical trials after the dissection is finished.

　We can't just leave it to the Mimu anyway, so let's get him involved now.

　That's why I decided to have a little talk with him now.

　About judging the effects of the treatment.

　I don't know much about how to do it, but in my previous life, there was a lot of medical information on TV.

　I remembered what I had heard and explained it to Mimu.

　The topic was that it was not accurate to simply treat a patient with a disease and argue whether it was cured or not as a way to confirm the effectiveness of the treatment.

　If the treatment actually cured the patient, then it was an effective treatment.

　That's how I felt when I saw it on TV.

　But in fact, there are cases where the treatment is completely ineffective and the patient is cured.

　For example, if you see a great doctor, such as a professor at a medical university, and he or she treats you, you would probably think without any evidence that you will get well.

　This is also the case when you take a medicine that is said to be effective in treating a disease.

　Even if the medicine is actually ineffective, people may be cured just by their beliefs.

　This is a phenomenon called the placebo effect.

　There are probably many people in this world who are cured by this placebo effect, even though there are doctors who do not understand what they are doing.

　If you just say that the treatment cured your body, you cannot tell whether it actually worked or whether the placebo effect was at work.

　Therefore, it is necessary to compare and verify the effects.

　If you want to examine the effect of a drug, you need to examine the case where the drug you want to examine is taken and the case where the drug is not taken.

　If they want to get more reliable data, they may give the patients fake drugs that are neither poison nor medicine.

　They divide patients with the same disease into two groups and test whether the probability of cure is different or the same when they take the drug and when they take the fake drug.

　I will then use the method of comparative study to compare the results of the two groups to see how effective the treatment method is in this world.

　Well, I guess there are more detailed steps to be taken, but I don't know much about them, so I'll just assume that this is enough.

"In other words, we're going to compare the actual treatment group with the non-treatment group, aren't we? Isn't that a pain in the ass?"

"Well, we're going to do clinical trials anyway, so let's at least do this. I don't want it to turn into a "Powder of Sympathy" story." (TLN: it's an actual story )

"Powder of Sympathy? What's that?"

"It's a story about the spread of a wrong treatment which was mistakenly proven effective by a wrong experimental method."

　The Powder of Sympathy story orginates from the Middle Ages.

　In order to heal patients who had been injured by weapons on the battlefield, ointment was applied to the weapon instead of the patient's body.

　At the time, this was considered to be the most advanced method of treatment because it was tested and found to be effective.

　If you think about it, there is no way a person's body could be healed by applying some medicine to a weapon.

　But why was this the case back then?

　There was a reason for it.

　In this story, the reason is that the way the experiment was conducted back then was wrong.

　At that time, the rate of healing was higher when the ointment was applied to the weapon than when it was applied to the patient's body.

　Why did this happen in such a strange way?

　The reason is that the ointments, or medicines of the time, were kneaded with animal dung, mud, and other substances that have adverse effects on the human body.

　In other words, if I understand the story correctly, it would have been better to put medicine on the weapon and let the body heal itself rather than undergo the common treatment of the medieval era.

"So, if we're going to get data, we need to do it in a reliable way. You'll cooperate with me, won't you, Painter-san?"

"Well, from what I've heard, it doesn't sound like you're just trying to experiment on people for fun. I understand. I'll cooperate with you, Barca-sama."

　Apparently, Painter-kun was convinced and was willing to cooperate.

　But how much of an impact will this clinical trial actually have?

　The fact that there is such a thing as healing magic is a far cry from the common sense I know.

　It's possible that there is magic that can heal you by putting some medicine on a weapon.

　It wasn't like Mimu, but I was a little excited to see what kind of results I could get from the clinical trials... before I even started.