Chapter 291

Digitalis and belladonna, the only two truly confirmed effective natural plant medicines in hand, with relatively clear mechanisms.

The former is fresh plant material recently harvested and delivered; the latter is a memento from the Westmin trip, dried and preserved, possibly mixed with a few blueberries missed during sorting.

Of course, when they were still fresh and distinguishable, Kraft had no time to carefully tell them apart. After drying, they were indistinguishable—just like strawberry seeds fallen into a pile of white sesame seeds.

Fortunately, there's no need for high precision now, and the sample likely won't mind if the reagent carries a hint of fruit fragrance.

Take two teaspoons of dried fruit, steep in the remaining hot water. The shriveled fruits swell, staining the liquid a faint glowing purple, looking beautiful in the transparent white glass container.

In fact, when belladonna appeared at banquets, it wasn't always the assassin's masterpiece; it was also used as a dangerous cosmetic.

Due to aesthetic preferences Kraft couldn't understand, some insisted that larger pupils made eyes look more vivid and alluring, until some genius discovered that belladonna poisoning caused pupil dilation.

Thus, belladonna eye drops became a popular beauty product—apply a drop before appearing, and you gain dazzling, captivating pupils. Despite occasional side effects of varying severity, its followers only grew in number.

This may be one of belladonna's earliest medicinal uses, well explaining its pharmacological mechanism as an anticholinergic agent. Since cholinergic receptors are widely distributed across many smooth muscles and glands, belladonna's range of influence is vast.

The sphincter muscle controlling pupil constriction is, of course, one of them. It must be said that topical use as eye drops is a relatively wise application—the wisest is not to use it at all. "Misuse" here can be taken literally.

Kraft drew a small amount with a quill and dripped it onto the sample, now returned to normal. The unprotected surface quickly absorbed the liquid; the purple seeped into the semi-transparent soft tissue, slowly diffusing and fading.

Following the diffusion path, previously invisible tiny capillaries became visible. The absorbed liquid traveled through the tubular system, quickly permeating one corner of the sample before abruptly stopping.

With a brief, complex fluctuation, fluid flow suddenly halted. It was as if a valve in the tube closed, forcibly confining the drug to a limited area, drastically slowing its spread.

"This is possible?" In normal blood vessels, valves serve as one-way check valves to prevent backflow, but in this sample, this simple structure seemed modified to open and close on demand.

It could selectively contain the poisoning locally, rather than, like a human, absorbing it and letting it circulate throughout the entire body.

Kraft tried adding more liquid, but the sample "became clever," refusing absorption and instead forming the same keratinous layer, isolating itself from the outside.

This did not deter the professor from continuing the experiment. Since it wouldn't absorb, he would inject the drug directly.

He had no proper syringe at hand, nor had he ever considered needing one. In his view, no suitable drugs for injection currently existed.

Unfortunately for patients, the concept of intravenous injection appeared far earlier than suitable drugs for it.

Long ago, people had tried injecting drugs directly into blood vessels to accelerate efficacy—though not with syringes. Theoretically, all you needed was a thin-tipped tube and a pressurized container.

"Next time I should ask the Xigo family if they can make syringes. Digitalis would convince them." With limited resources, Kraft used the ancestral injection device provided by the clinic—a pouch made from an animal's organ storing liquid metabolic waste.

"Uh, that thing looks a bit like..." Kup felt the shape and storage method of the tool were unsettling.

"You're right. If I took it, Dai Wei could never use it on patients." Kraft attached the needle to the bulb, drew up the belladonna solution, and injected it into the sample.

To prevent poor diffusion, he injected at multiple points and varying depths.

The fully dyed pale purple sample sphere contracted and expanded vigorously, its frequency clearly increasing, while its internal digestive vesicles grew sluggish and still. Various colored solid particles and small fragments proliferated and enlarged, sustained by abundant new blood vessels—likely compensatory hypertrophied secretory glands.

As expected, another complex fluctuation arose under the mental sensory field, unresolvable. Probably because target receptors were everywhere, forcing the entire organism to adjust.

The sample took time to adapt; the fluctuation's intensity was even stronger than during high-temperature exposure, but more chaotic.

Faced with imbalance across multiple systems caused by the same drug, it chose to respond through multiple simultaneous changes.

The assistant noticed the professor's seriousness mixed with confusion and a touch of disappointment.

"Crush the purple bellflower stems and leaves—hurry." The hourglass had not been turned, yet something else seemed to be urging time forward.

"Just a moment, coming right up." Kup tossed the entire plant into a washboard-like juicer, pressed it to extract fresh juice, and handed the bottle to the eager employer.

After simple fourfold dilution, the digitalis solution was squeezed into the now-calmed sample.

Unlike the vividly colored belladonna tea, the pale yellow-green solution blended in immediately, leaving no traceable path.

Kraft unconsciously widened his eyes, waiting for results. Time passed; the familiar pain and discomfort unexpectedly lessened, replaced instead by an unsettling sense of ease.

It should be time soon, but subjectively it wasn't yet—he wanted to see more.

The sample's overall activity slowed, yet its amplitude increased, as if shifting from short gasps to deep breaths. Rhythmic muscle fiber bundles pulled powerfully on surrounding tissues, contracting inward.

Enhanced contractions pumped fluid rapidly through the tubular system, affecting more muscle bundles, which in turn contracted even more powerfully.

Once this trend reached a threshold, the situation reversed: contraction frequency increased while intensity weakened.

When frequency reached a certain level, contraction magnitude dropped to an extremely inadequate degree—more like spasmodic trembling than rhythmic contraction; high-frequency, shallow, rapid contractions could no longer generate effective pressure.

The same condition seen in humans appeared in the sample, manifesting in a similar fashion.

This would be an ideal demonstration of cardiac myocyte electrophysiology—an excellent teaching tool. Cardiac contraction requires maintaining a specific intracellular and extracellular ion concentration gradient; digitalis's inhibition of the sodium-potassium pump, once reaching a threshold, disrupts this state by altering potassium ion gradients, lowering the resting potential.

For anyone who remembered even basic cellular electrophysiology, the implication was immediate—increased excitability.

In the heart, this manifested as increasingly rapid contractions, until, like convulsions, they ceased producing effective pressure—just as a constantly twitching hand cannot lift anything.

【Ventricular Fibrillation】

The most lethal arrhythmia had formed, fully visualized. The professor glanced regretfully at Kup—unfortunately, the only potential teaching subject here was far from having learned this level.

"Let's see—how will you respond now?" Kraft observed the sample with keen interest, his attention sharpened to its peak.

The sample's entire circulatory system should now be completely shut down; creating new tissue would be useless unless it could reverse this critical issue.

His expectation was answered.

A new fluctuation spilled forth from the Moon Corpse—not necessarily strong, but free of excessive noise, allowing it to stand out briefly and reach detectable levels.

The prepared mental organ sensed it, encoding this undescribable wave pattern into precise memory.

Visible to the naked eye, the trembling of the sample's cardiac muscle bundles was now controlled.