Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 01-26-2023, 09:29 AM   #41
buddpaul
 
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Texas
Default Re: Medieval first aid name?

This is an interesting discussion.
buddpaul is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-26-2023, 11:04 AM   #42
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Medieval first aid name?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
Characters says Physician doesn't exist, but is replaced by other skills. It's not saying you can't do what physician does, it's just saying that for some inscrutable reason you can't use Physician's name.
Yeah, it's kind of weird. I feel the intent is largely for TL 5+ healers to be able to heal people using the normal rules, but earlier ones need to rely on Esoteric Medicine, the effectiveness of which varies from setting to setting - and even within a setting, from discipline to discipline - as set by the GM. Pharmacy (Herbal) should probably only be able to stand in for Physician in specific circumstances, but normally just serves as a complement to Esoteric Medicine. Less "TL 4- uses different terms" and more "TL 4- requires more GM input as to effectiveness."


As for the original topic, if you want a specific term for the First Aid skill, something like Healing, Mending, or Bandaging seems appropriate. I'd probably go with Mending, to make it clear that it doesn't necessarily involve bandages.
__________________
GURPS Overhaul
Varyon is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-26-2023, 12:52 PM   #43
malloyd
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Default Re: Medieval first aid name?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
Yeah, it's kind of weird. I feel the intent is largely for TL 5+ healers to be able to heal people using the normal rules, but earlier ones need to rely on Esoteric Medicine, the effectiveness of which varies from setting to setting"
Probably. I think it hinges around assuming that TL5+ medicine is idealized in some way - that is Physician is the idealized healing skill, and that's what's in use at TL5+, others use an Esoteric Medicine or other skilll that defaults to that ideal at some penalty. If you made modern physicians buy Esoteric Medicine (Western Allopathic), defaults to Physician at -0 and let [nobody] buy the actual Physician skill I think it might all make more sense, at a cost of opening the debate about whether TL5 allopathic medicine really [is] as close to ideal medicine as possible at that TL.
__________________
--
MA Lloyd
malloyd is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-26-2023, 01:05 PM   #44
Donny Brook
 
Donny Brook's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: Snoopy's basement
Default Re: Medieval first aid name?

The scientific method was invented during TL4 and its application to the subject of medicine came to fruition at about the beginning of TL5. I would conjecture that the rules' take on it is based on considering "Physician" skill to be the professional application of science-based medical practice.
Donny Brook is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-26-2023, 07:05 PM   #45
Inky
 
Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: UK
Default Re: Medieval first aid name?

Possibly also a question of it's well known that a lot of what "physicians" did earlier than TL5 didn't work, sometimes even made things worse, so it raises puzzling questions of whether you count somebody's skill level in terms of how much training they have or in terms of how much use it actually is. (The latter seems to make sense, that seems like it would fit how the rules usually work).

TL5 as the cut-off for when it could be assumed that most of a doctor's training was actually useful may be a bit generous, of course, as malloyd seems to be implying :-D
__________________
Looking for online text-based game at a UK-feasible time, anything considered, Roll20 preferred. http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=168443
Inky is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 01-26-2023, 07:49 PM   #46
Fred Brackin
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Default Re: Medieval first aid name?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Inky View Post
P

TL5 as the cut-off for when it could be assumed that most of a doctor's training was actually useful may be a bit generous, of course, as malloyd seems to be implying :-D
As TL6 begins at 1880 and antiseptic medicine is brand new at 1870......yeah TL5 medicine probably not being worse than nothing is a late development.

Florence Nightingale inventing modern nursing for the Crimean War (1850s) might be a better touchstone anyway though they did have usable anesthetic for the US Civil War. 1730 though at the start of TL5? Nope.
__________________
Fred Brackin
Fred Brackin is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-27-2023, 09:26 AM   #47
malloyd
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Default Re: Medieval first aid name?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
As TL6 begins at 1880 and antiseptic medicine is brand new at 1870......yeah TL5 medicine probably not being worse than nothing is a late development.
Though the observation that keeping wounds clean was a good idea wasn't actually new. Paracelsus is commonly credited with its first print expression in 1536. Given that he also more or less invented toxicology, was a big proponent of scientific observation of patients, the concept of specifics, and was responsible for the popularization of some of the first effective ones (such as opium and mercury) in European medicine, he's probably a better breakpoint for the appearance of scientific medicine than Pasteur actually finding the mechanism for why cleanliness helped. Sure it finally settled the issue, but the idea had been kicking around for a couple centuries and the evidence was starting to be pretty convincing even without a mechanism.
__________________
--
MA Lloyd
malloyd is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-27-2023, 11:39 AM   #48
RyanW
 
RyanW's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
Default Re: Medieval first aid name?

Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
Prior to TL5, there really isn't all that much - other than treatment of wounds fairly shortly after they are inflicted there just aren't very many times when surgery is either helpful or worth the risk. Other than cataracts (which was moderately safe), and bladder and urinary tract stone removal (which had like a 50% chance of killing you from infection) there weren't all that many other surgical procedures out there for anything other than wound traumas.

Well OK, I guess boring holes in your skull to let out evil spirits counts, but it doesn't actually cure anything.
Extraction of foreign objects seems to have been a fairly widespread use a surgery.
__________________
RyanW
- Actually one normal sized guy in three tiny trenchcoats.
RyanW is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-27-2023, 10:13 PM   #49
Pursuivant
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Default Re: Medieval first aid name?

Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
Probably. I think it hinges around assuming that TL5+ medicine is idealized in some way
It's not that TL5 medicine was idealized it's just that, in the Western tradition, late TL4 & early TL5 was the period when a lot of "bad but traditional" TL 2-4 medical practices started to be challenged.

For the first time in ~1500 years, Western physicians actually started doing dissections to figure out the details of human anatomy. Early microscopes allowed physiologists to see fine bodily structures. (All those body parts with weird sounding names, like the Fallopian Tubes or the Islets of Langerhans, were named after 16th to 18th c. anatomists who discovered them.)

That's not to say that TL5 clinical physicians got any better. Early- to mid-18th c. medicine was the height of brutal medical practices like purging and bleeding, which hastened the deaths of many notable people.

Toxic metallic salts, which could act as chemotherapy in proper doses, were first used in Western medicine in the 16th century, but were sometimes prescribed in overdose amounts by tradition-minded 17th & 18th c. doctors. Functionally, early- to mid-TL5 physicians might effectively have Physician/TL4.

By late TL5, schools of medicine based on pseudosciences like homeopathy or hydropathy developed in reaction to this sort of aggressive, harmful medical intervention. That, and the cumulative effects of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution (which swept away many old-school physicians, forcing less formally-trained healers to practice battlefield medicine starting over from first principles), brought about the beginning of actual modern, science-based medicine.

It was only near the end of the period that you had the revolutions in public health, germ theory, hospital sanitization, and use of sterile medical procedure. By about 1870-75 (once Pasteur's work was widely accepted and the work of people like Florence Nightingale & Dorothea Dix was fully absorbed) you were at early TL6.

I'd argue that "Physician" skill exists as at TL0 in the form of nursing & palliative care to recover lost HP. There are paleolithic skeletons of people with severe injuries or ailments which wouldn't have allowed them to survive on their own, whose bodies showed evidence of healing or long-term survival, implying that someone was giving them nursing care. Call this skill Healer or Nursing.

Effective Physician skill to treat disease, internal injuries, or other maladies which couldn't be diagnosed with the naked eye doesn't exist, or is purely a matter of empirical experience rather than formal training, until TL6.

Pharmacy (Herbal) chugs along pretty much unchanged from TL1 to TL4, with the main improvements being better equipment and better access to good reference materials.

Physiology is effectively unchanged from TL1 to TL4 (plenty of people were doing dissections of human bodies prior to Galen, notably the Egyptians, who had a reputation as good doctors) and blossoms as an actual scientific skill at TL5 with widespread chemical tests and decent-quality microscopes.

Diagnosis improves slowly from TL0 to TL4, as more and better useful diagnostic manuals and treatments are devised, then takes off fast at TL5 with the invention of things like the stethoscope & thermometer, and the practice of autopsy pathology.

If you want a "baseline" medical TL, where doctors with knowledge of anatomy and germ theory could do decent-quality medicine with simple tools and drugs, but no fancy diagnostic or surgical equipment, I'd choose mid-TL6, possibly right before World War 1.

Last edited by Pursuivant; 01-27-2023 at 10:17 PM.
Pursuivant is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-28-2023, 03:34 AM   #50
Ulzgoroth
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Default Re: Medieval first aid name?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Pursuivant View Post
I'd argue that "Physician" skill exists as at TL0 in the form of nursing & palliative care to recover lost HP. There are paleolithic skeletons of people with severe injuries or ailments which wouldn't have allowed them to survive on their own, whose bodies showed evidence of healing or long-term survival, implying that someone was giving them nursing care. Call this skill Healer or Nursing.
That is, of course, exactly what the skill GURPS calls Physician does.

I've seen it argued by a historian that this also likely worked reasonably well for the most part right through the tech levels, and the people who called themselves 'physicians' and wrote extensively on nonsensical medical theories through TL 3-4 were actually something quite apart from the practice of common medical care.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pursuivant View Post
Effective Physician skill to treat disease, internal injuries, or other maladies which couldn't be diagnosed with the naked eye doesn't exist, or is purely a matter of empirical experience rather than formal training, until TL6.
That, of course, is Diagnosis, not Physician. (Also, most skills in Low Tech TLs are not learned by 'formal training' but by some kind of apprenticeship.)
__________________
I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident.
Ulzgoroth is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 04:19 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.