01-26-2023, 09:29 AM | #41 |
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Texas
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Re: Medieval first aid name?
This is an interesting discussion.
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01-26-2023, 11:04 AM | #42 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Medieval first aid name?
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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.
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GURPS Overhaul |
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01-26-2023, 12:52 PM | #43 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Medieval first aid name?
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.
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-- MA Lloyd |
01-26-2023, 01:05 PM | #44 |
Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: Snoopy's basement
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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.
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01-26-2023, 07:05 PM | #45 |
Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: UK
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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
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01-26-2023, 07:49 PM | #46 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Medieval first aid name?
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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.
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Fred Brackin |
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01-27-2023, 09:26 AM | #47 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Medieval first aid name?
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.
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-- MA Lloyd |
01-27-2023, 11:39 AM | #48 | |
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
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Re: Medieval first aid name?
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RyanW - Actually one normal sized guy in three tiny trenchcoats. |
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01-27-2023, 10:13 PM | #49 | |
Join Date: Apr 2005
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Re: Medieval first aid name?
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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. |
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01-28-2023, 03:34 AM | #50 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: Medieval first aid name?
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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. 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.)
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