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Old 03-06-2018, 02:12 AM   #27
Anthony
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Esoteric Medicine

A lot of things that might be called esoteric medicine might also be be classed as alchemy (homeopathy, ayurvedic medicing, colloidal silver, etc) or herbalism (realistically, anything in a herb that actually provably works gets extracted, purified, given standard doses, and made into conventional pharmacy, leaving herbalism for the stuff that probably doesn't work, or occasionally for banned stuff that's being disguised, like sports supplements that actually contain anabolic steroids).

Setting those things aside, there's a lot of variants on manipulating the body's 'energy currents', such as acupressure and acupressure, as well as more generalized energy transfer, such as reiki and therapeutic touch, and then high tech variants on that such as magnetic therapy and orgone therapy. There's also a number of dubious medical treatments that are about removing 'toxins' from the body, such as colon cleansing and various surface treatments that conveniently turn black on extended contact with flesh. Then there's (often but not always religious) systems that treat disease as a spiritual problem to be dealt with by lifestyle changes, and magical or spiritual traditions that treat diseases as spirits.

For GURPS, I'd be tempted by one type of esoteric healing per power source, so you have esoteric medicine (Ki), esoteric medicine (Holy), esoteric medicine (Magic), and so on.
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