Medieval Doctor Package

[mayapuppies]

Hello all,

If you were to design a package for a medieval doctor (the leeches and cranial saw type), what would you include in a skill heavy campaign world?

This is what I have so far as a rough outline:

Healing (aka Paramedic)
PS: Chirugeon
PS: Barber
PS: Blacksmith
KS: Herbalism
KS: Drugs, Poisons, and other Intoxicants
KS: Famous Doctors
Research

[Edsel]

The Ultimate Skill suggests that the skill Paramedic be used under the name Healer. "Healing includes some knowledge of folk remedies and herbalism as well as medical procedures for repairing wounds and so forth." Obviously the effectiveness of the skill should be tempered by your campaign world's level of medical knowledge.

[mayapuppies]

Yeah, that was the first skill I included in this package.

[Comic]

You might also see PS: Farrier, or some other smithing, since sharp metal implements were often made by the people who used them, as the mind set of craftsmen for ages was that the master made his own tools and all the parts of anything he produced.

Depending on the society, knowledge of religion and politics might be a stronger contender than you'd expect, too.

If the healer were anything other than the guy who happened to have the sharpest instruments handy, then most fields of study overlapped, since the world metaphysically was seen as a reflection of the 'Natural Order' with God at the top, then King, etc.

[mayapuppies]

The society is loosely based on medieval/dark ages europe during the transition from "paganism" to "one godism".

[S. John Ross]

Depending on how detailed you want it, a specific skill to represent dental-work would be appropriate, since the skills of the "adubedent" were prized and marketed on their own (but frequently combined in the same man who cuts your hair and your leg).

... and there are other possibilities that would be more dependent on the character and less universal. For a fun (I hope) read on one such quasimedieval fantasy doctor, here's a piece I did for CityBook 7 back in the day. I didn't limit my medical-history references to the medieval, however, a few of the details are nods to later centuries (anything slightly creepy or ridiculous was fair game), but it's all based on something someone at one point took seriously:

http://www.io.com/~sjohn/geoff.htm

[Killer Shrike]

Hmm....that seems like a very heavy investment for what is, at base, a LESS useful ability than the standard Paramedics skill.

I see where you are going with it, but I'd roll all the Professional Skill elements up into a single PS and all the KS elements up into a single KS, and all the Paramedicy / Herbalist / Quack medicine up into a single new skill that combined less effective versions of Paramedics and Alchemy into a single combined and thus less expensive but less useful skill.

But that's just me, certainly room for reasonable disagreement...

[mayapuppies]

Ok, going with KS's idea, how's this?

PS: Chirurgeon - covers the dark age version of a surgeon and blacksmith
KS: Medicine - covers the "bleed out the demons", alchemy and fellow doctors stuff
Doctor - covers the dark ages equivalent of first aid and "aches and pains curealls"

[Killer Shrike]

Ok, going with KS's idea, how's this?

PS: Chirurgeon - covers the dark age version of a surgeon and blacksmith
KS: Medicine - covers the "bleed out the demons", alchemy and fellow doctors stuff
Doctor - covers the dark ages equivalent of first aid and "aches and pains curealls"

I'd likely go:

PS: Chirurgeon
KS: Chiurgy
Chiurgy


But its all just semantics and feel ;)

[mayapuppies]

hehe, is chiurgy even a word?

Thanks for the input everyone.

[Killer Shrike]

Sorry, Chirurgy. I always forget the first r for some reason.

[Lawnmower Boy]

How are they going to cast their patients' horoscope? This is obviously the package for one of those Caribbean medical schools that don't even teach the basics!

[runescience]

im inclined to agree with KS:hrike! on just about everything or any one else that makes sense.

How ever, if you have a skill heavy group then

Healing (aka Paramedic)
PS: Chirugeon
PS: Metal craftsmenship <for fine detail> work.
KS: Herbalism / includes the medicinals, poisons, intoxicants
Research

[Shadowsoul]

It could be considered to come under herbalism or chirurgery but some medieval doctors might have something like KS: Spirits, this would cover everything from avoiding the plague spirits lurking in miasma and bleeding out evil to diagnosing curses and propitiating local fairies. You might also want to come up with a midwife package since before the advent of science and rationality etc no self respecting woman was going to let a man anywhere near her during child-birth.
It's also worth noting that an Arab trained doctor would have had a more advanced understanding of medicine and might even have advocated hygiene as a part of treatment.

[Comic]

I'll have to review my Discovery of Witchcraft (Reginald Scot), but I believe Sleight of Hand would also be a package skill.

It's way over on the bookshelf.

[Captain Obvious]

At the time, it was believed that imbalances in the humors were the cause of disease (leeching was an attempt to remedy an overabundance of blood). The humors were all linked to the four classical elements, so some elemental knowledge wouldn't be out of line, at least for some of the more knowledgeable university educated doctors.

[Comic]

Sufficient education could make a healer dangerous.

Not sure if you're going for the medicalized healers, historically noted for grave-robbing to gain research subjects, or the traditional pre-empire types who used grass-roots knowledge and personal experience supplemented with the conventional fictions of their day that passed for 'medical opinion'.

[Shadowsoul]

At the time, it was believed that imbalances in the humors were the cause of disease (leeching was an attempt to remedy an overabundance of blood). The humors were all linked to the four classical elements, so some elemental knowledge wouldn't be out of line, at least for some of the more knowledgeable university educated doctors.

True enough although since such ideas arose out of Greco-Roman medicine I would tend to associate them with the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods, late medieval to early modern. Of course since this theory survived from the classical period through to the Renaissance it is quite possible that learned medieval doctors would have had access to it as it must have been passed down through that period.

You can see a table of the humours and elements in Wikipedia by following this linkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humours