medicine

IIRC there's no text evidence for blood typing or vaccination, but I see no reason that Pasquale would not have introduced them.

Or at least in the case of vaccinations, detail the general steps to create them.

I doubt either would require proscribed technology.

Randomiser wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:Guys, they already have pretty decent anesthetics, and Fleming moss and a few other native plants provide a relatively effective base of antibiotics. They've also been able to see germs for a long time, and, thanks to the Writ, they know exactly what they are: demons loosed upon fallen humanity as a consequence of Shan-wei's Rebellion and the War Against the Fallen. They also know how to defend against them by using the dispensations granted by the Archangel Pasquale.

Where's the problem?

Well, do the dispensations include vaccination or blood-typing for instance? Both would make major differences to mortality and neither requires major technical advance, not to begin with at any rate. Come to think of it the thread a while ago about whether and, if so how, diseases were prevalent on Safehold never really came to anything.

SCLibrarian wrote:Reply. Yep. Retired public librarian and now volunteer church librarian (Mauldin U. Methodist, Mauldin, SC). I've been adding the Safehold series to our church library's fiction collection as the books are published because they give insight (in a sort of alternate history way) to the issues that occurred during the Protestant Reformation. Both sides have those who feel they are sincerely carrying out the will of God, and both sides have those who are using the upheaval for personal gain. Also, it shows the problems that are inherent with any religious organization that has too much secular power. One of those "absolute power corrupts absolutely" things. The problem of equating the church, an institution established by God but run by men so subject to human frailty, with an infallible God is yet another issue that Weber addresses. Of course, I am also adding the books because they are really good reads, but that alone doesn't justify being included in our church's limited shelf space.
Okay, more than your wanted to know. Verbosity is us.

Verbosity is a common trait here. Good to see another librarian!

runsforcelery wrote:

mustangman wrote:I agree, much of medicine improvement is going to have to wait for electricity and the discovery of radiation. I was thinking along the lines of germ theory, antibiotics. and other drugs such as anesthetics etc. I do think that with the microscopes as has been said germ theory at least is inevitable, as well as the understanding of how the other "curses" of Pasquale are caused. such as scurvy and osteonecrosis of the jaw.

Guys, they already have pretty decent anesthetics, and Fleming moss and a few other native plants provide a relatively effective base of antibiotics. They've also been able to see germs for a long time, and, thanks to the Writ, they know exactly what they are: demons loosed upon fallen humanity as a consequence of Shan-wei's Rebellion and the War Against the Fallen. They also know how to defend against them by using the dispensations granted by the Archangel Pasquale.

Where's the problem?

The history of antibiotics to date has not shown any serious longevity for effectiveness. Many antibiotics have had an effective life of only a decade or two. Mutations occur rapidly in bacteria, and they develop enzymes that destroy the antibiotics, or change the molecular structure of the pathogen to be resistant to the effects of the antibiotic. Even Vancomycin, which for many years was the emergency cure-all, is generating resistant strains. In it's case, that required 9 separate mutations. Without all of them, it was still effective.

My issue is that to date, there is no antibiotic that is resistant to pathogen mutation over the long haul. I suppose I should put my Science Fiction hat on and assume that a general antibiotic that pathogens could not evade or avoid would be developed, but I know a little too much to be comfortable with that. Who knows, maybe Fleming moss actually produces nanos - in which case, a mutation could turn the healing moss lethal in no time at all. I further suppose it is possible that there is a temple-based AI system by Pasquale that produces new antibiotics what the old ones stop working.

I guess I'm just uncomfortable with providing Fleming Moss and there, all fixed...

(My father was a pathologist, so I picked up a lot of this from him. Did you know that during WW II they recycled penicillin from the urine of treated patients?)

Sorry
-- Bob G

P.S. You can read about the history of antibiotics, antivirals, and chemotherapy in Life Saving Drugs, The Elusive Magic Bullet from the Royal Society of Chemistry.

DrakBibliophile wrote:IIRC there's no text evidence for blood typing or vaccination, but I see no reason that Pasquale would not have introduced them.

Or at least in the case of vaccinations, detail the general steps to create them.

I doubt either would require proscribed technology.

You can get a level of blood typing by mixing small quantities of the donor and the recipient's blood, and looking under a microscope to see if they clump (agglutinate). I suppose there could be gengineered rabbits that have specific antigen sensitivity, as so to react (die?), when exposed to the A or B or Rh-positive blood factors (and, btw, there are also cCdDeE blood types as well).

I think that diazo dyes are beyond the reach of pre-coal tar chemistry, so blood typing by reagents seems unlikely.

-- Bob G

There may not be anything for Safeholdians to vaccinate against. If the people and animals brought to Safehold didn't have diseases (and why would they?) I don't think many would have evolved in a mere 900-some years; most new diseases tend to jump from animals to humans.

Maybe antibiotics are used specifically for stuff like infected wounds. Do we know that Safehold has regular infectious disease?

cralkhi wrote:There may not be anything for Safeholdians to vaccinate against. If the people and animals brought to Safehold didn't have diseases (and why would they?) I don't think many would have evolved in a mere 900-some years; most new diseases tend to jump from animals to humans.

Maybe antibiotics are used specifically for stuff like infected wounds. Do we know that Safehold has regular infectious disease?

I think I remember one of the characters in an early book being concerned lest someone catch cold after exposure to the winter weather. Also we are told that Pasquale laid down strict hygiene requirements which would be in the main unnecessary if communicable diseases did not occur.

there also was a discussion about the safeholdian hornet, where the venom was not as deadly to people as to native life. so I suppose many types of diseases might be less common. unfortunately many diseases and infections are carried in and on our own bodies. the other side of that is I suspect many forms of diseases would have been wiped out before the ark ships left earth. coliform bacteria are essential for normal health, primarily to prevent saprophytic infections so maybe if all the bacteria could be eliminated they might no longer be required. however as has been mentioned above, there are still sickness's evidenced in the books so I guess not all of the potential pathogens are eliminated. I remember reading about false teeth, but there really is not much discussion about the medical side of things in the books. I don't think it is by any means essential to the story, however reading RFC's contribution to this thread I realized I don't really have a good feel for what level of medical care they can provide apparently it is better than I had assumed.

Randomiser wrote:Also we are told that Pasquale laid down strict hygiene requirements which would be in the main unnecessary if communicable diseases did not occur.

Well, sure, some kind of infections definitely exist.

But lots of stuff that isn't really a regular infectious disease can cause problems under the right circumstances. Wounds can get infected, and bacteria that are natural in human feces can be disease-causing in other parts of the body.

And I don't know if you're ever going to get a full microbial ecosystem in bodies of water that is totally safe to drink -- maybe it is possible with their kind of biotech, I don't know.

And some diseases may spring up from mutations of normal human-commensal bacteria into pathogenic ones.

But you also can't really vaccinate against stuff that is natural to the human body.

Sanitation is going to be important no matter what.

But I doubt Safehold has equivalents of smallpox, plague, measles, tuberculosis etc... the really deadly, common stuff.

here is another thought. first of all I have never tried to write anything original, I am used to looking in books for information, so when I started this thread it was thinking about what was "in" the books, not extrapolating "from" what was in the books. the previous poster that mentioned the fact that many native bacteria would not affect humans got me thinking.

since this planet was terraformed, and since the goal of Langhorne et al was to prevent innovation, it would make sense for them to genetically alter some of the herbs and plants that were introduced to provide the medicines that might be needed. instead of going to the pharmacy for your digitalis, you boil a tea from some terraformed fox glove and you get a refined dose.

the milk of the poppy is a not necessarily the same poppy juice we can get here, heck it could be as strong as morphine or fentanyl, chewing the bark of the willow could be as good as modern aspirin.

since I have no idea what could be accomplished with genetic engineering of plant life in a civilization capable of interstellar flight, there is no reason to doubt the possibility that a plant might be modified, genetically altered to provide most any chemical/drug one could think of.

just a thought

cralkhi wrote:(SNIP)

And I don't know if you're ever going to get a full microbial ecosystem in bodies of water that is totally safe to drink -- maybe it is possible with their kind of biotech, I don't know.

Who's to say that the original Adam's and Eve's weren't genetically modified to make them resistent to baterial infections....

Make it a dominant gene, and it would help the colonists survive in a low tech environment!