 Fantasy: November 13, 2024 Issue [#12836] |
This week: Healing Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease.
—Hippocrates
In the villages in Europe, there are still healers who tell stories.
—Yannick Noah
The best of healers is good cheer.
—Pindar |
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Whatever your Fantasy setting, chances are its inhabitants, like those of us in consensus reality, are susceptible to disease and/or injury.
It's natural to want to fix such issues when they occur, and we've been trying to do that for at least as long as we've been human. There's even evidence that some nonhuman animals work to heal themselves or others.
For much of human history, attempts at healing relied on folklore derived from trial and error, as well as, perhaps, appeals to spirits or gods. So if your story is set in the past, or on some other world, there might not be much science backing up the healer's toolkit.
Lots of Fantasy settings, particularly games, tend to feature some form of magical healing. Someone is sick or injured? There's a potion or a spell for that. This works in games to keep the action flowing, but it may not be reasonable to include in books or movies. For one thing, the stakes are much lower if your character can visit a temple to regrow a lost limb, or cure their pox.
Generally, the kind of treatments available depend on the overall technological (or magical) level of a society, so any healing should be consistent with that. While it's possible, and sometimes interesting, to include anachronisms (such as, perhaps, a modern hospital stuck in the 14th century), there should probably be a good reason for such things.
So ask yourself: how would your characters handle, say, a snakebite? A broken arm? Or something as simple as a common cold? What herbs, poultices, prayers, chants, techniques, etc. can be brought to bear on the issue?
There's even a common fantasy trope involving the protagonist having to undertake an epic adventure to find the one flower that can cure a loved one's malady, so these questions aren't necessarily just incidental ones; sometimes, it's the entire plot. |
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Last time, in "Harvest" , I talked about the sow/tend/reap cycle.
Quick-Quill  : Here is a good story about the sower and the seed.
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So that's it for me for November. See you next month! Until then,
DREAM ON!!!
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