campaign-developmentfantasygame-design
This is a follow up to Medieval Medicine in a Fantasy Setting?.
What could you call a medical doctor in a medieval/fantasy setting? I'm thinking along the lines of how an "alchemist" is more appropriate in a medieval/fantasy than a "chemist".
So is there an equivalent setting-appropriate term for "doctor"?
Several things to keep in mind about real medieval medicine:
The issue of specialists is important: Romans had surgeons and also healers, and some priests who did healings. Surgeons/Chiurgeons/Chirurgeons basically cauterized wounds and set limbs. Healers treated systemic disorders with herbal and chemical remedies, but generally avoided blood. Priests used potions and prayers, as did some wisewomen.
Post-Roman, the research was all but killed off; prohibitions on human vivisection, dissection, and autopsy, coupled with the loss of many medical texts, resulted in what little knowledge had been accrued being generally lost. Without vivisection and/or dissection and/or autopsy, little was known about the internals, and less about their operation. Further, given the choice between the later, better, Roman book by a noted hardline Christian Era pagan, and the pre-Christian era scholar who was known to have it wrong by the later Romans, typically, the earlier source was the one used.
Without anesthesia, and without sterilization, the risks of infection were immense. Honey-based salves and poultices were used, and known to work, but why wasn't. (Honey is naturally antibiotic.) Leaching of swellings would reduce them, but provided another infection route. Amputation risked contamination with incompatible blood types, as well as infection.
Cauterization was the common mode of cleaning wounds. It was rather effective, but extremely painful and often did damage all its own in addition.
Surgery was oft prohibited inside towns, due to noise and stench.
In Mystic Empyrean the players create the world as they explore it with a mix of individual authority, shared authority, and random card draws. It's non-traditional in a lot of ways though, so not everyone's cup of tea. It is definitely a worthwhile example of how such a system could be built. Studying the interplay between the system mechanics, character mechanics, world-generation mechanics, and setting conceits to determine how it ticks could be enlightening.
Key to the on-the-fly world generation are the game's authority structure and the nature of the setting and characters.
Authority is shared by all players:
The nature of the setting is specific but also not particular:
The world-generation system, then, relies on the fact that authority is shared and on the nature of the setting to harness the group's creativity to build out from the starting realm. The shared authority means that small contributions build up in unexpected ways into interesting, engaging places and events that nobody needed to construct (or even could have predicted) beforehand. The nature of the setting means that there is lots of room to build anything the players can imagine (really, anything is compatible, the way the world is defined in the book) and individual players can lean on their creative strengths.
The setting also means that there are natural bounds to play, so the mode of play switches to a creative building mode only when one of those limits is deliberately crossed by the group in order to discover what's over there. It handles during-play world creation as well as between-play solo creation, depending on how ownership is apportioned for the to-be-discovered piece of the world. The conceit that the PCs are shaping the rebuilt world in their own image makes the creative play mode parallel what is happening within the game: the player creating a realm represents their PC rediscovering a lost realm and influencing it's unfolding back into reality with their own personality.
The default way of playing is very non-traditional, but it also supports a more traditional GM/players division of labour simply by giving one player ownership of more kinds of things in the world – if all new realms are owned by the "world player", then one player can craft the world to their vision while the "character players" manipulate and explore it. It also spends a few paragraphs on using the system for different genres.
It's not a generic on-the-fly world-building system by far, but it's an interesting game technology and the only one that I know of that actually works seamlessly during play to give both structured results while being flexible and who and how it's used.
Best Answer
Medical practice as we now thing of it was not extant until the 17th Century; the various providers of medical treatment included a variety of individuals with various titles. Some of the trends
Laech, Physicker, Leech: Generally, a practitioner of Roman medicine. Leaches, salves, ointments, unguents, and caurterization, perhaps some stitching of lacerations (via thread or ant heads)
Barber: Bloodletting, some surgery, dentistry, and often potions. Plus hair and beard trimming.
Chirurgeon/Chiurgeon, Surgeon: Bone setting, bullet and arrow removal, cauterization, possibly some potions.
Chymist/Chemist/Alchemist, Pharmacist: Toxins, drugs, some antidotes, potions.
Wisewoman, Geriffa, Witch: potions, herbs, ritual.
Clergy, Friars & Monastics: prayers, herbs, some Roman medicine, Ritual.
Wife or Mother: most nursing care was simply done by the women of the house.
Note that clergy in Historical Europe had various titles.... but turning to clergy was a common resort, and many clergy of both Roman and Greek pagan faiths, as well as a surprising number of Catholic Clergy, had some practical knowledge of healing. Hospital orders often included monks or friars with backgrounds in the various other fields.
The one title that was almost unheard of: Medical Doctor. Until the renaissance, almost no colleges taught medicine. Doctor, being an academic title for one who has completed their licentiate/masters and fellowship (post masters instructional period), meant 10+ years of study in university (often from age 14). Even when medicine was taught, it was taught as part of a general arts degree, rather than a specific subject, and from Roman sources. With the early renaissance, and the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic ban on autopsy and dissection became far less often enforced, allowing many colleges to add Surgery to their list of specialties offered, and the Reformation lead also to such training being better than mere apprenticeship.