How Advanced Is Medical Knowledge & Tech in Eorzea?

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Originally Posted by NoblePigeon

Id like to immediately agree and say low tech one hundred percent...but then I look at a city like Ishgard and wonder what the hell kind of amazing engineering they have being able to build a city like that. Eorzea also has modern day levels of plumbing and music players (I.e. the orchestra rolls)...at least amongst those who can afford it. The Goldsmith’s Guild greatly specializes in clockwork technology. And then there’s the Golden Saucer...

Basically, high technology is not unknown in Eorzea. In fact, with the rise of Garlond Ironworks and increased trade with goblins, it’s becoming far more prominent in recent years. But for now at least, it’s restricted to those that can afford it, I.e successful adventurers like ourselves.

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Ishgardian architecture is based (to the best of my fairly limited architectural knowledge) on medieval Gothic architecture, which dates from the 1100s to the 1500s - which is perhaps a good point to start reading on their potential medical knowledge.


I'm not sure where you're getting "modern plumbing" from. What are you thinking of?


The in-world orchestrion may or may not actually play the quality of music we get from it at a game level. A while ago I'd seen a "street organ" at a festival that runs on paper music rolls or "book music", and assume that's what orchestrion rolls actually are - but interestingly enough, by looking that up, it turns out an orchestrion is an actual thing, if not exactly what we have in-game.

The dates are a bit variable for the devices and the paper-roll technology, but 1800s seems to be the approximate invention date.


Spring-driven clockwork apparently dates from the 1400s.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

in that specific reference to humorism the game itself even states that in universe it's possibly load of bunk with the description for the chigoe larva minion (which also revealed what a chirgueon actually is - it's not a fantasy name for a surgeon, but a quack doctor that uses a blood-sucking parasite to drain small amounts of blood from the patient to supposedly drain 'dark humors', in this case, a chigoe); that far from helping the patient it was discovered that the patients were contracting additional diseases and problems as a result!

The word' 'leech' also seems to be used in a similar manner - a 1.0 main story quest used that term to refer to a doctor when seeking medical treatment, and there is of course the SCH spell 'Leeches'. So yeah, the game kinda zigzags whether humorism really does work or if it's just a convinent way of explaining something coincidental in medical terms that has a more mundane, scientific explanation.

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Leeching and bloodletting goes hand-in-hand with the medical theory of humors. It's only "quack science" from a modern perspective.

In-game and with humor theory being treated as real science, a chigoe (ie. giant mosquito) probably did seem like a potentially efficient way of getting 'bad blood' out of a patient instead of using leeches. And they clearly took enough of a scientific approach to it to work out that it wasn't having the intended effect.

Also the term "chirugeon" is an archaic spelling of "surgeon", and within the game it seems to be the term for any physical (non-magical) medical practitioners, as opposed to conjurers.

The article on leeches mentions that "in Old English, lǣce was the name for a physician as well as for the animal, and lǣcecraft, leechcraft, was the art of healing".

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

With all this mix of technology, how advanced is the knowledge and technology of current Eorzea? Specifically, compared to a doctor on Earth, how does your average conjurer or Eorzean physician size up?

What do you think? I'd love to read your thoughts.

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Late to the party, and there have been a few really great responses in the thread already, but I have a few dedicated posts to the topic that you might find helpful:

Magical & Non-magical Healing Lore - As others have said, Eorzea rests in a strange quasi-Humours Theory era approaching more modern scientific alchemical breakthroughs in the area of medicine. Magic can be a boon to healing (but is not the end-all be all), but only if you have magic available to you in your area. Non-magical herbal healing is most prevalent across Eorzea for this reason.

Technological Advancement in Modern Eorzea - While the post primarily focuses on airships and airship technology, the progression of this technology seemingly runs concurrently with the overall technological advancement of Eorzea, up to the invention of Magitek and the eventual makings of an industrial revolution when it finally comes to Eorzea. The post does skip over clockwork tech (the standard tech used in most places across Eorzea), however, so I'll make mention that, while the Garlond Ironworks has introduced magitek technology to the city-states of Eorzea, its use and prevalence is restricted by the scarcity of materials and ceruleum in Eorzea. Therefor most places in Eorzea, especially smaller hamlets, exist in a low-tech, pre-Magitek clockwork era of technology.

(Finally, I saw a brief tangent into the consequences of the Calamity of Water on Eorzea's lack of scientific/arcane progression, so I thought I'd link this post as it goes a bit more into this period.)

Hope this helps, OP!

Since my original post in this thread about illnesses being rare, I did think of one interesting counterexample that weakens my theory.

In the Stormblood White Mage storyline, the mother of the prodigal Padjal at the center of the storyline is suffering from some kind of wasting disease. As it turns out, she was also host to a particularly vile Voidsent, which may or may not have been causing the disease - but whether it was or not, no one really seemed to think of her disease as anything UNUSUAL. The vibe was more, tragic, but all-too common.

I think they did mention that she'd be better off under the care of the Conjurers of Gridania (something she refused, as she rightly assumed the Padjal would take her daughter away), but I don't think it was ever stated that they would for certain be able to cure her.

Anyway, just something else to chew on.