How Advanced Is Medical Knowledge & Tech in Eorzea?

[Kacho_Nacho]

(On my phone so can't edit my prior post apparently)

After the 3rd calamity, priests and clergy were ostracized. After the 4th calamity, people actively went about destroying all of the technology they could find, and men of learning were either exiled or executed. After the 6th calamity, magic was pretty much taboo, and mages were persistently persecuted until fairly recently.

Yes, there was a lot of turmoil and the general populace took their anger out on the individuals who brought about the calamity. The recurring refrain is civilization rebuilds itself then pride brings about another calamity.

It will be interesting to see how this is handled in ShadowBringer.

It seems to me there has to be many groups besides the Scions seeking to regain knowledge which was lost during the Umbral Ages. Perhaps, we shall see more instances how that regained knowledge is used or abused.

We have already encountered a tragic situation with Edda and the misuse of white magic. Not all magi-medical knowledge is good.

[Wyssahtyn]

We have already encountered a tragic situation with Edda and the misuse of white magic. Not all magi-medical knowledge is good.

Edda was just a conjurer and was likely misled by voidsent into believing she could resurrect her dead fiance.

[Kacho_Nacho]

Edda was just a conjurer and was likely misled by voidsent into believing she could resurrect her dead fiance.

Yes, she was. The whole Edda story is a cautionary tale on many fronts which turns into a tragedy. There are several examples of the misuse of white magic throughout the tale.

[Wyssahtyn]

Yes, she was. The whole Edda story is a cautionary tale on many fronts which turns into a tragedy. There are several examples of the misuse of white magic throughout the tale.

Conjury is not white magic.

[Enkidoh]

Conjury is not white magic.

Right. White Magic is a seperate school of magic that piggybacks on Conjury by virtue of the ones who were entrusted with that knowledge already being CNJs themselves (ala the padjal, who were made custodians of Amdaporian white magic knowledge by the elementals as a safe guard against those trying to seek it out without permission).

Edda was not using White Magic in Tam Tara HM, she was using necromancy (which is actually void magic) to summon voidsent (in the mistaken belief it's reviving the dead) - presumedly given to her by whatever it was that pushed her towards the darkness (most likely an Ascian). It just shows how taboo the subject of necromancy in Eorzea really is (and why a Necromancer class will never be playable). But anyway...

After the 3rd calamity, priests and clergy were ostracized. After the 4th calamity, people actively went about destroying all of the technology they could find, and men of learning were either exiled or executed. After the 6th calamity, magic was pretty much taboo, and mages were persistently persecuted until fairly recently.

It wasn't just the 4th Calamity technology and science were destroyed, the aftermath of the 6th Calamity after the floodwaters abated any kind of knowledge or technical idea, whether magical or technological, was purged as a backlash against the cause of the Flood (the War of the Magi), to the point even those who just happened to be literate were lynched, because the layman could not tell the difference between a mage or a scientist. Not surprisingly, it caused Eorzean civilization to collapse into total barbarism that took millenia for the realm to actively recover (and it still has not fully reached the same level of progress that existed in the 5th Astral Era, let alone the 4th with the Allag and their cyberpunk levels of tech, not helped by the 7th Calamity pushing things back even further).

This is why Sharalyan is so elitist and zealous towards guarding their knowledge stores, they don't want a repeat of the 6th Calamity to happen again (unfortunately that just made them look arrogant towards other nations), Louisoux and the Circle of Knowing becoming condemned by the Sharalyan elite as total pariahs for advocating a more open policy towards dealing with the Eorzean citystates, and especially, the dissemnation of ancient knowledge and wisdom to Eorzea's nations.

It's worth noting that illnesses seem to be well under control. Aside from the Tonberries (and their illness is a very special case), there doesn't seem to be any kind of quarantine areas, like leper colonies or whatever. In fact, illnesses in general are rarely mentioned; I'm sure someone in game must have a tragic backstory of losing one or both parents to illness, but off the top of my head I can't remember any. Magic and/or magitek seem to be VERY effective at keeping sickness at bay - possibly even better than real life medical science is capable of.

Sorry to jump back to this but it is correct that most disease seems to be usually taken care of by magic or herbal/alchemical medicines - an example is the so-called 'wasting sickness', a potentially fatal disease that was at one time at epidemic levels among the hyuran population of Gridania, although it's stated that conjury spells exist now to cure the affliction (Esuna?), herbal treatments are still produced and stockpiled for hamlets in outlying areas as they are considered valuable in case a CNJ with the right skills is not available to treat the patient (this was mentioned in a very early sidequest in Hyrstmill).

However, having said that at the first Fanfest Ferne himself mentioned about an ultimately abandoned plotline for 1.0 that dealt with a disease called 'the green death' that was spreading like wildfire through La Noscea and Limsa, and that there was no effective treatment available, with quacks and snake-oil salesmen touting all sorts of remedies for it to the desperate that did not actually work, but it was never actually added to the game. It's possible this served ultimately as the basis for the tonberry plague in ARR which also was untreatable (although that was called 'the sickness from the sea' and which had a magical, voidsent cause).

Just to toss in the standard disclaimer, just because medical knowledge involves theories long abandoned in real life, does not mean those theories are WRONG. This is a fantasy universe, and stuff like the theory of body humours might actually be true.

True, but 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.

[Iscah]

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.

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.

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.

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".