We're blessed today with a painless, effective system of righting the wrongs in our bodies, but in older days things were not always so. From strange medicines that killed as often as they healed, to the days of bloody operations, the history of healing has some interesting chapters.
The roots of healing date back to primitive cultures, who utilized local herbs and roots in an attempt to banish illness and disease. They chose their remedies using a combination of luck, intuition, and observation. Healers would watch what animals or fae creatures would utilize for their own woes, and then experiment with the same plants. Unfortunately, we know today that many plants, berries, and leaves which are beneficial or edible to animals or fae can be quite poisonous to humans. Which leads us to surmise that many of these early remedies were quite dangerous to use.
Up to the Reign of the Alais Family in Masalla (about 770 years ago), all medicine was a refinement of these original concoctions. Arcane Alchemy was the dominant force in medicine at that time, and the raw plants were often treated or processed to extract oils, essences, or other ingredients. These more potent forms, then, were combined with the theories of Arcane Alchemy, which sometimes led to disastrous results. Since Arcane Alchemy was concerned mostly with the elemental properties, and not necessarily the medicinal properties, of the herbs, patients were dosed with remedies that we know, today, would have been better applied to different ailments. This example, from A Curative Guide to Disease and Mental Despair, written by Orillian, six years after the Unicorn War (about 900 years ago), gives a vivid account of how their medicine was improperly applied.
". . . a patient who produces symptoms of a weak heart, which beats irregularly or with a trembling pulse, is lacking gravely in the element of fire. When the heart is already weak, strenuous activity should not be recommended, which, of course, is the usual and most natural method for raising fire in the body. Instead, the body must be heavily dosed with an essential extract of Mandrake, in the realm of one thimble for a grown man. The patient must be secured, for they are apt to experience a temporary madness with this dosing. . ."
Such remedies were likely ill-tested, for we know that such a dose could kill even a healthy person, let alone one with a weakened heart.
After the Alais family came into power, medicine was revolutionized by the presence of two things -- a type of opium discovered by the gypsies of Sehra, which had significant pain-killing properties, and the discovery of magic capable of creating vorpal blades. These blades were so sharp that they could slice open flesh with a clean, smooth cut that would heal very quickly.
A healer by the name of Aradeen Loren was the primary shaper of the revolution. The problem of foreign bodies under the flesh (such as arrows) had always made opening the body a necessity. But Aradeen theorized that the body was much like a very complex machine, and that to repair it, we needed to learn how the body worked and learn to open it and fix what was wrong inside. The opium and the vorpal scalpel were his tools, and he pioneered numerous procedures, from excision of foreign objects to slicing and re-aligning bone that had healed improperly after a break. High standards of cleanliness, a tool that sliced easily through any substance, and his own invention of small clamps to cut off flow from blood vessels added up to a high level of success. He also opened corpses to learn what had caused death, and to learn the anatomy and topography of the inner body. His most famous success was with the last King of the Alais line, famous for strange stories.
"Many times before had I seen the progression of the King's disease. A sharp and piercing pain in the lower right belly, tender to the touch, which often caused death soon after. Each time I opened the corpse of a person who had thus died, I found that a certain organ, of whose function I was unsure, had become badly infected and had ruptured into the body cavity. Though unsure of how the King would fare without the organ, I dosed him heavily with essence of opiate and incised into his belly at the point of pain. Under the flesh and fatty tissues I was required to slice through two separate layers of muscle and then through a layer of sheathing before I found the organ, appearing much like I had seen in my corpses. I carefully removed it, clamped and cut the cord attaching it to his inner body, and sewed shut each layer of tissue with fine silken thread. I then dressed the closure with silver foil and to my delight and relief the King was quite himself two moons later."
As Aradeen's followers perfected his methods and combined them with advances in herbal treatments through the Ageless Times and into the advent of the Avorine Reign in Masalla, two new healing methods arose on the horizon -- Necromantic healing, which relied on specialized magic, and Gifted healing, a method of laying-on-the-hands which re-aligned the body into its most healthy form. Both vied for dominance in the field of healing, and Necromancy seemed destined to be the victor, for its healing was nearly instantaneous and exceedingly effective, while Gifted healing was slower and more organic. The magical system of Necromancy, however, was capable of much more than healing, and abuse by its practitioners soon saw it gaining the distrust of nobles and commoners alike, so that Gifted healing, with its soft, gentle approach, became the dominant and reputable force in the healing circles.
Today Gifted healing still holds that dominance, while Necromancy still lingers in disrepute. Practitioners of Gifted healing must be born with the capacity, but it is developed through specialized training. The healer feels into the person's body, locates all areas which are suffering imbalance or have been damaged by wounds, and then applies the healing energy into the patient, whose natural healing powers will be greatly enhanced by the healer's. The most potent of Gifted healers can close wounds before one's eyes, but most can only greatly speed the natural healing process, effectively combating illness, mortal injury, growths, infections, or any other imbalance within the body.
Remember, then, to be thankful to all those who came before, and had to suffer through more primitive methods of curing ills. Though many dangers and woes still affect us today, we are lucky that illness is not one of them.