Medieval Alchemy (The real deal)

Story & Setting
#1

Hey there folks.

Warhorse studio has already revealed that alchemy will be a part of the game. Now many folks might see this as unfit for a game that tries to be historically accurate because ‘dumb medieval folks knew nothing about anything’. The truth is that even back then research and medicine (alchemy) were well established, promoted by the church and above all reasonable effective.

What i’d recommend to all skeptics and folks who want to gain a glimpse of what alchemists at that time were capable of is to view this video. It’s presented by one of the Monthy Python actors but the information in it is very real and it’s a good watch.

Here is an interview with an archaeologist who is researching a 14th century hospital and the things he found there were quite amazing.

Among the things he found were Full anesthetics(opium), partial anesthetics, hunger suppressants, herbs that facilitate child birth/delivery, vasoconstrictors(stops bleeding), stuff that killed intestinal parasites and might have stopped internal bleeding,antidepressants and antiseptics.

Really that’s quite amazing isn’t it? Alchemy and medieval medicine certainly belong in this game and are not the exclusive territory of bad fantasy rpgs and the like.

I hope this posts managed to convince some people or show them what kind of things we can expect from alchemy in this game or at least provided a good read. Reading all this a strength potion does not seem that far off right?

Yours truly,
Dushin

9 Likes
Realism, How far should it be taken
Dark Ages and Period Advances
#2

Thanks, I hope alchemy is as indepth as it was back then.

#3

Oh yeah, they really should add all these herbs in the game’s alchemy system.

#4

Well I doubt we will be concocting potions for baby delivery but the rest seems okay :wink:

1 Like
#5

@Dushin

Could be a questline. Bring an overdue preganant woman a ‘potion’ to help facilitate labour. Failure to acquire this leads to the woman being pregnant for all time. :smile: (I put that in lieu of slightly sadder alternatives).

3 Likes
#6

Which begins 9 months before the potion delivery one :wink:

1 Like
#7

Aagh! but baby delivery potions are the best!!

#8

This is a great idea. Maybe not literally a pregnancy quest but a quest or two that requires the hero to use his alchemy skills to resolve the situation. It’s an added benefit if the player decided to pursue talent in alchemy.

#9

That’s some interesting information, but there’s a problem with the use of language. Alchemy is not medicine (1). People had known about medicine for thousands before alchemy got going (if they did it before the knowledge has been lost). Alchemy is chemistry. Knowing about herbs is not alchemy. Eating salad is not alchemy. Farming is not alchemy. Making tea is not alchemy.

I think this misuse of the word “alchemy” is a tradition in video games that goes back to dungeons and dragons (they got loads of things wrong). A quick look-up of dungeons and dragons alchemy says that it uses magic ingredients and magic potions and lock-destroying chalk and sword-empowering magic.
I have only known one person in my whole life to think that “alchemy” is about potions, and he got his knowledge from video games. If it’s video games that foreigners get their English language from, then I think it may benefit to consult people that are native speakers of it. Like me.

(1) Actually, I remember reading that hundreds of years after 1400, a doctor (he might have been the founder of western homeopathy) went around telling people about his new medicine that involves taking in elements, and he would need to be an (al)chemist to do that. Doctors then understood that what the patient thought of the medicine was as important as the medicine itself (the placebo effect). The doctor noticed that if he reduced the dose, then people were healthier. He eventually diluted it to almost nothing.
I think those elements might have been a bit poisonous, but the placebo effect made them better perhaps, so reducing the dose would have reduced the poisonousness and kept the placebo effect, until people were just drinking non-poisonous shaken water and believing that it would make them better.

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#10

Zweihander
Platemail
Skimpy Leather armor

Yeah most of that is due to DnD

#11

Indeed, I always thought the word “alchemy” referred specifically to the attempts to change one element into another, specifically the centuries-long quest to turn things into gold. That doesn’t have anything to do with herbs ‘n’ berries.

That said, I think this is all very interesting. I knew that many ancient and medieval cultures had some knowledge of herbal medicine, but the extent of it is still surprising.

I’m all for it being in the game, as long as the negative consequences are there as well. Think about the “herbal concoctions” that are known today as harmful and illegal drugs. There were no laws (AFAIK) against “drug use” back then, but that doesn’t mean there was no addiction / withdrawal / side effects. You can use something like PCP to make your character stronger in a fight, but you’ll wish you hadn’t!

I wonder if adding that kind of thing to the game would cause it to receive a different rating, though. I think as long as the drugs don’t receive modern names, it wouldn’t have an effect. Fallout 3 originally had “morphine,” but because of ratings problems, Bethesda was forced to change it to “Med-X.” It is actually still called morphine in the game files.

(LINK)

P.S. Just saw that the video above is hosted by Terry Jones. Awesome. Big Python fan here. :slight_smile:

#12

Most of the herbs I named would probably not conflict with any kind of rating. Only opium might be a bit controversial but simply using the old name “Milk of the poppy” would solve that.

#13

We don’t really know how will be potions related profesion called in game. It will be propably herbalism.

1 Like
#14

Another bump to prevent this from falling into obscurity.

#15

Pots for Medical Uses in the Arab World (8th—15th centuries): a possible reconstruction of the uses thanks to the cross disciplinary comparison of sources

The cross disciplinary comparison of sources enables us to ask questions about objects and practices by analysing and describing the functions, oſten lost, of certain types of pottery. This article is dedicated to pottery used by Islamic physicians — pots and pans, different types of jars. The texts, general medical manuals and dictionaries written in Iraq, Syria, Arabia and Iran between the 8th and 15th centuries are an extremely valuable source of information on medicinal substances, recipes for compound remedies and utensils. A number of illustrations in Islamic manuscript depicting physician activities reflect contemporaneous medical practises. They could sometimes help us to understand the use of objects found in excavations. The archaeological material of my corpus comes from a range of sites in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. By comparing the data, I present various pottery used in curative medicine in the Islamic world.

https://www.e-anthropology.com/English/Catalog/Archaeology/STM_DWL_Vyzb_KXZDTuY7nFUb.aspx

#16

Technical ceramics from the workshop of alchemist, jeweler and glassmaker in Bilyar

https://vk.com/doc-15658634_448476561?hash=2936ff5916bedb1f24&dl=b7a68a01e42c58f7b8

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