History and State of Medicine in The Steppes

There is currently no consensus on how to treat many sicknesses inside The Steppes and of course each city has a slightly different way of seeing things.


The first physicians of The Steppes were literally butchers serving in the stallian army whose particular set of skills seemed to be the most indicated at the time to perform the necessary battlefield medicine during the struggling first years of the city. They performed plenty of amputations right on the floor of the trenches, but ultimately managed to save few lives. Since it took very healthy individuals to survive these butchers, it is believed, this influenced the current stallian healthcare with its heavy focus on the preventive through a healthy lifestyle, diet and exercise.

When something similar to scientific progress started to take place during the following years, the figure of the barber-surgeon eventually emerged. These individuals, sometimes through training and sometimes through self-perceived talent, removed undesirable things from people's bodies, be that hair, decayed teeth, excessive blood or gangrenous limbs. A few of these individuals still thrive to this day especially in Arrakans, where they serve as something in between folk psychologists, charlatans, surgeons and singers. They are not particularly good at any of these fields, but they are often able to keep a secret, which is an attractive trait for crooks.

Medicine as a science took off in Ill-Vess. The quest for a greater knowledge on the human body led to a series of unpopular experiments and procedures practiced on both living and deceased individuals that caused the public to call for legislation. This legislation only caused the rise of grave robbers and the schism of the so called "Stitcher" doctors, which continued to pursue their amoral goals in an undercover way. The term stitcher originated in a veshite tabloid article, which originally assumed a serial killer was stitching together pieces of their victims, but the name stuck around ever since. These stitchers consider regular doctors hypocrites for benefiting of their research while condemning it, while the establishment blames stitchers of simply repeating useless, poorly controlled experiments on humans which they claim are nothing but cruel tortures on disguise.

As technology advanced, new medicines and equipment has been put into the service of medicine. This expensive equipment made necessary the creation of hospitals, as opposed to physicians working from their own homes. The first hospital was built in Nivhar not that long ago, followed by Ill-Vess' and the smaller imitations on other cities with lesser resources.

X-rays are all the fad, there are about half a dozen different types of antibiotics in use, optical microscopes are used to perform a series of medical analyses, and surgical procedures with a varying degree of success are performed regularly, more often than not in clean rooms.

The latest development in medicine is the differentiation of a significant number of nivharian physicians from the veshite model to seek a more psychosomatic approach, putting together psychology, sociology and behavioral sciences. This branch is too young to prove itself,  but other cities remain skeptic so far.

A lot of research has of course been put into the workings of samples of the beastfolk mutagen, which has given researchers a significant insight about genetics. But current instruments are not powerful enough to make much practical use of this.