# Found medicine



## skip.knox (Jul 12, 2014)

I have a young girl, Petra, whom some of you have heard from before. She has acquired an adult warrior who has been badly injured. Mostly cuts, none really serious, but she has lost a lot of blood and is weak. When Petra finds her, the woman is unable to walk on her own and slipping into delirium.

They are in a forest near the Black Sea, so there's plenty of plants and water and animals. It's August so stuff is in bloom. Petra manages to get the woman to her camp by a stream.

How would Petra nurse her? 

Let us assume no infections (a bit of a stretch, but not all wounds before the 20thc went gangrenous). The warrior (her name is Inglena) mainly needs rest and nourishment. I'm not making a big deal of the actual care; this is mainly a break in action scenes and a chance for a ten-year-old to face a moral decision. 

I wrote a line that mentioned gooseberries and lemongrass, and that's when I made a side note. You don't need to know anything about the flora of ancient Thrace; it's enough to know these are low mountains near a sea in a Mediterranean climate. Petra doesn't have woodlore; she's a city girl. I just want a few plants that might be in the neighborhood. No poultices or herbs--she wouldn't know about those. Just food. If it accidentally has medicinal properties, that'd be peachy.

As always, tia to Those Assembled.


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## DavidJae (Jul 14, 2014)

If it's Mediterranean, and you want food, then oranges or pears would fit the bill. Otherwise, you could have some tubers or root vegetables, but they might need cooking. Peaches or melons would also work. 

Hope this helps.


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## CupofJoe (Jul 14, 2014)

Petra might be a city girl but she should/would probably know some folk remedies as they would have been the only things available to her in town. She might know them only partially or not for the right reasons...   three things do spring to mind...  Willow twigs were chewed for their salicylic acid [a precursor to Aspirin]   Birch bark soaked in water and then wrapped around broken bones formed casts [and were apparently somewhat antiseptic] Sphagnum moss was used to cover and treat wounds [well into the 20C - in the early 1970s an uncle cut his hand as we went to a lake to fish, I watched him find and pick up a clump - chew it and then tie it under a handkerchief to the wound and carry on as if nothing had happened for the rest of the day]


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## skip.knox (Jul 14, 2014)

The moss is a good one. Inglena didn't break any bones, but I'll file that one away. Petra would know enough to clean the cuts and abrasions. Willow twigs are distinctive enough that she would recognize them; alas, the two are up in the hills and won't get back to flat land or similar willow country until Inglena is healed enough to travel.

Food is the more pressing concern. Apricots are a candidate, as are berries. Pears, I think, are mostly gone by mid-August (calendar constraints are strict in this story). Too soon for apples or olives or grapes. And wrong century for tomatoes.

But bless the survivalists. I have found their sites to be useful; stumbled across the survivalist sites by accident. I think I have more than enough now. Thanks to all. (I find myself hoping the survivalists get their Armageddon some day, they've worked so very hard for it)


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## Trick (Jul 14, 2014)

It's seems like you've got this covered but I wanted to add one thing for you, in case it helps. Red wine has the same healing properties as penicillin. If the warrior had a wine skin, which seems likely, drinking it would stave off infection. Not as well as penicillin per se but better than anything else she's likely to find in the wild without knowledge of herblore. Red wine is the reason so many wealthy people and clergymen survived the black plague, though they didn't know it at the time. 

If you're in the 12thc or later, Brandy would be available since it was originally distilled from wine to make it last longer on merchant caravans, and it would serve well to disinfect wounds because it has a high enough alcohol content, which wine does not. You lose the penicillin effect with brandy, though, so you'd probably have to use one or the other.


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