hoidhunter Posted January 23, 2015 Report Share Posted January 23, 2015 Well...In the beginning of WoK one of the other slaves has "the grinding coughs" and Kaladin knows how to treat it. The slave master is concerned enough about the sickness spreading that he kills the guy. Renarian has "blood weakness" with appears to be some kind of genetic seizure disorder. I'm not saying that it's not a possibility that Rosharians rarely get sick...but I don't know if I buy it... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oudeis Posted January 23, 2015 Report Share Posted January 23, 2015 They clearly do get sick, sometimes... Renarin's "issue" is clearly more than as much stormlight as you get from a lamp can heal, I would imagine. If you cut off someone's head, no amount of stormlight will simply heal it. I never meant to imply that I think stormlight heals instantly, hence me pointing out that it's infinitesimal. It wouldn't even seal a papercut over, but maybe if you're surrounded by lamps for a while, it'll heal in three days instead of four. And something big, like poor eyesight or a terminal illness or a grievous wound is simply too much for any duration of such light treatment to aid. Also, remember that there were no stormlight lanterns in the slave wagons. Maybe that's why people suddenly got sick. This would mean that rich people, who tend more frequently to have sphere lamps, would actually gain the benefit more frequently than poor people who have to make do with candles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hoidhunter Posted January 23, 2015 Report Share Posted January 23, 2015 Again...I'm not saying that it is impossible...but Mr.T also runs a massive free hospital to treat the sick and wounded (with somewhat sinister intent behind it) but the fact remains that a large scale free hospital is seen by the masses as an incredible act of philanthropy. There's gotta be a bunch of sick people for something like that to be necessary. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Calderis Posted January 23, 2015 Report Share Posted January 23, 2015 The way that I understand it(and don't get me wrong, this is completely personal interpretation/speculation) , higher investiture makes it harder for people to get sick. This would mean that there would be fewer minor illnesses, but once something can overcome that threshold, it's still going to make people sick. It would make sense for everyone to freak out about a cold. They aren't used to sickness in the form of a minor inconvenience. In their minds there's this mystery illness making people sick and sickness is dangerous. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kari-no-sugata Posted January 23, 2015 Report Share Posted January 23, 2015 Few random thoughts: I guess Stormlight has an effect similar to the basic health benefits of Breath. I wonder if it has more? Another: I guess Brandon wanted to be able to create a reasonably realistic fantasy world without the crippling diseases and mortality rates that would be typical for the medical knowledge. Perhaps the most chilling thing I ever did was reading a some death records from the late 1800s - most of the deaths were of children aged 0 or 1 (I was researching some family history at the time). That wasn't during some plague or the like either. And finally: perhaps there's been some subtle hints about this in the books. I forget the exact quotes but I seem to remember some references in tWoK about carrying spheres "for luck". 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hoidhunter Posted January 24, 2015 Report Share Posted January 24, 2015 (edited) You know...the more you guys talk about it...the more I'm buying into the idea...I do remember recently reading a WoB about stormlight helping plants grow...maybe my contrary position was hasty... EDIT: I now feel that I should up vote you for posing the idea...up vote for humility (on my part) Edited January 24, 2015 by hoidhunter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oudeis Posted January 24, 2015 Report Share Posted January 24, 2015 I misunderstood a previous post of yours... I thought you were replying to someone else. About the Kharbranth hospitals... You seem to be implying that I'm saying Stormlight lanterns = magic instant healing and no one ever gets sick. So let me reiterate what I've said twice now; I think stormlight lanterns will heal you a VERY, VERY small amount. Not enough to eradicate the idea of disease, but enough that "death by disease" will be statistically lower than it would be in a culture of analogous ecosystem and technology to this one. As I've also pointed out, only rich people have a lot of sphere lanterns. Even when the poor use them for money, they keep them safely tucked away in pouches or like cabinets or something, where the light won't show thieves where to get them... but where they also don't shine on the inhabitants, so they don't get extra healing. Recall also, that most of what Lirin (Kal's father) dealt with were injuries, not illnesses. Stormlight obviously has no more power to prevent you from getting gored by a whitespine than (Mistborn spoiler) gold feruchemy will stop you from getting shot, it will simply heal the wound thereafter. Stormlight might heal wounds, but you're not Investing like Kaladin does. You'd heal a drop, like the difference between getting splashed when someone drops a glass of water next to you, compared to leaping into the ocean. Someone who gets 1% of their daily recommended dose of Vitamin C will have a tiny boost to their immune system, whereas someone with 100% will get a huge boost. So, yeah, there'd still be plenty of work for the Kharbranth hospital. Injuries for everyone, and the sick, inordinately from the poorer classes which couldn't afford a hospital anyway. Sidenote, something that's been kicking around in my head for a while. This also implies that the spheres in Lirin's surgery do more than provide steady, even (ish) light, they'd actually be a decent factor in providing a tiny boost to the patient's capacity to heal, especially when they're at their most vulnerable, inner parts exposed to the world. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unhinged Posted January 24, 2015 Report Share Posted January 24, 2015 Um I don't mean to derail all the crazy speculation here but is it possible that the common cold simply doesn't exist on Roshar (till now anyway) and the people simply had no resistance to the virus. on another note this could cause problems once the worlds in the Cosmer start linking up in later books. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moogle Posted January 24, 2015 Report Share Posted January 24, 2015 Another possibility is that the highstorms 'splash' everything and everyone with Investiture regularly, leaving high ambient levels of it, like humidity goes up after a thunderstorm. This would tie in with why spren don't appear in Shinovar. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oudeis Posted January 24, 2015 Report Share Posted January 24, 2015 Um I don't mean to derail all the crazy speculation here but is it possible that the common cold simply doesn't exist on Roshar (till now anyway) and the people simply had no resistance to the virus. Yes, I think this is the premise we're all basing our arguments on. (Or rather, more specifically, the Rosharan equivalent of "the common cold" is simply very different from the equivalent on some other planet.) Basically, some people are raising the question, if the WoB itself says that Rosharans have a stronger resistance to disease, why should a weak virus from another planet affect them? And the rest of us are trying to explain why it does, in fact, make sense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kari-no-sugata Posted January 24, 2015 Report Share Posted January 24, 2015 Another possibility is that the highstorms 'splash' everything and everyone with Investiture regularly, leaving high ambient levels of it, like humidity goes up after a thunderstorm. This would tie in with why spren don't appear in Shinovar. This sounds highly plausible.... I wonder if people in Shinovar are typically less healthy then? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moogle Posted January 24, 2015 Report Share Posted January 24, 2015 This sounds highly plausible.... I wonder if people in Shinovar are typically less healthy then? Probably, but if they are less healthy it may just be because they don't carry spheres around because it's too holy/unholy. If we wanted to test between the spheres-heal-people and highstorms-heal-people hypotheses, we'd want to look at the poor and see if they're sick more often. Of course, this introduces a billion confounding variables. And, of course, both theories may be true and contribute. Or both false, and it's something to do with Rosharan innate Investiture. Science is hard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hoidhunter Posted January 25, 2015 Report Share Posted January 25, 2015 I misunderstood a previous post of yours... I thought you were replying to someone else. About the Kharbranth hospitals... You seem to be implying that I'm saying Stormlight lanterns = magic instant healing and no one ever gets sick. So let me reiterate what I've said twice now; I think stormlight lanterns will heal you a VERY, VERY small amount. Not enough to eradicate the idea of disease, but enough that "death by disease" will be statistically lower than it would be in a culture of analogous ecosystem and technology to this one. As I've also pointed out, only rich people have a lot of sphere lanterns. Even when the poor use them for money, they keep them safely tucked away in pouches or like cabinets or something, where the light won't show thieves where to get them... but where they also don't shine on the inhabitants, so they don't get extra healing. Recall also, that most of what Lirin (Kal's father) dealt with were injuries, not illnesses. Stormlight obviously has no more power to prevent you from getting gored by a whitespine than (Mistborn spoiler) gold feruchemy will stop you from getting shot, it will simply heal the wound thereafter. Stormlight might heal wounds, but you're not Investing like Kaladin does. You'd heal a drop, like the difference between getting splashed when someone drops a glass of water next to you, compared to leaping into the ocean. Someone who gets 1% of their daily recommended dose of Vitamin C will have a tiny boost to their immune system, whereas someone with 100% will get a huge boost. So, yeah, there'd still be plenty of work for the Kharbranth hospital. Injuries for everyone, and the sick, inordinately from the poorer classes which couldn't afford a hospital anyway. Sidenote, something that's been kicking around in my head for a while. This also implies that the spheres in Lirin's surgery do more than provide steady, even (ish) light, they'd actually be a decent factor in providing a tiny boost to the patient's capacity to heal, especially when they're at their most vulnerable, inner parts exposed to the world. Again...I think it sounds plausible...you might be onto something...I just don't know if I'm totally convinced. If I lived on Roshar...I wouldn't open a stormlight lantern tanning salon to keep people healthier...but I might start sleeping with the stormlight on...just in case. On a separate note, I know that the weather in the purelake is almost always perfect, and the water is shallow and warm...but does anyone else think that living in a place where you are ALWAYS wet from the knee down sounds like a nightmare? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natc Posted January 25, 2015 Report Share Posted January 25, 2015 If you grew up with it probably not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redbird Posted January 25, 2015 Report Share Posted January 25, 2015 Or maybe it is just that the common cold never developed on Roshar, all the plants and animals are different, why not the viruses and microorganisms? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Calderis Posted January 25, 2015 Report Share Posted January 25, 2015 The point is that their idea of a disease seems to be more than a minor illness. Calling something as simple as a flu a plague implies that they're seeing a bunch of people get sick, and are worried. They aren't used to the idea of an illness being minor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oudeis Posted January 25, 2015 Report Share Posted January 25, 2015 Um... you think the flu is minor? Per the Center for Disease Control, nearly 10% of all deaths within 122 monitored city were due to pneumonia or influenza. This is in a first-world country with advanced medicine against a virus that we specifically target with vaccinations. The flu is never minor. (Get your flu shots.) Imagine a world where literally no one has ever developed an antibody even close to being able to overcome this disease. In a world with stormlight, where minor diseases are easily gotten over, even something as simple as a common cold would typically reach epidemic potential, even if it was non-fatal. Now, with the Stormlight healing, more people than you'd expect would survive. Interestingly, the virus itself is a microcosm for how people react to the virus. Peoples immune systems are entirely unable to deal with the cold, and stormlight healing, while salubrious, is not enough to cure the disease on its own, so people get ragingly sick. Look at Roshar as a body. Because of the healing, plagues are all but unknown. I live in a city that literally shuts down when there's an inch of snow, because people simply cannot even. When the weather report says a 75% chance of snow the next day, toilet paper and milk gets sold out, schools get shut down, everything closes, even if the snow itself never falls, because my city just can't deal. So even when the disease is something which by our standards we'd consider minor, just as my ancestral home of New England would literally not notice just an inch of snowfall, the people of Roshar who never have to worry about epidemics would flip their lids trying to deal with it. They don't usually have to react to it, so they're totally unprepared to do so, so something which should be minor becomes a huge deal. Whether you're talking about one immune system or a nation's capacity to handle widespread illness. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Calderis Posted January 25, 2015 Report Share Posted January 25, 2015 (edited) The flu and the common cold are not the same thing. If it were the flu in an area with no antibodies it would be major. The sniffles and a cough, with a minor fever, but no diarrhea or vomiting on the other hand is hardly lethal. Edit: Human rhino virus, not influenza. Very very different. Edited January 25, 2015 by Calderis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oudeis Posted January 25, 2015 Report Share Posted January 25, 2015 Okay well... the rest of us were talking about the common cold. You're the first person who said it was "the flu". The point is that their idea of a disease seems to be more than a minor illness. Calling something as simple as a flu a plague implies that they're seeing a bunch of people get sick, and are worried. They aren't used to the idea of an illness being minor. So.... if you know the difference between a cold and the flu, then please don't tell us we're talking about the flu when we're talking about the common cold. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Calderis Posted January 25, 2015 Report Share Posted January 25, 2015 Wow. I didn't even notice that screw up in my post. I didn't understand where the flu thing came from and I inadvertently started it. Sorry to temporarily derail the thread 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oudeis Posted January 25, 2015 Report Share Posted January 25, 2015 Ah, my apologies for exacerbating a simple misunderstanding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Calderis Posted January 25, 2015 Report Share Posted January 25, 2015 No need to apologize. Thanks for making me realize my mistake. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natc Posted January 25, 2015 Report Share Posted January 25, 2015 Well it could be a nonlethal epidemic I guess? The cold is still pretty annoying. The question is, is it Demoux, Galladon, or the other guy? Damnation to it all, worldhoppers. You mess with everything when you show up! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sitroentje Posted January 25, 2015 Report Share Posted January 25, 2015 The cold is nonlethal to us, but only because we had centuries of exposure to it, to a population where it was not endemic it would be very lethal, killing up to 70-80% of the population. The same happened in Europe, Asia and of course in the americas. One of the reasons the amerindian empires fell so quickly is because their populations simply died of diseases that in Europe every child gets and survives without too mucht trouble, like the meazles. The question I'm asking myself is this: Demoux, Galladon and the third should have known this if they were experienced worldhoppers, so do they think that capturing Hoid is important enough to sacrifice hundreds or thousends of lives? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redbird Posted January 25, 2015 Report Share Posted January 25, 2015 The cold is nonlethal to us, but only because we had centuries of exposure to it, to a population where it was not endemic it would be very lethal, killing up to 70-80% of the population. The same happened in Europe, Asia and of course in the americas. One of the reasons the amerindian empires fell so quickly is because their populations simply died of diseases that in Europe every child gets and survives without too mucht trouble, like the meazles. The diseases that wiped out the natives were also ones that killed a decent amount of Europeans, like smallpox and tuberculosis. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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