Medical errors in Words of Radiance

[Sasukerinnegan]

Medicine is far too advanced in the Stormlight Archive and utterly out of sync with the era Roshar is presently in. Roshar is yet to discover gunpowder, yet to start the industrial era but has near 20th century medicinal capacities in Earth terms. See this excerpt

 

“Physical ailments,” Renarin said. “I’ve a blood weakness.”

“That’s a folk description of many different conditions,” Kaladin said. “What do you really have?”

“I’m epileptic,” Renarin said. “It means—”

“Yes, yes. Is it idiopathic or symptomatic?”

Renarin stood absolutely still in the darkness. “Uh . . .”

“Was it caused by a specific brain injury,” Kaladin asked, “or is it something that just started happening for no reason?”

“I’ve had it since I was a kid.”

“How bad are the seizures?”

“They’re fine,” Renarin said quickly. “It’s not as bad as everyone says. It’s not like I fall to the ground or froth like everyone thinks. My arm will jerk a few times, or I’ll twitch uncontrollably for a few moments.”

“You retain consciousness?”

“Yeah.”

“Myoclonic, probably,” Kaladin said. “You’ve been given bitterleaf to chew?”

“I . . . Yes. I don’t know if it helps. The jerking isn’t the whole problem. A lot of times, when it’s happening, I get really weak. Particularly along one side of my body.”

“Huh,” Kaladin said. “I suppose that could fit with the seizures. Have you ever had any persistent relaxation of the muscles, an inability to smile on one side of your face, for example?”

Epilepsies certainly weren't this well diagnosed in the 19th century nor were there specific treatments even semi effective folk treatments. Then again Kaladin asks whether the epilepsy is idiopathic or symptomatic. The question itself is wrong. Idiopathic means of unknown cause whereas symptomatic does not refer to the cause at all, it just means if the patient exhibits any symptoms of the disorder. At the scientific level that Roshar is in (I assume it to be late 19th century in medical terms), ALL disorders would be idiopathic since causes and specific pathology of most ailments weren't known (unless the cause was obvious, like trauma to the head etc) and therefore the term would be redundant. Myoclonic disorders were well described only in the late 19th century and there was certainly no treatment at the time.

Even accounting for Carl's superb article http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/03/the-spren-theory-of-disease-unexpected-science-in-the-way-of-kings, the medical science is still far too advanced. It was well into the 20th century before use of antiseptic became common practice in all nations.

 

Then comes logarithms. Taravangian uses logarithms to describe his IQ condition. Logarithms were discovered in the 1600's and certainly at the time it was never used in medical practice. Use of statistics became common much later towards the mid 19th century. One of the reasons Gregor Johann Mendel, commonly considered the father of genetics, was ridiculed was because he applied mathematical probability to describe genetics in the 18th century. It was one of the reasons why his work was ignored for the better part of a century and he never used something as complicated as logarithms.

 

The reason I mention this is because it seems to be there is a huge disconnect when it comes to describing Rosharan development in Earth terms. Some things like medicine and mathematics are far too advanced for Roshar while development of military weaponry seems to be far too little. There are no descriptions of gunpowder use or even crossbows for that matter while medical progress is of the kind we achieved only in early 20th century. Even politically speaking, Roshar is far too advanced. Lirin faces up to Roshone on the strength of the justice system then existent. It would be near impossible for the disadvantaged class to get justice from the nobility even in 19th century.

[name_here]

Brandon has previously stated he's not much for "technology levels". Roshar's medicine is more advanced than Earth's medicine in Earth's pre-gunpowder era.

[Azul]

Between spren and the Heralds teachings most of these things are explained. 

[Seloun]

There's a pretty big assumption here that there is a natural 'progression' in technology of different areas. However, I'll accept the premise for the sake of argument.

 

It's worth noting that the Desolations have consistently knocked civilizations down in waves. The main mechanism of information being secured between the Desolations appears to be through the Heralds; Taln talks about how the Heralds will teach them about medicine and smelting. So it's actually not that surprising the 'tech level' would feel somewhat schizophrenic; the Heralds apparently can only stick around for a limited amount of time and each one is going to focus on their survival speciality. As a general statement, I think that holds, though individual cases can still be examined to see if that explanation makes sense.

 

Also, there's nothing special about laying out the sequence using logarithms - it's not being used in a medical fashion here in any case, and it's also not really related to statistics (however, the woman was talking about both statistics as well as logarithms, but you can have one without the other). It's also not clear if there's an entire underlying mathematical theory of exponentials here or just an observation that you can plot large amounts of space in a small amount of space if you have a doubling concept.

[EvilKetchupCow]

Come to think of it wouldn't log be different on roshar

[Raevun]

The reason I mention this is because it seems to be there is a huge disconnect when it comes to describing Rosharan development in Earth terms. 

 

Why is it necessary to make a parallel to Earth? It's impossible to expect equal progression in technology on a world where magic is existent. 

 

With the antiseptic, they can physically see infection with rotspren. It's much easier to come to the conclusion that antiseptic is needed when you can see rotspren causing an infection compared to Earth, where the causes of infection are on an invisible-to-the-eye scale. Having a substance that wards it off is instantly recognisable as beneficial.

 

As for military development, there is little reason to develop new weaponry when you have Shardblades in the world. The destructive potential of one is unparalleled to anything that they would be capable of making in reasonable technological leaps from what they already have. The main branch of military scientific development, that of fabrials, has, arguably, been more focussed on the replication of Shardblades instead of trying to create something to rival their destructive power.

 

Add in to the mix the desolations wiping out civilisations, causing humanity to rebuild again and again. There are also several different humanoid races with very different physiologies, meaning that discoveries of one nation may be inapplicable to another (so there can be no true global collaboration/arms races). 

 

And then there's also people arriving on Roshar from other planets entirely, from different eras, potentially giving advice in some areas and not in others. The heralds are also still around, and have witnessed many development/desolation cycles, and have given advice on how humanity can progress. 

 

In short, of course the technology is wildly varied. There's magic. 

Edited March 10, 2014 by FeatherWriter
Watch language please.

[happyman]

Since it's actually mentioned at one point that the Herald's straight-up gave Roshar medical technology at least once, being advanced in that field doesn't seem as out of place as it should be.

[Aminar]

Not just that, but Technologically Roshar is a whole lot more modern than you're giving it credit for.  It's just a different type of tech(magic.)  The Fabrials they have put them at well past the era of Gunpowder.  They just haven't discovered that one single thing.(Likely due to the fact that it's not necessarily of the most use in a place where keeping anything dry is questionable at best...  They'd have to house the powder with the same carefulness they use on books(Basically bank vaulting the stuff.)  That is if they even have access to all the materials needed for Gunpowder.  In a primarily crustacean Eco-system they very well might not.

[chuchuoftime]

I think we can actually say that things were discovered in a perfectly reasonable way.  During the desolations, and even during the book, people have shards far more powerful than guns.  Why invent new weapons when the almighty himself gives you shards?  On the other hand, there are no medical shards, and roshar is constantly at war, it makes sense that medicine would have progressed very quickly while other things lag behind.

[name_here]

It has been quite a long time since Shards were in ready supply, but on the other hand Roshar had been hastily uplifted to the Bronze Age during the prior desolation, so their military technology seems to have advanced a reasonable degree since then.

 

Also, their medical knowledge is a bit spotty; they don't seem to have much of a grasp on chemistry. Sure, they have painkillers and antiseptics, but apparently only by using naturally occurring ones. Even Dalinar's surgeons don't have the capacity to synthesize anything and we've seen no evidence of sophisticated methods of distilling the active ingredient of knobweed sap or similar. That would fit very well with lacking gunpowder.

[Walker]

Come to think of it wouldn't log be different on roshar

 

It might have a different base; I doubt they use natural logarithm.  But the sketch of the graph, including derivatives and asymptotes, is structurally the same across bases.  And that is all they are using it for in the Taravangian discussion.

A lot of these math concepts go back to the Greeks. They were just much more informal back then. It was not until we got the Cartesian plane that we started formalizing a lot of them. But none of the math in this book looks like it is much beyond Greek/Ancient Chinese/Vedic Astrology level.

Edited March 10, 2014 by Walker

[Gamma Fiend]

Also, I think it's worth noting, advanced mathematical concepts aren't that abstract on Roshar. In our real world, we had ancient Arabic civilizations completely invent Algebra and other amazing progress in mathematics, Babylonians were doing work making the baseline of our knowledge of algorithms. And those types of scientific and mathematical progress were stopped at various points throughout history, due to war, politics, and religion. The Ardents and the Church have been doing these practices consistently for millennia. .

And then as people have said, without even the Heralds handing this knowledge down, we have Spren to help people get an understanding of the world. People would see rotspren would gather around nasty, infected wounds. This was a visual clue. Then they found natural antiseptics and things that drove the rotspren away. That puts them hundreds, if not thousands of years ahead of our history.

We didn't even start washing our hands for medical procedures until almost the 1900's! People on Roshar knew better than that since the last Desolation.

[Walker]

To follow up from my previous post, the use of logarithms in the Taravangian interlude shows that they are not advanced in mathematics. Logarithms do not have a bump in the middle. The ardent is trying to describe a normal-like distribution. This is only like a logarithm at the tails, because the higher-order derivatives match up there. But it is nothing like a logarithm in the middle.

This is exactly how you would expect a society that did not have probability (a very recent invention) try to explain the long tail phenomenon.

[The Duke]

@OP As stated by some, there is no law demanding that discoveries must be made in the same order as in our world (and more specifically in Europe), especially across fields. Sure if we check specifics we can find that some discoveries correlate to others, but it's not set in stone. Specifically to maths, unlike other fields which require experiments, and technological tools that are able to carry them out, to advance, everything we worked out in mathematics up to the most recent discoveries can be done with pencil and paper. Even 10,000 years ago.

If one is sent from our age back to the Bronze age he would find it very difficult to actually build an engine or create a vaccine using their tool. It would be quite possible to teach mathematics up to the highest pinnacle we achieved (without computers).

@Gamma Field, the Arabs certainly not completely invent Algebra, far from it. They did expand upon the works of their predecessors to a good extent.

@Walker, well, It's not impossible for a Gaussian shaped curve to be seen on a logarithmic scale. I prefare to take it as it is.

 

Gunpowder might not be the best yardstick here. It seems like culturally ranged weapons are not much in use perhaps gunpowder was deemed unsatisfactory before its weapons had a chance to evolve? Could gunpowder ingredients be rare on Roshar?
I am not sure how viable this option is, but couldn't there be a planet on which Sulfur is a rare commodity?

Edited March 10, 2014 by The Duke

[Yamahako]

I bet we'd have been using antiseptic earlier on, if we had magical faeries to let us know where the infections were.  Remember they think that antiseptic scares away rot spren, not that it kills off microscopic bacteria that causes infection.  Detection is huge for prevention.

[Shards of Mist]

The reason they don't have gunpowder could be a very simple one.  It takes Potassium Nitrate, Charcoal, and Sulfur to make gunpowder.  Roshar may not have one or more of these elements.

[Aminar]

The reason they don't have gunpowder could be a very simple one.  It takes Potassium Nitrate, Charcoal, and Sulfur to make gunpowder.  Roshar may not have one or more of these elements.

 

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 281018368 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 285468976 bytes) in Unknown on line 0

Most likely Potassium. I haven't seen much of anything with Potassium... What I have seen is Strawberries and they were condsidered rare. Of course that means that Rosharan's are missing some important dietary needs and mus be stiff as hell. Outside of Shin I think most groundbased nutrients are rare...

[Walker]

 

@Walker, well, It's not impossible for a Gaussian shaped curve to be seen on a logarithmic scale. I prefare to take it as it is.

 

 

Which is not the same as saying that a curve has logarithmic behavior.  But I understand what you are saying.

[Mr_Doe]

To follow up from my previous post, the use of logarithms in the Taravangian interlude shows that they are not advanced in mathematics. Logarithms do not have a bump in the middle. The ardent is trying to describe a normal-like distribution. This is only like a logarithm at the tails, because the higher-order derivatives match up there. But it is nothing like a logarithm in the middle.

This is exactly how you would expect a society that did not have probability (a very recent invention) try to explain the long tail phenomenon.

So you said a lot there without it meaning anything... but she seems to be saying that it is a normal gaussian distribution, and the "linear" values of the horizontal axis correspond to a logarithmic intelligence scale (aka they have been normalized by some method).  This way the standard deviation remains a constant of some function.  Check out the wiki on log-normal distributions

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log-normal_distribution

 

As to the whole gunpowder thing, it was mentioned before how difficult mining is on roshar, and you need to mine to get any real amount of materials for gunpowder (sulfur, potassium, etc).  And for the medical "problem", it is simple, roshar has no religious biases against unknown medical conditions.  So an individual who was sick with an unknown illness becomes a patient and studied, rather than ostricized as a "possessed" person as most cultures on earth would do historically.  Look up the history of epileptics, especially in christian societies.

Edited March 10, 2014 by Mr_Doe

[Aleksiel]

The lack of gunpowder and what's related to it can be easily explained by the existence of Shardbearers. You can't shoot down a man in a Shardplate and since they are the most powerful warriors, scientist and scholars aim to find a way to deal with Shardbearers. So, science on Roshar didn't progress towards gun-related inventions as it's ineffective when it comes to Shardbearers. There are some problems with this reasoning, but it's a possibility. 

[shadewolf]

Exactly like Aleksiel said, I'd also like to point out that that alot of the other uses of explosive substances, are unnecessary due to soulcasting. Actually while we're on the topic of soulcasting, we have no clue on just how much mathematics and technology is put into creating fabriels. Technology has an interesting relationship with mathematics, technology is advanced by developments in mathematics, but technology only bring up problems for mathematicians to solve. Much of our current mathematics could be known by the people of roshar, but they may not know specific relationships in their world to apply the mathematics too.

[Aminar]

The lack of gunpowder and what's related to it can be easily explained by the existence of Shardbearers. You can't shoot down a man in a Shardplate and since they are the most powerful warriors, scientist and scholars aim to find a way to deal with Shardbearers. So, science on Roshar didn't progress towards gun-related inventions as it's ineffective when it comes to Shardbearers. There are some problems with this reasoning, but it's a possibility.

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 281018368 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 408414512 bytes) in Unknown on line 0

Bullets would bea very effective weapon against Shardplate. It's great against slashing weapons, and with a blade it's effective against people wielding hammers, but Bullet's pack a whole lot of froce in a very small area. Probably enough to shatter a plate in a single shot(Black Powder guns especially, as they pack a hell of a punch.) The deflective nature of shardplate might minimize this to an extent, but Shardplate is not likely to hold up to gunfire for long.

Edited March 10, 2014 by Aminar

[The Duke]

So you said a lot there without it meaning anything... but she seems to be saying that it is a normal gaussian distribution, and the "linear" values of the horizontal axis correspond to a logarithmic intelligence scale (aka they have been normalized by some method).  This way the standard deviation remains a constant of some function.  Check out the wiki on log-normal distributions

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log-normal_distribution

 

As to the whole gunpowder thing, it was mentioned before how difficult mining is on roshar, and you need to mine to get any real amount of materials for gunpowder (sulfur, potassium, etc).  And for the medical "problem", it is simple, roshar has no religious biases against unknown medical conditions.  So an individual who was sick with an unknown illness becomes a patient and studied, rather than ostricized as a "possessed" person as most cultures on earth would do historically.  Look up the history of epileptics, especially in christian societies.

 

Mining might be tough, but once a method is developed they can soulcast the materials. Just like they do with their metals (iirc) for swords, spears and practically everything. If they can afford to Soulcast food they can probably soulcast gunpowder.

 

The lack of gunpowder and what's related to it can be easily explained by the existence of Shardbearers. You can't shoot down a man in a Shardplate and since they are the most powerful warriors, scientist and scholars aim to find a way to deal with Shardbearers. So, science on Roshar didn't progress towards gun-related inventions as it's ineffective when it comes to Shardbearers. There are some problems with this reasoning, but it's a possibility. 

 

I believe to the contrary, the last thing that I would have wanted to do is get into swinging distance of a shardbearer. Seems like it's a lot more effective to spread out and shoot at one from a distance than to clump up about him.

Which makes me wonder how come there are no crossbows, catapults, trebuchets and scorpions in the books. Especially crossbows could be extremely effective against shards.

Perhaps the shardbearers in the nobility discourage ranged weapons because they know it can hurt them? Just like the forbid darkeyes from using swords (albeit for different reasons). Though it's hard to believe some shardless brighlord never tried to use this tactic.

[Arcanist Lupus]

Catapults would be useless on the Shattered Plains, since you'd have to lug them over the bridges. That said, not all wars were fought on the Shattered Plain.

I could see them being too hard to defend against Shardbearers, but the earliest battles that Kaladin fought in had (or at least were supposed to have) no Shardbearers, so that point isn't really valid.

As for gunpowder, someone pointed out earlier that we've seen no indication of chemistry or alchemy practice; all their potential chemists study fabrials instead, and you can't use fabrials to create gunpowder.

[PudgyNinja]

Catapults would be useless on the Shattered Plains, since you'd have to lug them over the bridges. That said, not all wars were fought on the Shattered Plain. I could see them being too hard to defend against Shardbearers, but the earliest battles that Kaladin fought in had (or at least were supposed to have) no Shardbearers, so that point isn't really valid. As for gunpowder, someone pointed out earlier that we've seen no indication of chemistry or alchemy practice; all their potential chemists study fabrials instead, and you can't use fabrials to create gunpowder.

 

Catapults are primarily siege engines, to be used against castle walls and stationary structures.  They're not really anti-personnel weapons.  Kaladin's experiences were all in the open field.