Medical errors in Words of Radiance

[Tarion]

I don't imagine siege engines would work out on Roshar.  Sieges seem like a very bad idea, since everyone lives in a natural stronghold anyway, and your army is going to be exposed to the highstorms.  Furthermore, it's basically impossible to cut off people's supplies - Soulcasting provides food and materials, and the highstorms provide water.  

 

Not to mention, what's going through a wall quicker - Your slow, vulnerable catapults, or the guy that can ride up to the wall quickly and slice straight through it?  It changes the dynamics of the fight entirely.  

 

I also imagine that the components of most siege weapons (and ranged weapons in general) are going to be hard to maintain with the constant highstorms.  It's going to take a lot of extra effort to keep them dry and usable.  

There's also the Thrill to consider.  It seems to encourage the direct conflict of hand-to-hand combat, rather than the use of ranged weapons.  Bows seem to be considered hunting weapons, and weapons of necessity rather than the true weapons of war.  The only real role of the archers in the chasm battles is (IIRC) to soften enemy lines before the impact of cavalry/Shardbearers.  

Finally, consider that this may come down to the gender differences in Alethi society.  War is a masculine pursuit, while technology is a feminine pursuit.  That leaves very little crossover in the field of military technology.  There's obviously some (See: Grandbows, Half-Shards) but they seem to be more about trying to design complements for (and eventually, improvements on) Shardplate rather than making genuine contributions to warfare.  It may well be that Shardplate, as a core component of the duels that lighteyed women would watch, wouldn't be too deeply associated with warfare.  It's part of lighteyed society, rather than something only tied to warfare.  After all, remember Dalinar's reaction Malasha to wanting to come to see a battle and compare it to the audience of the duels, which seemed to include a mixed crowd.  

 

Dalinar said nothing. Battle was a masculine art. A woman wanting to come to the battlefield was like…well, like a man wanting to read. Unnatural.

Edited March 11, 2014 by Tarion

[Satsuoni he/him]

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

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.

 

Well, I know nothing about epilepsy, but a google search for "idiopathic or symptomatic" reveals that: "[Epilepsy] Causes can be put into three main groups: symptomatic, idiopathic and cryptogenic." So his question makes perfect sense in this regard, I guess.

As for medicine, relevant points were made above already: rotspren/painspren are visible and point out infection /areas of intense pain with some precision. Heralds - considered gods or sent by one - repeatedly injected advanced knowledge, which was probably written into something like Bible at some points, etc.