Soulcasting Question

[OdiYum]

While re-reading Way of Kings, an idea popped into my head.  When Jasnah soulcasted Shallan's blood, did she remove all of Shallan's immunities?  Does this mean Shallan will get deathly ill without stormlight?  Is this question completely irrelevent?  Have at thee!!!

[Swimmingly he/him]

I bet that the Soulcast blood had the proper distribution of white blood cells, forming a functional immune system that Shallan didn't reject as foreign because SHHH IT'S MAGIC.

seriously though, anyone have any ideas?

[OdiYum]

But wouldn't that require that Jasnah knows all of the immunities present?  She couldn't make the jam perfectly because she has never smelled, tasted or seen berries.  Does that mean that she has tasted Shallan's blood?  Is she a vampire...Am I doped on allergies pills?

 

Edit: I don't know how she could do replace all of Shallan's antibodies, but not be able properly create the Jam, unless that means that all of the essences include everything present in said essence (but that seems VERY complicated).

Edited June 4, 2014 by OdiYum

[Swimmingly he/him]

Well, Blood is one of the essences. Maybe it's like a default that adjusts to the normal of the person it's being soulcast in.

[Moogle]

As Shallan regularly uses Stormlight, I imagine she's long since restored all of her antibodies.

 

I'm not sure what a normal person would do, though. Maybe Roshar doesn't have as many illnesses?

[Swimmingly he/him]

Kaladin is a surgeon intimately familiar with many illnesses. Rotspren are commonly sighted. I'm pretty sure that there are all sorts of bugs going about the place.

[OdiYum]

I was about to say that.  Plus stormlight heals you based on how you view yourself.  Soulcasting is based on how the soulcaster sees the object/person they are soulcasting.  So does infusing stormlight/soulcasting remove the antigens or cure them creating new immunities?  Sorry I just really find this topic interesting.

[Kurkistan he/him]

Perhaps Jasnah managed to do a tad of "healing-ish" Soulcasting, then? If, as we saw with Stick, there's a degree of negotiation to the thing, Jasnah might be able to get away with just saying "hey blood BE THE WAY YOU WERE 5 MINUTS AGO!!!" and the blood will go along with it. Maybe.

[Aonar he/him]

Because blood is one of the Essences, the understanding required for more complex Soulcastings is unnecessary. In fact, in this case I think it would have hindered her.

 

I would think that this mostly has to do with what exactly happens during a Soulcasting. Soulcasting (of an Essense anyway) draws from Spiritual and Cognitive Ideals when it makes changes. The recreated blood would have all the base components that blood would need, because it's Spiritual and Cognitive Aspects would include them.

 

It's one of those weird Cosmere things, where the Soulcasted blood should come with a functioning immune system that is fully compatible with the subject. Not because that would make sense from a medical perspective, but because Rosharans don't understand enough how these things work. Their medical science at this point just assumes that blood is blood, and any blood should do. Because they believe that, that's how it works when someone's blood is Soulcast.

 

Or at least that's how I think of it anyway.

Edited June 4, 2014 by AonarFaileas

[Swimmingly he/him]

And, again, it's kind of hard to tell because Shallan has the equivalent of a very effective immune system buzzing through her system whenever she's around a lighted sphere.

[Kurkistan he/him]

Because blood is one of the Essences, the understanding required for more complex Soulcastings is unnecessary. In fact, in this case I think it would have hindered her.

 

I would think that this mostly has to do with what exactly happens during a Soulcasting. Soulcasting (of an Essense anyway) draws from Spiritual and Cognitive Ideals when it makes changes. The recreated blood would have all the base components that blood would need, because it's Spiritual and Cognitive Aspects would include them.

 

It's one of those weird Cosmere things, where the Soulcasted blood should come with a functioning immune system that is fully compatible with the subject. Not because that would make sense from a medical perspective, but because Rosharans don't understand enough how these things work. Their medical science at this point just assumes that blood is blood, and any blood should do. Because they believe that, that's how it works when someone's blood is Soulcast.

 

Or at least that's how I think of it anyway.

 

And how I think of it, actually, making me feel kind of silly for not giving that explanation myself... 

[Fifth of Daybreak he/him]

Unfortunately, my understanding of the immune system isn't as vast as some of the other body systems, but I think I can shed some light on this. 

 

The soulcasting of Shallan's blood should not have a drastic effect on the immune system. When someone is healthy, they normally don't have a lot of white blood cells, or leukocytes in the blood stream. One of the ways to test for infection is to do a white blood cell count, and if it's elevated, it's because the body is involved in fighting the infection, and so more leukocytes have been made to combat the infection. 

 

When the body isn't involved in fighting infection, the leukocytes are stored outside of the blood, in the bone marrow, spleen, and thymus. The majority of immune system works through the lymphatic system, which has its own channels for transportation apart from the cardiovascular system, and is separate from the red blood cells, which would be the ones Jasnah is soulcasting. The poison would be carried in the plasma of the blood. 

 

So here, we see that the soulcasting isn't necessarily even affecting the immune system, as I'd assume white blood cells would be replaced during the soulcasting.

 

As far as immunity goes, the memory cells that recall past illnesses are completely seperate from the blood. This passage describes it as well as I can

 

 

 

Memory CellsDuring the initial course of responding to antigens such as bacteria and viruses, some T and B lymphocytes become cells known as memory cells. These cells enable the immune system to recognize antigens that the body has previously encountered. Memory cells direct a secondary immune response in which immune cells such as cytotoxic T cells and antibodies are produced more quickly and for a longer period of time than during the primary response. Memory cells are stored in the lymph nodes and spleen and can remain for the life of an individual. If enough memory cells are produced while encountering an infection, these cells can provide life-long immunity against certain diseases such as mumps and measles.

http://biology.about.com/od/cellbiology/ss/lymphocytes.htm

 

 

Shallan should have all her immunities in tact!

[Kurkistan he/him]

@EMTrevor

 

+1 for science. 

[ccstat he/him]

Good question! I was excited to weigh in on this (as an immunologist), but the important things have all been said.

 

Even if serum components like antibodies were not part of the cognitive aspect of "blood" and got filtered out like the poison, the cells that produce those antibodies are residing elsewhere and would quickly* replace what had been lost. 

*The half-life of antibodies in serum (with constant renewal) is 1-4 Rosharan weeks, depending on subtype, so within a few days you'd be back up to nearly full strength. 

 

Cellular immunity could take more of a hit, since T cells tend to recirculate a bit more, but not enough to matter in this case. 

If all circulating white blood cells were removed, you would definitely have a vulnerable period. The issue then would not be with your acquired immunities, but the reduction in innate immunity from bacteria gobblers like neutrophils. However, those renew completely within a day (you kick out almost 100 billion of them in that time) [source] so you shouldn't be in too much trouble.

[OdiYum]

Neat, thanks for the help everyone!

[ccstat he/him]

The thing that interests me now is Jasnah's comment about essences:

The pure form of an Essence is quite easy to make; the eight kinds of blood are easier to create than water, for instance

Eight kinds of blood on Roshar. I had been thinking about this in terms of our own ABO blood groups, which determine transfusion compatibility (an antibody-mediated quality).  But there is no evidence to suggest that anyone has tried to transfuse blood, and in the absence of anticoagulants agglutination assays are impossible to perform. So nobody would have discovered an incompatibility if it exists.
 
Even if they had, there is no reason to suspect that Jasnah checked Shallan's blood type before saving her life, and checking it after would only identify the blood she had already soulcast, not what was there originally. So either blood type genetics are strictly race-restricted (similar to hair color and other odd physical traits on Roshar, which appear to have a magical origin/component), or blood type doesn't mean "transfusion compatibility" the way I thought.(I suppose she could have intuited Shallan's blood type via Shadesmar, but that still doesn't address why "8 kinds of blood" is common knowledge.) 

 
So what is she talking about? It can't be a species thing (red, orange, and violet as seen in the prologue equals three, not eight) unless they are also counting insects, chulls, "piece of wet slime and a disgusting crab thing with seventeen legs."

[Moogle]

Even if they had, there is no reason to suspect that Jasnah checked Shallan's blood type before saving her life, and checking it after would only identify the blood she had already soulcast, not what was there originally. So either blood type genetics are strictly race-restricted (similar to hair color and other odd physical traits on Roshar, which appear to have a magical origin/component), or blood type doesn't mean "transfusion compatibility" the way I thought.(I suppose she could have intuited Shallan's blood type via Shadesmar, but that still doesn't address why "8 kinds of blood" is common knowledge.) 

 

Surely Jasnah could just have just Soulcasted Shallan's blood to O- blood? I'd almost suspect that's the "default" blood Soulcasted to, for some reason.

[ccstat he/him]

Yes, if that is what "kind of blood" means.

Now that I think it through, one additional co-dominant gene would give exactly 8 distinct blood types, compared to the 4 we have.
[O, A, B, AB, C, AC, BC, ABC] So that is certainly possible, and if soulcasting blood is a common enough occurrence then they might reasonably have discovered those incompatibilities. Especially if an experienced soulcaster can sense cognitively what kind of blood she is dealing with.

I guess I had attributed the idea (of destroying poison by soulcasting blood into blood) to Jasnah's quick problem solving, a spur-of-the-moment brilliance. But it makes just as much sense to assume that there was medical precedent to inspire what she did. And if the 8 types work as our 4 do, then O would indeed be the universal negative.

In fact, our own Rh factor could be the 3rd gene. When you give your blood type, you say "A+" or "A-" because each of the 4 types has an Rh+ and Rh- version. So there really are 8 basic blood types on earth, with O- the universal donor. We don't need to posit additional genes after all. Not sure why I didn't think of that first.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, Moogle!

Edited June 5, 2014 by ccstat