If you'd have suggested going to a doctor when I was a kid, my parents would have thought you were crazy. But these days, yeah. I would take my kids to a doctor. Medicine has a changed a lot in my lifetime.
Medical History
The first people who cared for the health and well being of others on Nideon are what today would be known as healers. They used their understanding of the flora and fauna around them to treat common ailments. Most healers had a magical connection to plants, which allowed them to more intuitively understand the uses of different those plants in improving health. In some rare cases, people had an innate magical connection with animals, which they were able to develop into healing through magic alone, but such abilities have never been common on Nideon. Healers were generally chosen for training based on their innate skill for the task and taught through apprenticeships.
Though healers were able to treat many common ailments, the practice was limited. More serious conditions could only be treated to a certain degree, and they could do little to assist with more internal injuries, such as broken bones. Thus, modern medicine slowly rose out of a desire to find answers to these problems, as well as for those who had interest in healing, but lacked the intuitive gift, to study the art through a scientific means.
Medical Conflict
As the medical profession grew, a conflict developed between healers and doctors, fighting over the same patients. Doctors often criticized healers for the lack of rigor in their training, as their practices had changed little over time. In contrast, healer criticized doctors for not trusting in old traditions, as many, in their desire to separate themselves from the older profession, dismissed healer remedies as superstition, without examining historical evidence. Despite the conflict, many patients preferred to visit healers because their means were trusted and early advancements in medical science saw numerous mistakes that made patients wary of their expertise.
Development of Antibiotics
At the turn of the century, renowned healer and doctor team Lauthier Coelho and Gueneviere Herzog determined that the best method for advancing medicine was for the two groups to work together. Using Coelho's historical knowledge and her own scientific resources, Herzog analyzed a common remedy, hoping to isolate specific elements within traditional healer remedies with the hope of using these elements to create medicines for less common afflictions such as
The Innocent Death, which had plagued both groups. After years of study, a 1928 breakthrough led to the first discovery, which in turn led to the first mass-produced antibiotic medicines.
Though this first drug had its limitations, Coelho and Herzog's research led to a new era of cooperation between healers and doctors, and during the next couple of decades, several other antibiotics were developed which targeted particular infections and ushered in a whole new age of medicine. Furthermore, it brought new respect for doctors from patients. The cooperation between the two groups is currently seen as one of the greatest assets for both. Many hospitals employ healers to assist in their areas of expertise and many healers continue their studies by also becoming doctors.
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