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*kicks in door* I HEARD GERM THEORY WHAT Here are my two cents: If we assume that Skyhold is eventually the home of some of the best Thedas has to offer, I'm inclined to believe germ theory isn't prevalent in their medicine. Given the existence of the surgeon hanging around, and the fact that I don't see any traces of microscopes in the Thedas that we know, there's no hint to imply that Theodosians are even aware of the possibility. And why should they? We're told that Theodosians bar Qunari are heavily reliant on magic; the study of non-magical science itself is most likely stunted from this.

A talk with "Surgeon" in Skyhold nets a good look at the state of medical science in Thedas. It's quite interesting because for all that the world of Dragon Age seems to have healing magic it's ideas about medicine seem to be quite primeval.

Sans magic and game mechanics, what do we know about what they actually do? Here's what I can find. I have left out any herb for which no in-world use or effect is given besides crafting, for brevity's sake. I have also left out herbs which appear to be strictly poisonous. This is all information from the wiki, so if anyone has more information from, say, the RPG guide, I'd love to add it.

This is a collection of posts and conversations about healing and medicine, both magical and non-magical, in Thedas. A lot of it is necessarily headcanon, but reading through some or all of these may help people formulate their own ideas of how these work, for writing purposes.

I don't know about you, but when I was first considering the overall state of Thedas, mostly for worldbuilding purposes, I was semi-consciously thinking of it as a fairly typical pseudo-medieval-Europe. And that's natural enough, because in Origins, Ferelden really did look like that. Thatching, half-timbering, nobles in fortified castles, a fairly monolithic church around which much of society was built.

An exploration of paper-like materials mentioned in canon.

As part of the upgrades to Skyhold, the Inquisitor can have a surgery built, there is an option to talk to the surgeon who challenges the view...

All information is taken from in-game item descriptions, codex entries, war table missions, and extended lore material (such as the RPG book.)

Oh lord. Uh. So 'alchemy' is definitely an idea, and still called as such (rather than Natural History or something to suggest a more recent, 'scientific' approach). The search term alchemy brings up quite a few hits you can check out on the wiki.

I read quite a bit about navigation and astronomy instruments, including astrolabes, while I was in high school and in my early college years. I was writing fanfiction for a very different fandom at that time that I felt required knowledge of 16th century sailing. I did notice that the globes in the Brecilian ruins resembled an orrery under glass and the orbs I jokingly called "weird ass whirligigs" do bear a resemblance to a dioptra or an armillary sphere. So could they be used for astronomy?

So, Titans. A life form, of some kind, made of earth and stone. Their blood is lyrium which behaves like a mineral, if not a metal outright, in the form it is mined. Of course its mined form very well might be altered from its normal state for life-function. But at any rate, the thought [personal profile] sarahq and I landed at at one point, whilst musing on various lore, was: blood serves to deliver oxygen. What is oxygen doing? It's delivering electrons to the ATP cycle. Titan blood may not need oxygen or to be liquid, as long as whatever it is can transmit electron flow. You know what fucking transmits electrons really well? Metals. And semi-conductors at the right temperatures.