What can dirt do for you?!

Felarya's soil has a section on the front page, and we all know pretty much what it is helpful for, but some things aren't so clear about it.

We have already listed:
- Cures all diseases
-Revitalizes living beings
-Stops aging (at prime, halts further aging if past physical prime)
- Dying from illness
-Non-lethal wounds completely heal in weeks or days
-Accentuated growth

I think for one, the 'cures all diseases' needs to be elaborated on. There are many kinds of diseases. Cardiovascular or nerve-damaging disease, yeah, I could see that healing up grouped in with 'wounds and stuff'. An inherited genetic 'disease', or disorder, shouldn't go away because it's part of the organism's natural growth. And to muddle even more, what about cancers? Those are malignant growths of the creature's own cells. What if the soil actually caused cancer to become worse by causing it to grow faster? That could be one of the 'drawbacks to these effects' the wiki mentions.

Illnesses now. That covers a lot too. You're not going to get sick from the cold or the flu, so how about just going with the explanation of "Acts as a greatly boosting supplement to an organism's own immune system- it is practically impossible for microbes such as bacteria and viruses to cause infection of living tissue."

We already know microbes such as bacteria have to exist to decompose things, make alcohol (yeast fermentation), and there are plants used to help with bad breath (which bacteria causes, not so much an infection in that regard) so that should just about work fine eh? I believe that's about how Cliff explained it to me, and it seemed quite logical.

To add:

"While the soil can help guard against some types of harmful things, there are those it cannot. Among these are parasitic and fungal infections, poisons, curses*, hexes, and morning breath."

*Magical vampires don't get to blame the soil for their trouble of recruiting.

Some people weren't sure if poisons worked. Might as well deserve a mention.

I can't really think of why no one would have to worry about parasites in the water, and so boiling it would be smart like any other place. There's like, giant nematodes and dryad gut worms, so that seems to be a viable environmental threat that could get around the illness-preventing soil. That's if the protection is in the form of a supplement to the immune system as I mentioned above; parasites tend to be unaffected entirely by immune systems.

Another thought on that: I think healers could be using some rather comparably dangerous cures, such as poisons to get rid of parasites (as the damage left from non-lethal poison could likely heal up quickly).

So far, am I really off about anything?

About the poison it's more a matter of dosage and constitution, so some creature can resist where some dose can be enough to kill another one which are bigger. Except if you face a slug-girl poison has a strong chance to affect the creature or cause serious trouble.

Quote :

Another thought on that: I think healers could be using some rather comparably dangerous cures, such as poisons to get rid of parasites (as the damage left from non-lethal poison could likely heal up quickly

Let me to suggest you something, there are some research about the medical use of the venoms and the silk of the spiders. Why dridders don't develop medicine based on using their and their silk

I assume in the case of cancers it heals the damaged DNA sequences that cause unrestricted cell growth, and then the body reabsorbs the tumor at an accelerated rate.

JohnDoe wrote:

I assume in the case of cancers it heals the damaged DNA sequences that cause unrestricted cell growth, and then the body reabsorbs the tumor at an accelerated rate.

Or the boosted immune system is able to fight off tumors while they are still tiny. The human immune system DOES have systems in place to destroy cells that are out of control. Sometimes the growth is just too fast though. If the healing factor DOES work by beefing up the immune system, in theory, they could fight off any cancer.

rcs619 wrote:

JohnDoe wrote:

I assume in the case of cancers it heals the damaged DNA sequences that cause unrestricted cell growth, and then the body reabsorbs the tumor at an accelerated rate.

Or the boosted immune system is able to fight off tumors while they are still tiny. The human immune system DOES have systems in place to destroy cells that are out of control. Sometimes the growth is just too fast though. If the healing factor DOES work by beefing up the immune system, in theory, they could fight off any cancer.

That was my assumption.

But if someone came to Felarya who had a really advanced aggressive tumour, it's not going to do them that much good.


For the healing thing, I've had this idea for a while:

If we assume that the healing rate is linear, that is, it increases proportionately to the number of cells, then we have to come up with something else/
Linear:
The Felarya soil causes 1000 cells to heal at a rate of 10 cells a minute.
The Felarya soil causes 2000 cells to heal at a rate of 20 cells a minute.


If, however, the healing rate increases with a cubic or exponential rate, this makes explaining how large bodies beat infections much easier:
The Felarya soil causes 1000 cells to heal at a rate of 10 cells a minute.
The Felarya soil causes 2000 cells to heal at a rate of 25 cells a minute.

Or something like that.

This means that large groups of cells, like a human body would be effected by the Felaryan soil more than a few bacteria. Therefore they would be able to fight infection off easily. Same goes for small cancers.

those are really interesting thoughts indeed you are right this section is in need of re-writting( as many others ) ^^