The Book of Short Tales by Lyra

B2MeM '13 - Knowledge vs. Ignorance - The Price

This ficlet started out as a response to the B2MeM '12 prompts O67 (Scientific Achievement: Pharmacy and In a Manner of Speaking: Skeletons in the Closet) and G50 (Scientific Achievement: Medicine), and then languished in my WiP folder until I read the theme quote for Knowledge vs. Ignorance for B2MeM '13. So I thought I'd finish it, polish it, and post it at last!

Istimë muses on the price she (or her patients) had to pay for her knowledge.

The Price

Of course she had made mistakes - particularly in the beginning. How else should she have learned? She only got formal training after her people had reached Aman. In the early days, everything she knew had been acquired by trial and error. Nowadays, of course, it seemed incomprehensible that a healer would not rightly know what to do about an injury or illness: Even if the healer's own experience failed, one could turn to Estë, and she would gently explain how the body worked, and how to counter whatever was ailing the patient. At any rate, the number of patients had dropped drastically once they were in Aman. Rarely, craftsmen slipped with their hammers, or children fell off rocks or trees or horses. That was about it. If there had not been a regular need for midwives, the healing profession would surely have died out – with all the necessary knowledge about healing easily available.

In Cuiviénen, however, there had been wild beasts and poisonous berries, treacherous heights and the strange illnesses that came by air or water or food. There, medical knowledge had been direly needed; and Istimë had had to acquire it all by herself. Her students had avoided her mistakes because she had made them in her time, and could warn them. And oh, they never asked how she knew that rue healed sore eyes and ears, but made pregnant women lose their unborn children; that willowbark cured fevers, but could made the blood run dangerously thin. She knew these things - that was enough.

But she knew that for every person she had healed, at least one had died or been crippled. Thus she had learned that wounds had to be cleaned, that bones had to be set. Thus she had learned what herbs could be used for healing, and in what quantity, and in what combination. That was how she learned to remove every last part of a splinter so that none were left inside to fester, how to make a splint, how to staunch bleeding. That was also how she learned that though two plants might look almost the same, they might have very different properties. Mistaking hemlock for chervil was deadly. Lily-of-the-Valley made people fight for breath, or faint, or worse, while ramsons was strengthening and could heal weak stomachs. She had learned to pay the utmost attention to characteristic smells, to minuscule differences in leaf-shapes and stem-form.
And she knew that sometimes, when she said, "I could not make him better," it really meant "I made him worse"; "I could not heal her" meant "I harmed her".

She was revered for her wisdom. Tatië had graced her with the epithet of Istimë, wise-woman, and in time the name that had been hers at birth was all but forgotten: She was Istimë now. She was indeed a wise woman; but her greatest wisdom was the price it had cost her, her and anyone else who had worked as a healer in those early days. Certainly, some patients might have died even without being administered brews of yew bark or berries of nightshade. But some would surely have lived. Some, also, might have lived if she had known then what she learned later.

Istimë did not reproach herself overmuch over those who had died by her hands or under her hands. It could not be helped. She accepted responsibility and then moved on. You had to take the bad with the good.
Perhaps it was this knowledge that made her more forgiving towards others: Everybody could made mistakes, and good intentions were not enough to keep people alive.
It certainly was a potent cure against pride.

Chapter End Notes

Disclaimer: The things Istimë identifies as dangerous in here really are dangerous. Don't try them at home, or anywhere else for that matter.