I think you underestimate the amount of medical knowledge possessed by the current Healers. It takes the Yellows less than a minute after seeing Fire and Earth being used in a "Healing" weave to come up with plans to use them against heart conditions and so on. Which indicates a clear idea of the problems the current battlefield Healing couldn't solve, and also a pretty detailed picture of those problems.
While you're right that they don't have codified medical knowledge, especially at the sub-organ, tissue, cellular, and sub-cellular levels, they do have something that other primitive Healers in our world never had... Delving.
Take the case of Nynaeve delving Naeff. She doesn't describe the surface of the brain as the cortex, and doesn't give names to the deeper regions of the brain where she sees the taint-compulsion reach, but she can sense it, and Heal each of those individual regions. And she can regenerate various cell types, as she did when she regrew flesh and skin and nerves and blood-vessels in Rand's forearm when Semirhage burned it.
What Nynaeve doesn't have is the terms for these things. And she probably can't send weaves into the "pleasure centers of the brain" without delving, like Semirhage can. But from all evidence, her Healing is as fine and detailed as Semirhage's. Since she can actually purge specific poisons and microbe-based diseases with no issues, I assume that a lack of actual knowledge in biochemistry and microbiology is not a hindrance, due to delving.
None of this negates your point about why this technique was lost, of course. Nynaeve is an outlier in that she has extraordinary abilities in Delving and Healing. And women like her were incredibly rare even in the AoL. No way could this technique have survived the Breaking.
While you're right that they don't have codified medical knowledge, especially at the sub-organ, tissue, cellular, and sub-cellular levels, they do have something that other primitive Healers in our world never had... Delving.
Take the case of Nynaeve delving Naeff. She doesn't describe the surface of the brain as the cortex, and doesn't give names to the deeper regions of the brain where she sees the taint-compulsion reach, but she can sense it, and Heal each of those individual regions. And she can regenerate various cell types, as she did when she regrew flesh and skin and nerves and blood-vessels in Rand's forearm when Semirhage burned it.
What Nynaeve doesn't have is the terms for these things. And she probably can't send weaves into the "pleasure centers of the brain" without delving, like Semirhage can. But from all evidence, her Healing is as fine and detailed as Semirhage's. Since she can actually purge specific poisons and microbe-based diseases with no issues, I assume that a lack of actual knowledge in biochemistry and microbiology is not a hindrance, due to delving.
None of this negates your point about why this technique was lost, of course. Nynaeve is an outlier in that she has extraordinary abilities in Delving and Healing. And women like her were incredibly rare even in the AoL. No way could this technique have survived the Breaking.
How did Travelling become a lost Talent?
03/02/2012 09:09:39 AM
- 1983 Views
It is a little odd. Maybe because channelers weren't united for a while?
03/02/2012 02:24:17 PM
- 915 Views
Re: How did Travelling become a lost Talent?
03/02/2012 02:49:02 PM
- 757 Views
Hey, why don't you reference ANY place in the series a character learns ANY weave from a book?
04/02/2012 07:42:43 AM
- 870 Views
i think it could be
03/02/2012 07:56:18 PM
- 964 Views
THANK YOU!!! Are we the only ones here who can see the obvious?!
04/02/2012 07:40:39 AM
- 834 Views
Re: THANK YOU!!! Are we the only ones here who can see the obvious?!
04/02/2012 09:56:48 AM
- 956 Views
Re: THANK YOU!!! Are we the only ones here who can see the obvious?!
04/02/2012 01:57:10 PM
- 958 Views
Have you read the Big White Book? It details some of the events that happened during The Breaking
08/02/2012 04:27:13 PM
- 752 Views
It's always struck me as a tool of the Author more than a good hard fact
04/02/2012 01:40:06 AM
- 608 Views
Your theory is based on rather severely flawed assumptions
04/02/2012 07:34:45 AM
- 1002 Views
Re: Your theory is based on rather severely flawed assumptions
04/02/2012 09:48:52 AM
- 811 Views
Re: Your theory is based on rather severely flawed assumptions
04/02/2012 03:04:48 PM
- 854 Views
Re: Your theory is based on rather severely flawed assumptions
04/02/2012 06:58:41 PM
- 740 Views
Re: Your theory is based on rather severely flawed assumptions
05/02/2012 12:00:05 AM
- 751 Views
Re: Your theory is based on rather severely flawed assumptions
05/02/2012 04:05:57 AM
- 661 Views
I don't see why people are having trouble believing Traveling was lost in the Breaking
05/02/2012 05:53:32 PM
- 708 Views
Re: I don't see why people are having trouble believing Traveling was lost in the Breaking
05/02/2012 07:39:51 PM
- 882 Views
Medical knowledge...
06/02/2012 02:15:13 AM
- 596 Views
My point was that it's surprising only ONE Healing weave survived
11/02/2012 08:25:02 PM
- 677 Views
Re: I don't see why people are having trouble believing Traveling was lost in the Breaking
05/02/2012 09:11:04 PM
- 602 Views
I agree. I was going to respond but you covered most of the bases.
08/02/2012 04:13:20 PM
- 583 Views
Re: Your theory is based on rather severely flawed assumptions
05/02/2012 09:52:35 PM
- 766 Views
You really need to read the BWB sections regarding this
14/02/2012 01:20:20 AM
- 593 Views
he needs to read it just to see it for his own eyes
14/02/2012 02:46:44 AM
- 562 Views
Re: he needs to read it just to see it for his own eyes
14/02/2012 10:15:46 PM
- 641 Views
I would agree with you on less structured parts of the series
15/02/2012 03:38:37 PM
- 531 Views
Re: I would agree with you on less structured parts of the series
16/02/2012 09:41:29 PM
- 690 Views
That I can agree with
17/02/2012 05:46:49 AM
- 736 Views
Re: That I can agree with
17/02/2012 09:26:50 AM
- 599 Views
Seriously! The Yellow should be ashamed
17/02/2012 01:49:07 PM
- 726 Views
Well to be fair to the Yellow (which generally annoy me as an Ajah)...
17/02/2012 06:20:06 PM
- 671 Views
Re: Your theory is based on rather severely flawed assumptions
05/02/2012 09:02:28 PM
- 719 Views
Why would the AoL Servants of All build themselves a self-aggrandizing island-city-fort-tower?
08/02/2012 03:03:49 PM
- 663 Views
Re: Why would the AoL Servants of All build themselves a self-aggrandizing island-city-fort-tower?
09/02/2012 10:38:23 PM
- 653 Views
Re: Why would the AoL Servants of All build themselves a self-aggrandizing island-city-fort-tower?
11/02/2012 07:58:40 PM
- 742 Views
The White Tower began construction in 98 AB. Go read the section in the BWB
12/02/2012 01:48:58 AM
- 694 Views
The Wheel Weaves as the Wheel Wills. *NM*
06/02/2012 02:38:36 AM
- 402 Views
I wonder if it'd possible to open gateways based on the memories of a previous incarnation? *NM*
07/02/2012 09:56:25 PM
- 358 Views
except for Rand/LTT and Birgitte, I get the impression that people don't have memories of past lives *NM*
08/02/2012 02:38:00 AM
- 314 Views