Posts tagged medicine
So my character (16 yr old girl) got a deep cut (inches across) from a dagger across her torso and is knocked unconscious. (She falls onto her back) She had just enough time to contact her friends ...
When developing a medival fantasy realm, especially one with no known healing and restoration magic, one may need to develop the people's understanding of science and medicine. A unique example of ...
Happiness is mandatory. Unhappiness is treason. Treason is punishable by summary execution. Are you happy, citizen? - Friend computer. Welcome to Beta Complex, the little brother of Alpha Comp...
Is there an example of substances interacting with each other in the following way? A is a lethal substance, killing within minutes to hours when orally ingested; anti-A is an antidote for A (or ...
Which minimal order of magnitude is required to simulate single cells and microorganisms in cyberspace? In an utopian future, people will be possibly able to rapidly design new cures, be their rea...
In large doses, the body's ability to change cyanide into thiocyanate is overwhelmed. Large doses of cyanide prevent cells from using oxygen and eventually these cells die. The heart, respiratory s...
When torturing people or executing them in slow and painful ways, your victims sometimes fall unconscious, which ruins the point of the exercise. After all, if they aren't feeling the pain, then wh...
If the immune system of a healthy human just shut down completely and instantly (magic, nanotechnology, whatever), and after a certain time period it went back to normal, how much time without the ...
Say there is a plant-based toxin that causes what is essentially a state of deep sedation but has no other real effects. In this world there is one animal that is immune to this toxin (the plant is...
According to a recent National Geographic article, astronauts returning home after longer missions suffer permanently impaired vision. This is a problem that must be addressed in hard-science world...
Cryostasis, suspended animation, cryo-preservation or cryosleep (the marketing guy's prefer this last one as "Oh yeah, we gonna kill you in a manner we that will hopefully make it possible to reviv...
In the near future Science Fiction novel I am writing, the personality and memory of a person are transferred to an artificial brain after a fatal accident, creating an artificial intelligence with...
An artificial endocrine gland is cultured in the lab and is to be inserted in a person. This gland functions by secreting special substances in the blood stream. It needs to be placed in a positi...
One of my characters suffers an injury where a spike pierced his lower jaw and severed his tongue. Ignoring the fact that he may not have survived this wound under normal circumstances (eldritch p...
My character has a prosthetic, or technically you could say a bionic or cybernetic, left eye. For one reason or another, the replacement eye couldn't be connected directly to the optic nerve. Inste...
Whilst not strictly relevant to this question, the questions and answers may interest the curious: this is the 4th in a series of question here - 1, 2, 3. My population (in excess of 500,000) und...
For context, I'm currently working on a short story series centered on a young man living in a dystopian America. This U.S. government keeps its 'undesirables' in medically-induced comas (long stor...
Information I am writing a fantasy sci-fi, that is almost the same as our reality, the only difference being humans in this world are capable of using drugs (serums in their world) to improve thei...
I need ideas for a chemical or disease which kills the victim upon holding it in the palm for about 4 or 5 seconds. The death isn't necessarily immediate, as it might take days to kill the victim i...
As clarification we're talking about those common fantasy healing potions that recover health over time and their scientific plausibility. Here are some results from my research on the subject: Mo...
I once saw an experiment with mice, where they connected the bloodstream of a younger mouse to the bloodstream of an older mouse. And the older mouse became "younger", or at least healthier. If I ...
The secret police of my fictional country (unoriginally) uses sodium thiopental in medical interrogations, usually in combination with various forms of physical torture. An antagonist (a courier o...
In a world big enough for human civilizations as knowledgeable about medicine as ours to develop without contacting each other, how could they initiate that contact without exposing each other to p...
In post-apocalypse fiction, diabetics, if they are ever even mentioned, are typically portrayed as utterly, irrevocably screwed. In fact there was a pretty cynical example in Dies The Fire (a book ...
I'm working on a sci fi story which heavily integrates themes of varying alien configurations and how they shape society, culture and language. As part of this theme, I want to have some of the hum...
So, humans have finally figured out how to build a solar-system crossing ship. On the way to the first exo-planet to be colonized, an accident happens, and a few people wind up floating through spa...
Some time ago I asked: "How long would it take until we realise that people stopped dying from natural causes?" I today realized that similar but much more interesting (and more realistic...) ques...
This question has received a major rewrite and restructuring but is still the same original question. Please see this meta-post, where I asked for advice on how to refocus this question. While I ...
Sci-fi is full of examples of engineered diseases that spread as viruses and usually they are so powerful that they kill almost everyone, and the possible cure is always the slowest possible, vacci...
In my story, I plan on having one of my main characters lifted off the ground by a dragon-like creature and carried a couple miles away. Of course the plan involves them surviving the encounter whe...
/Edit : so, I would like to create character which is supposed to have some metal grafted under his skin, but by under his skin I mean straight under, like a second layer. This is supposed to be li...
The Scenario: A technologically advanced mother culture wants to manage mass outbreaks of virulent disease in its technologically regressed colonies, who are inclined to resist most of what the mot...
Background story: In near future (max 10 years from now) mega-rich person suffers yet unknown disease. He obviously employs every doctor possible and spends loads from his fortune on researching, w...
The backstory of one of my characters involves being lowered onto steadily rising, open flames back first. The story is set in a dystopic/post apocalyptic time where modern technology became unavai...
According to a recent paper from the university of Edinburgh, the ground of Mars contains a lot of perchlorate, which combined with the high level of ultraviolet radiation, makes a very bacteria ho...
My question is: Can a human be used as a living ant hill or bee hive, e.g. have insects living inside themselves under the premise that they (the human) are completely immobilized? "Living hill o...
Can you get modern levels of health care, with no electric technology and no steam technology? Both electricity and steam are possible. Physics is the same as real life. Like... No Cavities No ...
I have a scenario where a person has nanorobots unknowingly injected into his bloodstream. I'd like his doctor to discover them through some kind of medical test, preferably a blood test. Of cour...
This would only comprise death by natural causes, no accidents, suicides, homicides etc. As Wikipedia says: A death by natural causes is one that is primarily attributed to an illness or an ...
I did some quick research on DNA and I know it can be damaged by different sorts of mutagens. I also know that this kind of damage can lead to cancer. Though I'm not entirely sure of where exactly ...
Current technological level. (in the setting there is an awful tech stagnation, so waiting for better DNA engineering technology is considered as waste of time) Possibility to use all contemporary ...
A pharmaceutical company begins drug trials of a pill that they believe can activate a previously understudied and widely unknown region of the brain. The trial begins and when the first participan...
By using antibiotics too frequently, some argue, we're setting the world up for a pandemic that we cannot treat. Every time an antibiotic substance is used, the bacteria that survive reproduce. Ev...
Inspired by Frank Herbert's Dune: Action Joe is kept prisoner in Doctor Evil's prison. Doctor Evil knows that Joe's escape is inevitable. So he decides to introduce poison to Joe's body. Joe gets ...
Suppose the mermaids share similar intelligent and technology with us, they also practise performing surgical operation like we do in hospital. Negate the issue of negligent during the operation th...
Might make more sense to ask this in a skin-diving discussion, but... would something like motorcycle leathers hold up to water well enough to function as a wet suit, trapping a layer of warm water...
In a world I am working on, I have a wilderness-living, social, group-living species that for various reasons lacks access and ability to anything resembling modern medicine, including vaccinations...
In an answer to this question Cyrus suggested that pre-technology merpeople might use shrimp or prawns in lue of maggots to eat away rotting flesh. Similar to how plants and (in some cases) anima...
This question is closely related to, but more specific, than the question/comment that inspired it: Could a modern times time traveler produce an antibiotic in medieval times?. Imagine a person is...
