Birdy Was Here

the organism ID side of reddit truly is the gift that keeps on giving.

....and then a chain of "HOLY SHIT SOMEONE WITH TWO BRAIN CELLS" "Actually yeah most people who come here do".

This goes hand in hand with r/whatsthissnake and r/whatsthisbug proving how CHILL a lot of venomous animals are if people aren't freaking out ...

because of the number of photos of people holding "hey I found this random critter and it's really cool and chill what is it?"

And there was this one guy I talked with who seemed super sharp, but had virtually zero experience writing software. When it came time to do the show-n-tell part of the interview he whips out his laptop, brings up a website, and spins it around to show me what he made.

A website of tiny ceramic frogs.

Not for sale. Just… all these ceramic frogs, organized into categories. Frogs on bicycles, frogs with hats, frogs sitting on lily pads. It was a virtual museum of ceramic frogs in web form.

I scrolled through his online collection of frogs, slightly baffled.

“This is your website?” I asked finally.

“Yep!”

“You coded this yourself?” I popped into view-source mode and poked around some incredibly well-formatted, well-commented html. I nodded slowly. This guy was meticulous.

“Yep!”

“So… where’d all the frogs come from?”

“I made those too,” he says, beaming. 

And while I’m processing this he rummages in his bag and pulls out a little ceramic frog working at a computer terminal. He places it on the table before us, next to the laptop.

“And THIS one,” he says, “I made for you! As a thank you for the interview.”

It was adorable. I hired him on the spot. I mean, why not? Worst case he’d wash out in 90 days and we’d hire somebody else. He turned out to be one of the best developers on our team. 

Please imagine me gently holding your hands, I am not reprimanding you, I say this with nothing but love and respect, but

If you give a character with no access to antibiotics a wound infection, they are going to die.

If a character is delirious with fever, they are going to die.

Make them lose a substantial amount of blood. For reference: For an adult human, about 8% of their body weight is blood. They can lose around 10% of that without much trouble, 20% will cause serious symptoms, more than 50-60% is generally incompatible with life. These numbers are estimations. The slower this blood loss, the better the body can compensate for it. Losing a significant amount of blood will affect the character's consciousness and take days or weeks to recover from.

Fever and malaise. Injuries are stressful. Inflammation is a natural response to that. Destroyed cells release proteins which can cause moderate fever (too much of that can cause kidney failure which is why excessive beatings can kill people, even when they don't initially sustain any life-threatening injuries). The character will be in pain, they'll feel like shit, they'll need plenty of rest and tender caretaking without their limb rotting off.

If you have to infect them, give them an abscess. That way, the pus and bacteria are walled off and can be drained out (by cutting the abscess open), with lower risk of it getting into the blood stream. It's also risky but much more survivable than phlegmone (diffuse infection of soft tissue).

Drugs. Just drug 'em. Ye Olde Opium/Laudanum will put them in a scarily deep sleep while Love Interest can sit there and hold vigil. Now this might also kill them so use with caution.

Keep. It. Clean. Carefully and gently clean out gross stuff and things that do not belong in there, do not introduce foreign matter, and keep that wound covered.

The body will support Caretaker in this. Exudation is a natural defense mechanism to flush out germs and other dirt. Normal exudate is clear, with a slight yellow tinge, and almost odorless (wounds do have a characteristic smell, but they don't stink). Excessive exudate can form crusts around the wound, those should be cleaned away. Boiled water or saline solution is probably the safest bet for wound irrigation. Gentle mechanical cleaning (wiping with wet cloth) is appropriate.

Wounds want to be kept moist. Ointment can help with that, and also prevent the bandage from sticking to the wound. For a premodern setting, lard (rendered pig fat) is probably not a terrible option. It contains almost no water or sugar, so doesn't grow mold, and the grease prevents the tissue from drying out. Still, Caretaker will probably want to soak that bandage before they remove it.

The bandage should be clean linen. Not wool. If Caretaker has to rip up their clothes for bandages, at least use the undergarment, and the parts of it that are less dirty (sleeves).

A cavernous wound (ie from a drained abscess) might need to be tamponaded, that is, lined with a strip of wet cloth, to keep it open and help with drainage.

Various herbs, honey, spices, etc, have historically all been used to promote healing, some more successfully than others. However, everything is potentially contaminated with germs and fungal spores. Putting mashed plant matter that hasn't been otherwise treated into wounds is always a gamble.

Disinfection is a possibility, but an effective disinfectant will also damage healthy tissue. If Character has their wound bathed with wine or spirits every time the bandage is changed, that wound will become necrotic.

Stitches are likewise a double-edged sword. Pulling the edges of a deep wound together will make it heal quicker and more smoothly, but it also retains exudate in a warm, anaerobic environment, which makes an ideal growing environment for nasty bacteria. Balance risk and reward appropriately.

Some additional thoughts:

Medicine has taken unimaginable leaps during the last ~150 years. Things that would have been a death sentence to our ancestors are barely more than a nuisance to us. As a result, we have a fundamentally different attitude towards treatments, especially invasive treatments. We do surgeries as precaution or to restore optimal function, where in the past, surgery was often a last resort. It was very risky, and ran a good chance of killing the patient, so it would only be done if they would die anyway.

That doesn't mean doctors and surgeons of the past were helpless, there are a lot of amazing and very sophisticated treatments, that are older than you'd think. For as long as we have been human we have tried to heal each other, and were often successful.

Just because we know humoral pathology is wrong doesn't mean it's stupid. It's based on very solid observations of health and the human body. It was the accepted theory for a long time. It makes no sense for a doctor in that setting to reject it.

The human body is at once more resilient and more fragile than most people think. Humans can walk off devastating injuries, a lot of things will sort themselves out. However, once a tipping point is reached and the body can no longer compensate for whatever is going wrong, there's no turning that process around. This is why systemic infections are so dangerous: Bacteria/toxins overwhelm the immune system, everything is poisoned, multiple organ failure, death. It's very difficult to come back from that, even today.

their (live!) young gestate for. wait for it. eight to eighteen (??) YEARS. can have up to 10 at a time. good grief.

longest lifespan of any vertebrate, up to five hundred years

toxic flesh

has giant eyes but is usually blind because of a weird little crustacean that's evolved to live on and eat their eyes. this doesn't seem to bother them much.

lives in deep cold water and has the lowest swim speed and tail-beat frequency for its size across all fish species. just generally lives life in extreme slow motion

largest genome of any shark

eats everything including moose and polar bears

So it’s very likely they diverged from other Sleeper Shark lineages during one of the Pleistocene ice ages, when thickening polar ice would have trapped certain populations in perpetual icy darkness for thousands of years. These are the descendants of the survivors of that.

Their flesh is toxic for numerous biomechanical reasons that directly relate to their ability to not only survive but thrive in waters that would literally freeze you or I solid.

Urea and Trimethylamine-N-Oxide

The Greenland shark accomplishes this using first concentrated Urea, which is a natural antifreeze and depresses the freezing point of the shark’s fluids; and TMAO, which stabilizes proteins against denaturation, both from the concentrated Urea and the crushing pressure of the deep.

Additionally, the Greenland Shark has 3 distinct Hemoglobin complexes in its blood, 2 of which are apparently specifically adapted to be unaffected by the high antifreeze concentrations. More research is needed here.

{anecdotally; once pulled from the water by fishermen, the shark allegedly persists thrashing and fighting for far longer than any other fish, and there are stories of the flesh itself continuing to twitch and move long after its apparent death, as the creature is butchered}

Their longevity is partially enabled by a highly derived genome: it is comprised largely of transposable elements, also known as “jumping genes,” which normally cause organisms to be more prone to Cancers, but, are also capable of self-replication; and amongst these, we have already identified over 80 discrete gene sequences dedicated specifically to DNA repair.

They’re viviparous, and the female reproductive systems are quite complex, including a system of villi to deliver oxygen to the developing pups. The variability in gestation time remains subject of ongoing study: how is this accomplished? What triggers it? Many questions; fewer answers.