#pugfaced

In the Dragon Age Comic from IDW, the one about a mage called Gleam: A dwarf called Minderel has only has one arm, having lost the other. He injures his leg in a fight, and instructs Gleam in how to heal him. This is odd to me because he’s a dwarf (uhh how does he know how healing magic works?) and Gleam doesn’t have formal training in this kind of magic, she’s like 17 and was raised by a non-mage blacksmith on a farm, not in the Circle or by an apostate like mage Hawke… Anyways, she heals his leg, and like, in the process.. unintentionally regrows his entire freakin long-lost arm?? Healer mages can regrow lost limbs?? WAT? His new arm is half the size of what it should be, but it’s there and functioning. Would it be the right size if an experienced healer did it?? Honestly.. this entire segment was so totally random and ‘tha fuk?’ that I pretend it didn’t happen. This comic in general wasn’t good quality. It’s like the ugly stepchild of the DA comics. The one nobody ever speaks about. it has other nonsensical-by-existing-lore stuff in it (like it says dwarves can’t see in the dark, when they can). actually this comic is a hot mess lore wise and iirc even some of the actual DA writers (the comic was written by an outside person) were like uhmm yeah you guys can decide for yourselves if these are canon… lmao. so I tend to write this incident off as world-breaking third-tier nonsense, like the kid Eiton in Dragon Age Legends who was supposedly born Tranquil (that can’t happen) and go with the line of thinking that no, mages in DA cannot regrow long-lost limbs. You’d think that if they could, this would be like, mentioned? The world of Thedas would be different if this was a thing that was possible. Like, if this is possible, why does Neve Gallus have a metal prosthetic leg of dwarven make…? ok I guess maybe she just wanted one or they’re stronger or sth? but cmon… anyway It did happen in a canon material though, so folk can make up their own minds ofc. imo though the power of healing magic is limited, and this would really be something that is impossible to heal.

There’s a moment I adore in Blue Wraith. Francesca, who has quite unique nature/plant magic for a human (such magic is usually only seen among Dalish elves), is also able to use healing magic, tho she doesn’t seem to be a spirit healer (which is consistent with what I said above). Aaron’s horse, Cassé, gets injured in battle. from the looks of things it’s an injury which would get a horse put down in our world. (that’s less a comment on the severity of a leg injury and more a comment from a biological perspective about how.. weirdly delicate horses can be despite appearances and strength, and how their specific body structure and such means broken legs in horses have only a small chance for recovery) Aaron, knowing Fran is a powerful mage, says that she may be able to heal him. she does so, re-knitting his bone. she also used her magic to grow Embrium blossoms to calm him during the process. Her writers note that even Fran’s healing is supplemented by plant magic, and this makes her unique even amongst healers. Aaron calls this magnificent and comments that he hasn’t seen magic like that since his time with a group of Emerald Knight restorationist elves who he travelled with in the Dales, possibly implying that some elven mages do similar things. From Fran’s comment on bone re-knitting, which is what bone in our world is sometimes said to do when it’s healing from a break, it sounds like healing magic is magical acceleration of the natural healing process. this is supported when Rhys healing is described as “knitting flesh back together”. that also sounds like it’s basically mimicking a sped up version of how our bodies would naturally heal given time. I wouldn’t say mages can heal things in a flash, because we see different examples of mages leaning over their charges and there’s glowing light while it happens (Fran here, meeting Anders in DAII), so it does take a bit of time. but certainly it seems rather quick and is oodles faster than the time it would take in normal circumstances.

In Tevinter Nights, Myrion is a mage who knows a little healing magic, but isn’t a spirit healer. He talks about his friend Jasecca, who “worked with spirits” - she was a spirit healer. she taught him a few tricks. On the subject of the capabilities of healing magic - Jasecca once reattached a man’s hand after it had been chopped off, presumably like very soon after. this mimics surgical limb re-plantation in our world, where most patients need to have the limb reattached within hours of the injury.

In the same story Myrion’s healing of Strife, who was punched clean through his torso with a big Qunari arrow, gives a lil bit more insight of how healing magic works. Myrion uses magic to close the wound and Strife feels a humming warmth seep into his back. it seems like Myrion does this without calling on a spirit.

Isabela goes to Anders in DAII in order for a magical cure (or relief from the symptoms of?) a disease which is implied to be an STD.

In TME Dalish mage Mihris uses healing magic to reduce inflammation on Celene’s wound, which had been stitched up I think manually beforehand. her hand glowed with cool white light which made Michel’s skin crawl.

In the Dalish Origin after Mahariel has been Tainted by the mirror, they are delirious with fever after Duncan found them unconscious. Marethari used “the old magic to [apparently] heal” them from the sickness. She says it was difficult even for her magic to keep them alive. Merrill apparently knows a degree of this magic and would be able to increase Tamlen’s chances of making it back to camp alive if they found him. It transpires that Mahariel’s ‘recovery’ was only temporary. Marethari weakened the Taint but couldn’t cure it with her healing arts.

what’s super interesting is the healing and related capabilities of (ironically) blood magic. We’ve seen it extend lifespans and keep youth despite aging. We’ve seen it cleanse the freakin Blight. a mage called Seraphinian used his own blood to cure his lover from a “wasting disease”. it’s even implied somewhere that I can’t remember that blood magic can restore sight if you’ve gone blind. edit: thank you @pugfaced for the help/note on where this came from. per pugfaced in the notes below, this “implication that blood magic can help restore sight – there’s a senior enchanter in the mage origin in DAO who says his eyesight is bad, you can ask if there’s magical ways to fix that, and he says “not any magic i’d be caught dead doing””.

as you say there are also written examples in The Calling when Fiona uses her magic. these are fairly informative in terms of the frame of your question. here she heals herself from fairly serious wounds (arrows in her stomach):

With a wave of a hand, a warm blue glow suddenly suffused her entire body. She gasped out loud as the pain was lifted from her, arching her back as the magic worked its way through her body. Maric watched, impressed, as several of the smaller cuts along her arms slowly closed and healed. When the spell was finished, the glow disappeared and Fiona collapsed limply.

this isn’t the only instance of a spirit healer healing themselves outside of gameplay. Rhys does the same thing in Asunder.

back to Fiona, here the limit seems to be the limits of Fiona’s power, i.e. her remaining strength and magical reserves, mana reserves. (she was exhausted at the time and they’d just been in a big ass fight). she drinks what seems to be a lyrium potion after in order to regain strength enough to then go on to heal some of the injuries the rest of her party sustained. The book notes that the magic she provides had its limitations. whether that’s of Fiona’s power specifically or of healing magic in general isn’t clear, but I lean towards the latter, because Fiona is a powerful and capable mage. We’re told it can mend flesh, stem bleeding and restore a degree of health, but that severe wounds were beyond her ability to heal. She wasn’t able to heal Julien’s broken arm, or Nicolas’ internal injuries. her own injuries were not fully healed. Maric’s twisted leg feels better immediately, but not completely repaired. 

Her tone was gruff but her fingers were gentle, brushing his skin lightly as the tingle of her magic began to wash through him. He tried not to stare at her, and instead concentrated on the aura of sapphire light that surrounded him.

some further description of what it feels like to receive. the glowing blue light is the most common theme.

here I’ll note that it’s not clear if this sort of partial healing is typical, as in this is the lore saying “healing magic is good but has limits, it’s not like a mage does the glowy blue light on your wound and you’re in brilliant shape again”, or whether it’s limited here because Fiona was so exhausted and also having to like “ration out” her power and heal her party members each just a bit, if that makes sense, as most of them had sustained pretty intense injuries.

healing magic clearly significantly sap’s the user’s strength. we see this in Fiona, in Asunder after healing Rhys Wynne is pale and drawn, we see it when we meet Anders in DA2 and he’s wobbly after healing the boy. these facts lead me to believe that the way healing magic is just flung around in battle willy-nilly in-game when we play in DAO and DAII is not.. truly representative of how it works in the setting. imo it probably requires a lot of focus and is more tiring than more usual forms of battle-magic like flinging a fireball. there are totally points in these books when Fiona etc do it in battle. but I think it’s hard and not at all like how it plays out in game.

later we see more of healing magic’s hard limits. in this bit I’m confident it’s a limit of healing magic itself, not of Fiona’s specific abilities, because at this point iirc she wasn’t injured herself and wasn’t like super exhausted. Julien lies mangled and probably died of a broken neck. Fiona pours magic into the body,

but very little seemed to be happening. Some of the gaping wounds on Julien’s body were closing, but no color was being restored to his pale skin and he didn’t move at all.

She keeps trying but he’s clearly dead… :’( reading the death of Julien always makes me teary, shit..

As Genevieve bluntly puts it, magic can’t bring someone back from the dead. although it can clearly mend flesh wounds on a recently-deceased corpse, presumably because at this point the tissue itself, purely mechanically, is still warm and ‘living’ enough in order for there to be an effect. This is reinforced in Asunder when someone dies. Even summoning healing spirits won’t wake the dead.

[Wynne] desperately summoned healing spirits to mend the woman’s injuries, but the magic she poured into the body was pointless. The woman was dead and gone

the same thing happens again when Evangeline dies. this one echoes what happened with Julien - her flesh knits and wounds close, but she doesn’t come back to life (not until Wynne gives her Faith obviously and dies herself).

There’s also a bit more info in Asunder. Evangeline gets injured in a fight. she gets burned, inhales smoke, cracks her head off the floor, is made dizzy. force magic had also knocked the breath out of her and her body got kinda battered as she crashed to the ground. she passes out and Leli has a mage heal her. 

Despite the healing magic, it still felt as if her bones were covered in bruises and her lungs filled with soot.

Magic can’t do everything, she reminded herself.

this excerpt lends credence to the notion that healing magic doesn’t heal injuries perfectly and people still feel pained and aren’t 100% healed after.

There’s a limit to healing oneself - Rhys can’t do it at one point when he’s too hurt.

Rhys tried to summon mana to heal himself. He closed his eyes and concentrated, but the pain was simply too great. It was a white blaze he just couldn’t fight his way past, and trying only made it worse. He doubled over, the light-headedness threatening to make him swoon.

I will also say that all magics in general seem to be more developed and so forth in Tevinter due to the lack of restraints on mages / lack of distrust of magic. I therefore think it’s reasonable to infer that healing magic too is more powerful and advanced/capable in Tevinter, especially with the prevalence of blood magic there (see section on blood magic above).

Umm so let’s recap/summarize because this has become a whole ass thing…

There are healing spells / healing magics that do not require the mage to be a spirit healer. Not all mages have or know these spells.

Spirit healers are far more powerful and capable at healing, thanks to the assistance of spirits. A bit more detail on how getting the spirits to help works and how one might become a spirit healer etc in the lore is found in the DA wiki article on spirit healers.

Healing magic and indeed medicinal practises in general in DA is frustrating because it’s spotty. Canon specifics and details on the healing process are thin on the ground and not well or clearly set out. Some of it is also inconsistent. Most of what we know is from isolated examples. We have a limited picture built mostly from those examples. We also contend with gameplay-story segregation - how much of the healing magic skill descriptions in-game and the way they play out on screen in front of us holds true for how healing magic truly works in the setting?

From what we can seem to tell however, its power is not unlimited. It seems to largely be a magical acceleration of the natural healing process. It’s not done in a flash, but it is of course a lot quicker than mundane methods or unassisted healing.

Examples of what is possible to heal/do with healing magic: regrowing a long-lost limb [?], re-knitting bone, knitting flesh back together, growing specific blossoms in the ground at the time to calm the patient while he’s being healed [rare], reattaching body parts soon after they’ve been chopped off, cure or help with a disease which is implied to be a sexually transmitted disease, heal oneself even when badly injured, restore health, stem bleeding, close wounds, close flesh wounds on a recently-deceased corpse, help with burns and smoke inhalation, dull pain, reduce inflammation.

Notes on the above: The regrowing a long-lost limb is super questionable. The segment it occurs in doesn’t make sense as a whole. This segment is from a poor quality source that gets a bunch of other lore stuff wrong. The source is such that even some of the dev-writers are like “umm.. yeah.. nvm probably” about it, lol. imo this would be impossible to do. The growing of flowers to assist is technically healing being supplemented by plant magic. This is a rare skill or thing to do that makes its human user unique even amongst human healers, but might also be something found among Dalish elves. The reattaching of a body part was done by a Tevinter spirit healer. I imagine that healing magic, like other kinds of magic, in a general sense is more advanced/capable in Tevinter, due to the lack of restrictions on mages.

Blood magic can also be used to heal. We’ve seen it extend lifespans, maintain youth, cure a wasting disease, and cleanse the Blight from both inanimate and organic/living objects. Lore implies blood magic could also restore sight after having gone blind. These instances of blood magic curing a disease and cleansing Blight are pretty much the only things that we know of currently that spring to mind at this time as regards the illnesses and poisons part of your question (aside from the STD).

On canon for the healing process - basically magic flows from the healer to the patient (they can either touch them or hover their hands over them it seems), there’s a blue/white glow or aura, the patient feels suffused with warmth as magic flows through their body. Wounds then slowly seal and such. Pouring magic into a dead body is pointless.

On limits: the healer’s individual power, their strength reserves, their mana reserves. Healing saps them and they can’t do it if they’re exhausted. Anders becomes woozy in a cutscene and Wynne becomes pale and drawn after an instance, for example.We’re also told healing magic has limitations multiple times. There are some examples of this which I think are partially due to Fiona’s exhausted injured state and number of patients at the time, but also partially due to the natural limitations of healing magic. Severe wounds were beyond her ability; she couldn’t heal a broken arm; she couldn’t heal internal injuries; some of her work left people feeling better but not fully repaired; some of her own wounds were not fully healed. In a general sense it does seem that healing magic doesn’t heal injuries perfectly and people still feel pained and not 100% after. It mostly seems like superficial healing. Further hard limits are not being able to bring back someone from the dead, even if flesh wounds on their corpse close over and you have the help of healing spirits (which would imply rez spells in-game are not rezzing dead chars but knocked out ppl or something, or that it’s purely a mechanic), and not being able to heal oneself if you’re in too much pain.

Also, no magical artifact can do something that a spell cannot do. In Tevinter Nights the healing bauble Bharv stole heals his injuries and closes his wounds til they’re purple welts. It also smooths the skin of one hand til it looks 10 years younger, and earlier on it didn’t close a wound he had on his stomach but it dulled the pain from a sear to a dull throb. The amulet couldn’t rez Elim from the dead. These things are consistent with the capabilities of healing magic as explored in this post.