Advanced: Medical Herbology on Herbology

Nathan Xavier

June 16, 2020 8:57 AM

Advanced: Medical Herbology by Nathan Xavier

Professor Nathan Xavier stood beside Greenhouse Two as the Advanced students began to arrive first thing this fine Thursday morning. The temperature was cool, though expected to warm later in the day, a welcome relief of impending autumn weather after the heat of the summer. Of course, the Advanced students also had Herbology well before the greenhouses started to become completely intolerable on sunny afternoons, so the changing weather was perhaps not quite so welcome to them as it would be for the Intermediates.

As each of the students arrived, he handed back a homework essay with comments and minor corrections. At this level, he left it up to them to know whether or not they needed help or a visit to office hours, though he did keep a small poster just inside the greenhouse, next to the door so they would see it when exiting, to let them know when his office hours were, in case the harder RATS level material was something that pushed them harder than they'd needed at the earlier levels and didn't already know when they were being offered.

Once everyone had arrived, he followed the last student inside and sat on the stool he normally sat on when teaching the smaller Advanced group. This was the smaller greenhouse, with just one tall work table in the middle, and stools placed evenly around it. He sat at the table with them, hoping this would help make class discussions more open rather than having them expect him to just tell them everything.

Of course, he was the instructor, so there was some of that still going on, and he started there.

"Hello, you all got back your essays on medicinal uses of herbs today, and I'm pleased with what I saw. You all have a good theoretical grasp of what some plants are capable of with regards to use in potions and salves. Today, we're going to go into some healing effects plants can have on their own. As a disclaimer, I am not, and after this unit of Medical Herbology, none of you will be qualified healers. You should still go to the hospital wing if you feel ill or get hurt. However, in an emergency situation, or in an unlikely scenario like you found yourself in for some of the challenges a few years ago, you should be able to provide some basic first aid and pallative care - that is, treating pain or symptoms without addressing the underlying cause - using only raw plant material."

"So, before we get into the cold winter months, we're going to go out together into the Gardens to see what plants are growing out there that we can use during medical emergencies. Each of you will have a patient." He murmured a spell word and moved his wand so that a collection of large dolls flew out of a bin and one of them landed in front of each student. Each doll had a rash on one arm, a small burn on a leg, a cut on their cheek, and a bruise on their elbow.

"We'll be looking for plants that can have properties like pain relief, burn relief, itch relief, and something to disinfect open wounds. Each of your patients is enchanted so applying the right kind of plant to the appropriate problem will make it disappear." He'd had to get help from some of the other staff to get that working to his satisfaction, but it seemed to be functioning correctly now.

"You'll be looking for something like this," he held up a yellow flower. "Arnica is helpful in reducing pain and swelling, so we'll use it on the bruise. Do be aware that it is toxic if eaten, so please don't. Also, some people are sensitive to it and may get skin irritation if you touch it. If you think you may be prone to that, please wear gloves. To apply, crush the flower and apply topically, after you determine that your patient is not allergic to it. Fortunately, none of yours are today."

"For the rash, we're going to look for lavender," he held up the purple flower. "The oil from this is what is helpful, so again, crush the flower until you can feel a bit of oily substance on your fingers and spread that around on the site of the rash. Lavender is also good for disinfecting things, so you can also use that on the cut."

"Aloe Vera grows wild in the desert, and we have a sprigs of it around out Gardens. Break it and smear the juice on a mild burn to cool the pain and help speed healing."

"Those are the three most common plants in our garden for addressing these first aid problems, but this hand-out has several more options, some of which we do have growing on the grounds, so if you find some of these first, you can go ahead and use them instead." Another wave of his wand passed out a handout title 'Herbal Emergency First Aid'. "Again, remember, none of this is a substitute for actual medical care. This is what you can do if medical care isn't available, and is better than doing nothing at all."

"Alright, go on out and help your emergency patient. You may work in pairs or small groups if you like. Return here to show me your healed companion when you are done. We'll go over some other medical uses of plants in first aid when everyone has completed this assignment."

OOC:
I did some basic googling for 'plants to relieve pain' etc and just used the first result, so if you want to do the same and come up with other options, the field is wide open.

Subthreads:

How useful! by Sylvia Mordue

1 Nathan Xavier Advanced: Medical Herbology 28 1 5

Sylvia Mordue

July 04, 2020 7:00 AM

How useful! by Sylvia Mordue

Herbology was, in spite of the dirt and general distastefulness, really quite a pleasant class overall. Sylvia had kept the same five subjects Nate had out of a combination of camaraderie and competitiveness. Not mean competitiveness, of course. But if Nate could take five advanced level classes, so could she. She was smarter, more powerful and more organised. Sylvia would never say out loud that she was better at many things than Nate was, unless it was something like flower arranging or make up that she was supposed to be good at because it would be hurtful and because girls weren’t really supposed to be better than boys. Given that she wasn’t allowed to say how good she was, she thought people were occasionally in danger of forgetting that it was undeniably true. Not Nate, of course. Nate, for his part, was always perfectly willing to let her show it without complaint, for which she was grateful.

She probably oughtn’t get more RATS than him but she thought she could get the same number and not be regarded as being unladylike. She was also fairly sure that five was a sensible limit anyway. She had forgotten when signing up to consider whether she was outshining Simon but that was frankly quite hard not to do. Anyway, no one ever really asked girls about their test scores anyway, so she could probably beat him in relative privacy without his reputation suffering too much.

Herbology was useful, both because managing a garden was a woman’s domain, and because of lessons like today’s which was clearly relevant to the attentive housewife and mother. Honestly, Herbology was really going streaks ahead of other advanced classes - who would have thought that it would beat DADA in ways to look after her future offspring? But in one of her classes, Professor Hawthorne had made them write essays about their feelings instead of doing anything useful!

She accepted a doll, trying to look vaguely fond and maternal with it because she suspected that was how she was supposed to react to a miniature human. Hers would be cuter and more fashionably dressed than this blank slate, so presumably it would be easier with the real thing. She wasn’t go to coo or play pretend with it, but she was aiming to comport herself in a ladylike fashion in moving it around, rather than say, dragging it by the head.

Along with the vaguely useful content of the lesson they got to spend pleasant time outdoors, so really this was a very productive and pleasant way to spend a class period. She was almost sorry she had passively aggressively insulted Professor Xavier via the medium of floral displays in the past, but not really. Just because his class was useful now did not mean his personal life had not been a ghastly mess. Just because he wasn’t even the most morally offensive staff member any more didn’t redeem his own failings. As a human, that was. As a teacher, she supposed he was decent.

Locating an arnica flower, she plucked it, testing it by its distinct medicinal smell as well as its appearance, before applying it to the bruise on the doll, watching with satisfaction as it vanished.

13 Sylvia Mordue How useful! 1413 0 5