After reading the various threads, a thought occurred to me...using very similar code to what already exists for prepared food manufacture, syndrome generation and artifact material choice to make apothecary science interesting. An apothecary labor "experiment" would result in the dwarf with the appropriate labor seeking out a random assortment of rocks, plants, metals, trees, liquids, etc, spend some time mixing, purifying, calcinating, powdering, all of the ingredients to eventually produce a substance (liquid, powder, oil, etc) with randomly generated properties (an assortment of causing and curing the available syndromes, adding or subtracting hunger or thirst, etc) and a randomly generated description and title. It could then be used directly in dwarven medicine (frequently with horrible side effects) or tested on animals or captured goblins with a different labor (which would slowly reveal more and more of the substance's properties the more times it was tested). Most of the time, though, a new substance would just have a bad taste and no significant effects, just wasting the reagents. Intensity of effects (good and bad) would be tied to the dwarf buck value of the reagents, with the chance of good effects being tied to the skill of the apothecary (although still low, sort of like herbalism). The final labor for the apothecary would be to produce doses of an existing formula, which would require the same ingredients and time as the original, but would have predictable effects.
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Topic: Pharmacy (Read 1903 times)