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Author Topic: Clean patients with alcohol  (Read 4683 times)

LoneAccident of Axes

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Re: Clean patients with alcohol
« Reply #15 on: September 18, 2015, 02:16:36 am »

Aye, this is accurate. Historically most alcohol was piss-weak until after the cutoff. Alcohol applied to wounds was typically boiling when applied so it was more of a cauterization thing. The real benefit of using alcohol was then that it has less particulate matter that would get stuck in the wound because it had been distilled.
That's what I was getting at, booze is distilled and the presence of alcohol means it's mostly sterile, in contrast to the muddy water they're pulling from the well.

For those talking about the aseptic properties of alcohol, yes it kills bacteria but it also damages the skin. You can demonstrate this by rubbing aquagel or dettol into a papercut, it will sting, you don't want to use rubbing alcohol on a wound.

The closer to water the booze is the better it would be to clean a wound. Given the choice between water and booze, they should consider water the better option for cleaning wounds and only use booze when no water is around, due to the pain the alcohol content may cause and the desire to drink it rather than clean with it.
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Neonivek

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Re: Clean patients with alcohol
« Reply #16 on: September 18, 2015, 07:01:16 am »

Also as for those saying "Maybe Dwarves have advanced knowledge of booze making" I should state that the knowledge that would allow the type of alcohol contents you are referring to would also include other technological advancements.
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GoblinCookie

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Re: Clean patients with alcohol
« Reply #17 on: September 18, 2015, 10:01:11 am »

Still GoblinCookie the watered down factor is still an issue.

But... typically wine, even modern day wine, actually makes a wound worse.

Ultimately yes, the key thing here is how concentrated it is; the good thing is that concentrating liquids does not require an advanced technological level.  The more concentrated the wine is, the greater the sugar+alchohol content overall which means we have a antiseptic effect.  If the sugar however is sufficiantly diluted then would have the opposite of the intended effect, increasing infection rather reducing it. 

Vinegar is something we have to think about here I think, though there *is* no vinegar in the DF universe.  Vinegar is highly acidic, but has little alchohol or sugar content I think. 

Aye, this is accurate. Historically most alcohol was piss-weak until after the cutoff. Alcohol applied to wounds was typically boiling when applied so it was more of a cauterization thing. The real benefit of using alcohol was then that it has less particulate matter that would get stuck in the wound because it had been distilled.
That's what I was getting at, booze is distilled and the presence of alcohol means it's mostly sterile, in contrast to the muddy water they're pulling from the well.

For those talking about the aseptic properties of alcohol, yes it kills bacteria but it also damages the skin. You can demonstrate this by rubbing aquagel or dettol into a papercut, it will sting, you don't want to use rubbing alcohol on a wound.

The closer to water the booze is the better it would be to clean a wound. Given the choice between water and booze, they should consider water the better option for cleaning wounds and only use booze when no water is around, due to the pain the alcohol content may cause and the desire to drink it rather than clean with it.

As already mentioned, the problem with most alchoholic beverages is that they have a diluted suger content.  Suger works as an antiseptic because it draws water from the cells of the bacteria, but at the same time the bacteria live on suger; the water leeching effect of suger means that eating sweets will make you thirsty.  Alchohol is poisonous to living cells, hence why it kills bacteria and is consumed by human beings to keep their brains for working properly, a functioning brain being something that makes them unhappy.

Nobody cares about pain and damaging the skin; they perform surgery without anaesthetic already.  Killing off the cells immediately surrounding the wound is actually a bonus because it deprives flesh-eating bacteria of food, the cells will grow back.
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Neonivek

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Re: Clean patients with alcohol
« Reply #18 on: September 18, 2015, 02:59:12 pm »

Well concentrating alcohol requires knowledge of distilling and chemistry. The ability to produce very stable and specific temperatures.
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Dorsidwarf

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Re: Clean patients with alcohol
« Reply #19 on: September 18, 2015, 04:03:05 pm »

Or a reliably cold winter.

But anyway, dwarves currently use manky water that their mother has been decomposing in for the last three months to treat their son's broken lungs, so how bad could alcohol be?
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GoblinCookie

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Re: Clean patients with alcohol
« Reply #20 on: September 19, 2015, 12:53:55 pm »

Well concentrating alcohol requires knowledge of distilling and chemistry. The ability to produce very stable and specific temperatures.

Yes because alchohol boils off.

Concentrating suger on the other hand?
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Bumber

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Re: Clean patients with alcohol
« Reply #21 on: September 19, 2015, 01:15:09 pm »

Well concentrating alcohol requires knowledge of distilling and chemistry. The ability to produce very stable and specific temperatures.
Their process is not necessarily the same as ours. They have access to fictional materials such as nether-cap. Maybe they have a fungus (or facial parasite) that helps them filter. I mean, if our bodies can filter alcohol out of the bloodstream, there's probably a realistic but gross and convoluted option IRL.
« Last Edit: September 19, 2015, 01:21:21 pm by Bumber »
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dwarobaki

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Re: Clean patients with alcohol
« Reply #22 on: September 21, 2015, 08:49:18 am »

A Short History of the Art of Distillation: From the Beginnings Up to the Death of Cellier Blumenthal by Robert J. Forbes

Second paragraph on this page:
https://books.google.pl/books?id=XeqWOkKYn28C&lpg=PP1&hl=pl&pg=PA89&output=embed

Based on this I think we can assume that dwarves know how to make concentrated alcohol.


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Akura

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Re: Clean patients with alcohol
« Reply #23 on: September 21, 2015, 12:32:01 pm »

Given that dwarven alcohol requires no water and is produced by a dwarf sitting in the still staring intently at it for a few days, I'd say it's pretty concentrated already.


But yeah, I was under the impression that drinking alcohol was bad for wound-cleaning.
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Re: Clean patients with alcohol
« Reply #24 on: September 21, 2015, 01:33:20 pm »

Given that dwarven alcohol requires no water and is produced by a dwarf sitting in the still staring intently at it for a few days, I'd say it's pretty concentrated already.


But yeah, I was under the impression that drinking alcohol was bad for wound-cleaning.
I'd suggest a specific cleanser liquid made either from a drink, or something that has a DRINK_MAT in it.  The cleanser would not be edible and in fact have a syndrome in it that causes blindness or something.

The cleanser could also carry a tag that makes desperate alcoholic units drink it as a last resort.
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Neonivek

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Re: Clean patients with alcohol
« Reply #25 on: September 22, 2015, 05:03:52 am »

Based on this I think we can assume that dwarves know how to make concentrated alcohol.

What? That a guy who was born in the late 1200 hundreds (and died after the cut off point) was able to distill alcohol and thus Dwarves should as well?
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Bumber

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Re: Clean patients with alcohol
« Reply #26 on: September 22, 2015, 05:20:28 am »

Based on this I think we can assume that dwarves know how to make concentrated alcohol.
What? That a guy who was born in the late 1200 hundreds (and died after the cut off point) was able to distill alcohol and thus Dwarves should as well?
Ahem:
It has been entertaining building up the different knowledge branches, interacting with our year 1400 cut-off, and no doubt screwing up various simple ideas and so forth.
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Ezekhiel2517

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Re: Clean patients with alcohol
« Reply #27 on: April 20, 2016, 05:32:20 pm »

+1. Maybe not just any booze, but pure alcohol, specifically made for health care industry. Booze could be used by dwarves to treat their wounded mates on the field, after combat
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Clean patients with alcohol
« Reply #28 on: April 20, 2016, 09:44:02 pm »

+1. Maybe not just any booze, but pure alcohol, specifically made for health care industry. Booze could be used by dwarves to treat their wounded mates on the field, after combat

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Re: Clean patients with alcohol
« Reply #29 on: April 20, 2016, 11:23:37 pm »

Well, he did add a nominal amount of suggestion-stuff.
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