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[Dunamisdeos]

I am currently in a fort that lacks rocks that can be used to make powder for casts. What do you guys think about some alternate, historically accurate casting methods?

For instance, here is a non-plaster method I found with a quick Wikipedia search on the subject. In-game, I propose creating a "cast kit" using two cloth, a splint, and some kind of "starch". This could be made with flour and water and stored in a bucket. It would be far more resource and labor intensive than the gypsum method, making it useful only in areas where gypsum was an absolute impossibility. The "cast kit" would be stored in a hospital and applied to the broken area in question.

Louis' Seutin’s technique
"The limb was initially wrapped in wool, especially over any bony prominences. Pasteboard was then cut into shape to provide a splint and dampened down in order that it could be molded to the limb. The limb was then wrapped in bandages before a starch coating was applied to the outer surface. Seutin’s technique for the application of the starch apparatus formed the basis of the technique used with plaster of Paris dressings today."

[NW_Kohaku]

Flour can make some sense.  I know some other plants were also used medicinally when ground up to create something similar, although if the idea is to make it more widely available, then simply making flour casts is sufficient and widely available.

Also, not that this isn't valid for vanilla game, but this sounds easily moddable.  I suspect that it shouldn't be that hard to trade for under most conditions, so I don't think it necessarily needs to be in the vanilla game, and Toady does want trading in at least some capacity to be mandatory.

[Dunamisdeos]

There could certainly be options for starch, too. Apparently, a flower called  "cuckoo-pint" was used in medieval times to make starch. It also dried out your hands something fierce. I'm sure a number of items could be used.

"The most pure and white starch is made of the rootes of the Cuckoo-pint, but most hurtful for the hands of the laundresse that have the handling of it, for it chappeth, blistereth, and maketh the hands rough and rugged and withall smarting.
 Gerard's Herbal, 1633"

[NW_Kohaku]

I haven't heard of cuckoo pint before, and I believe it's not in the game, but it says it's used as a substitute for arrowroot, which I have heard of before.  Arrowroot also has other medicinal uses in that it was historically used to draw poison out of wounds.  I hope to soon see more medicinal herbs in DF...

There should also be tropical plants that fill a similar niche, however, as plants basically fall into a tropical/temperate divide right now.