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[iceball3]

One current problem (as i see it) with DF's medical system is the fact that there are frequently wounds that may ought to be survivable with prompt treatment, or at least for some significant duration, but medical interventions currently in the game only seek to mitigate and reverse chronic injury symptoms only, such as infection or breakage healing.

For example, if i'm not mistaken, any creature that isn't fireproof and who catches aflame is almost guaranteed to die due to their injuries, because the only way to put the fire out is to get them into water, and they lack the AI to make this decision even when it's present. (Please inform me if this has changed via AI or fire logic). So my suggestion is to implement a first-aid system, where dwarves, invaders, adventurers, etc can render aid on their allies (or themselves if adequately conscious) to buy time for appropriate medical treatment to reduce the chance of them dying for their injuries.

Wound Compression: One of the best first-aid treatments in history for bleeding, can be crucial to preventing anemia from all sorts of wounds.
    -Active compression: Can be done poorly with bare hands if available, moderately well with improvised and proper bandages, and excessively well with a tourniquet, predisposes the individual rendering aid (which can be the victim) and is only typically done if the one rendering treatment expects (or has no option but to hope for) aid from a better trained and equipped first aid individual. This slows the active bleeding down significantly, and allowing the clots to form can mean a significant difference in peril between just being wounded and a few ingame minutes of compression. Uses consciousness-weighted strength, so while a wounded dwarf can self-administer compression, being on the verge of losing consciousness or otherwise severely battered will hinder these efforts.
    -Passive Compression: requires at least makeshift bandages, a short bit of time, and the Wound Dressing skill, this is to help keep an active bleed under control to allow the patient to be transported, or at the very least to free up a set of hands trying to keep the patient immediately alive. Leaving on a tourniquet too long can have adverse effects, and the assembly can come apart after a while, but for survivable wounds, this compression will help keep the patient alive long enough to either successfully clot or allow surgeons to attempt to render treatment.

Beyond those two, further non-magical medical aid may not be adequate to save someone from a sufficiently large ripped artery, but if they do save the dwarf, the other medical treatments of the like currently ingame will help ensure that the wound heals cleaner as normal.

Was gonna write about fire injuries and fire brigades and all that but I'm just out of brain energy juice. What do you all think?

[DwarfStar]

+1 to all these ideas

One historical detail I would like to suggest, when Toady gets around to first aid, is using moss as a wound dressing. Sphagnum moss was used this way since ancient times because of its antimicrobial properties. And it was used extensively during WWI to treat wounds.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-humble-moss-helped-heal-wounds-thousands-WWI-180963081/

I guess actual sphagnum moss could be added to the game. But, since cave moss is so common already, maybe it could just be harvested and used for this purpose? Gameplay-wise, the nice thing it would add would be an additional incentive for breaking into the caverns. I'm picturing it working somewhat like thread sutures do, being applied by a dwarf doing a medical/first aid job. But, the moss would eventually need to disappear, or there would need to be a different job to remove it.

[iceball3]

+1 to all these ideas

One historical detail I would like to suggest, when Toady gets around to first aid, is using moss as a wound dressing. Sphagnum moss was used this way since ancient times because of its antimicrobial properties. And it was used extensively during WWI to treat wounds.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-humble-moss-helped-heal-wounds-thousands-WWI-180963081/

I guess actual sphagnum moss could be added to the game. But, since cave moss is so common already, maybe it could just be harvested and used for this purpose? Gameplay-wise, the nice thing it would add would be an additional incentive for breaking into the caverns. I'm picturing it working somewhat like thread sutures do, being applied by a dwarf doing a medical/first aid job. But, the moss would eventually need to disappear, or there would need to be a different job to remove it.

The addition of incrementally beneficial medical treatments (distilled alcohol as wound antiseptic, comfrey as another wound treating plant, and so forth) would definitely be an excellent addition to herbalism and medical treatment for sure! Honestly, at the very least it would be nice if the Knowledge system was exposed more to the RAWs (user defined knowledges, in terms of what topics can facilitate them and what actions and crafts they permit) as well as a means of manually dictating substance administration even outside the hospital. Those two together would be the foundation of any mod setup that wants to add all these details in.