Maladies of Maleficence

[jallanite]

As I recall it, in the vanished thread Inziladun suggested that possibly scientific knowledge was always morally wrong in Tolkien’s legendarium. I pointed out various places in the books where what may be taken as scientific learning was not morallly wrong. One example was that Gandalf appears as possibly the inventor of gunpowder, or at least the most prominent user of gunpowder, in his famous fireworks. My post vanished with the thread.

One difficulty is that one might always claim that what looks like scientific knowledge in the books may in fact be supposed to be just magic. But since we cannot in most cases know that, it is impossible to prove either that it is or is not magic.

Originally Posted by Pervinca Took

I know the herb athelas is used, but in surgical terms Elrond would have had to practically cut Frodo in half to get that splinter out, and there is no evidence that he has done so when he wakes up in Rivendell, so the suggestion is that he has somehow "charmed" the splinter out.

I don’t see this. Surgery into where the splinter now was would be sufficient to remove the splinter and may have involved a very small amount of cutting. The difficulty would have been to first realize that the splinter existed, that the problem was not something like a spiritual influence from Frodo having the morgul-blade in his body for a short time. Second, the surgical technicians would have to determine exactly where the splinter was to be found so that Elrond knew precisely where to cut.

What techniques Elrond had to do either of these things the story does not get into. So any reader may imagine any techniques the reader wishes. The rest of Pervinca Took’s post I agree with, save that Faramir says nothing about the rivers of Mordor in general, but only that the Hobbits are not to drink from any stream that flows from Imlad Morgul. Presumably Faramir knows from experience of the area that most or all such streams are polluted, being either chemically polluted or carrying disease.

[Alfirin]

If I recall from my history reading, the Greeks and Romans had a medical tool(I think they called it a scapula after it's shape, but I am not sure) they used for getting barbed arrows out of people that looked like a long metal shoehorn(you stuck in in the hole along the shaft and used it to push and hold the flesh apart wide enough you could remove the arrow without causing further damage). Assuming that the Elves have such a tool (and it seems to me that assuming the Elves have a level of medical tech roughly equivalent to the Ancient Greeks and Romans does not seem much of a stretch.) someone with a very good hand could use such a thing to get the dagger shard out. One could re open the scar (remember Frodo's wound had closed up over the shard, so it'd have to be re-opened push in the scapula until it connected with the shard (a good hand could probably feel it hit) get under it to disloge it (sort of like how you can use a sewing needle to get a splinter out of your finger) then pull it back up on the scapula.
It also occurs to me that, given the circumstances, actually physically taking the the dagger tip out might not have been neccacary (I know Gandalf says it was removed, but just follow me here). Since the morgul blade dissolves in daylight, it might be possible that, if daylight was gotten to the tip, it would dissolve as well which might be considered safer (after all the tip was almost at Frodo's heart, so there was a real chance of Elrond killing Frodo in the process if he actually had to cut it out) If one is willing to let magic in in some form, maybe Elrond simply sent a beam of sunlight into the wound. HOW he would do that, I have no idea, but it occurs to me that, if Galdriel had the ability to trap the light of a star in some water held in a crystal container and have it stay there as an illumination source, Elrond might be able to take a ray of sunglight and direct it (maybe some sort of lens apparatus?)

[Pervinca Took]

Alfirin made the point that the splinter was now very near Frodo's heart. Or, at least, "deeply buried," Gandalf said. It tends to be assumed that it was working towards his heart, because Gandalf said that was where the Witch-King was aiming for. Perhaps it was simply known to the Wise that that was how Morgul-blades operated, how they turned a person into a wraith.

Gandalf believed all along that there was a fragment of the blade still in the closed wound, and Strider and the hobbits had seen that the tip of the blade was broken off. I presume that Aragorn could have tried extraction in the wild simply with a knife, yet he dared not. Maybe Morgul splinters had a nasty habit of resplintering - but if so, why was only one splinter found? Maybe they were simply elusive and only Elrond's skill - and the presence of Vilya at Rivendell - were enough to give Frodo a fighting chance of surviving extraction even if it could be achieved. At any rate, by the time they reached Rivendell, it must have been too late for a "scapula" method - it has travelled too far from the original site of the wound.

The pain travelled both down his (Frodo's) arm and his side - or, at least, the chill did, as did the sensation of "icy claws" - claws implies pain as well as cold. That makes sense in the early stages, but even later on, when the splinter is supposedly near his heart, he still cannot raise or use his hand. Reasonable enough - it was a deadly wound with residual damage. Then again, when the pain recurs even after the healing, it appears to be at the site of the initial wounding, not where the splinter ended up.

Further to Jallanite's point that the surgery could be "local" once the splinter was located, Glorfindel's searching of the wound with his fingers (by which he learns enough to disquiet him) might be the key to the "locating" aspect. It takes about three days, too - even a master of healing would need to know exactly where he was cutting.

[Inziladun]

I had another thought on this.

If the workings of "evil" diseases and poisons were directed toward the spirit rather than the body, that would explain why neither Morgoth nor Sauron had any apparent fear that using the plague-weapons could have a negative impact on their own troops.
Then again, what about the Men in the service of evil? While the Orcs seem as a race to be evil-inclined, that doesn't seem to be the case with Men under Morgoth and Sauron. Did Sauron simply not care if his Men died? Maybe he found some way to blame it on the West.

[Mithalwen]

There is also the simple fact that one is vulnerable to new or new-to-you strains of disease. Think of how the Europeans wiped out native populations in the colonies with their diseases as their weapons.

I took a gap year befor university and worked for six months in a pharmacy. All day long I was exposed to the sneezing and snuffling of the local sick collecting their 'scripts and buying cough lozenges. The only cold I caught that year was the one my sister considerately brought home from the other side of the country.

I agree however that if you scare someone enough the physical becomes irrelevant, and it is unlikely that Sauron had any humanitarian concern for his troops.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

All day long I was exposed to the sneezing and snuffling of the local sick collecting their 'scripts and buying cough lozenges. The only cold I caught that year was the one my sister considerately brought home from the other side of the country.

It is known by those versed in scientific medical knowledge that by the time one has reached the point of suffering a full-fledged cold, one’s body has mostly defeated the main disease infection and is flushing out dead germs. These are totally harmless to others, though the process is miserable to the one who has had the cold infection. And people in an environment such as you were in tend to wash themselves more than they otherwise might.