2.5.1. Medicines and Poisons
- Milk of the poppy is a powerful medicine that sets men to sleep despite great pain (I: 21, etc.)
- Honey, water, and herbs are mixed together to feed patients in a coma (I: 77)
- Salves for bruises or sprains (I: 152)
- Wasting potions and pepper juice are used to purge potentially dangerous matter from the body (I: 212)
- The tears of Lys is rare and costly, clear and sweet as water and leaving no trace. It is a cruel poison that eats at a man's bowels and belly, and seems like an illness of those parts (I: 270. IV: 516)
- Myrish fire is dabbed on cuts and feels like it burns (I: 284)
- Boiling wine is used to clean out wounds (I: 322. THK: 528)
- Firemilk is a pale red ointment used to clean wounds (I: 616)
- Dreamwine is used against pain (I: 659. II: 575)
- Maesters are known to shave the heads of patients to treat lice, rootworm, and certain illnesses (THK: 469)
- A poison which seems as small, extremely purple crystals made from a certain plant that grows only on the islands of the Jade Sea. The leaves are aged and soaked in a wash of limes and sugar water and certain rare spices from the Summer Isles. Afterwards the leaves could be discarded, but the potion must be thickened with ash. The process is slow and difficult, leading to its cost. The alchemists of Lys, the Faceless Men, and the maesters of the Citadel know how to make it (II: 15)
- The leaf has a particular name amongst the Asshai'i and the Lysene have a name for the crystals. To the maesters, the poison is known as 'the strangler' for causing the throat to clench so powerfully that the windpipe shuts (II: 15)
- Various poisons: sweetsleep (a pinch will bring sound and dreamless sleep, while three pinches brings death, nightshade, powdered greycap (taken from the toadstool), wolfsbane, demon's dance, basilisk venom, blindeye, and widow's blood (named so for its color, it's a cruel potion that shuts down bladder and bowels so the victim drowns in their own poisons) (II: 193. III: 743, 872. IV: 516)
- There appears to be no knowledge of birth control outside of the interruption method (II: 329)
- Leeching is known of and used medicinally. Some take the practice to an extreme with regular leeching in the belief that it helps purge 'bad blood' and lead to a longer life (II: 507)
- Wounds that seem near to mortification are treated with boiling wine and maggots (II: 686)
- Hot wine is said to be better than compresses for colds and fluxes (III: 112)
- Moon tea is used to abort children. It is made of tansy, mint, wormwood, a spoon of honey, and a drop of pennyroyal (III: 171, 913)
- A posset of herbs and milk and ale, supposedly for the purpose of increasing fertility (III: 233)
- Tansy tea appears to be used by the smallfolk to induce abortions (III: 252)
- Hot garlic broth and milk of the poppy are given to people with bad fevers, to warm them and take away the aches and shivers (III: 285)
- Leeching is done to drain off bad blood from the ill (III: 285)
- Boiling wine and a poultice of nettles can be used to try to burn out infection in severely corrupted flesh (III: 349, 350)
- Catgut is used for stitches (III: 350)
- There are herbs that can be mixed into wine and drunk to help bring down fever (III: 351)
- Leeches are used to drain bad blood from inflamed wounds (III: 351)
- Myrish fire, mustard salve, ground garlic, tansy, poppy, kingscopper, and other herbs are used in healing (III: 366)
- Licorice steeped in vinegar, with honey and cloves, helps restore strength and clear heads (III: 421)
- Maesters will heat their medical irons (III: 549, 551)
- Nettle, mustard seed, and moldy bread can be used in a poultice to combat an infected wound (III: 553)
- Chewing willow bark helps to ease pain (III: 610)
- A poison using manticore venom thickened by some method (possibly magic) so rather than killing instantly upon reaching the heart, it instead takes much longer to reach the heart and thereby delays death while causing excruciating pain. The flesh mortifies and oozes pus, so much so that maggots will not do their work. Violent convulsions ensue. The rotting of the flesh cannot be treated by normal means such as boiling wine and bread mold, and the veins in an arm are turning black. Leeches used to drain blood die of the poison as well (III: 821. IV: 110)
- A fit of the shaking sickness is treated with dreamwine to calm the victim, and then leeching is performed to thin the blood in the belief that bad blood leads to anger or other strong emotion that attract the fits (III: 906)
- If needed, a maester could carry antidotes and purges against the twenty most common poisons (IV: 173)
- A scratch from a crannogman arrow is said to be enough to leave a man in agony with bloody bowels, screaming as blood and watery feces runs down his legs until he dies (IV: 257)
- The poisons used by the House of Black and White can stunt growth (IV: 324, 517)
- Sweetsleep is named in part because of its taste. A small pinch can soothe an anxious child, but too large a dose or too regular use can be dangerous (IV: 333, 516)
- Boiled vinegar to clean out a wound (IV: 431)
- A paste spiced with basilisk blood that gives meat a savory smell, but brings a violent madness on any creature with warm blood, whether man or beast (IV: 516-517)
- A poison that induces blindness, deposited in warm milk and giving it a slightly burnt smell and a bitter aftertaste (IV: 518)
- An older man with an illness that leads to severe coughing might be treated with purges, poultices, infusions, mists, sweetsleep, and bleeding (IV: 537)
- A poison known as heart's bane, served in a cup (IV: 545)
- It's claimed that a woman would only drink moon tea to avoid giving birth to a child (IV: 577)
Last revised July 15, 2009
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