OK guys, here’s a quick explanation of healing magic in Idenau.

First, a recap: healing magic basically just accelerates the body’s natural healing processes. So, a human in Idenau can’t regrow a limb using magic, but cuts and bruises and other things that will eventually go away on their own can be quickly healed. This process expends a lot of energy and requires even more concentration on the part of the caster, so you often find wizards who specialize in healing as opposed to offensive/defensive light/dark magic.

In Ancient Idenau, magic was used to heal others in a much more general sense. Because the people of Ancient Idenau didn’t really understand the finer points of biology, they tended to throw random spells and potions at the problem to see what stuck. So, “doctors” at this used basic strength and fortitude spells to help a patient heal just a bit faster, and possibly to reduce the amount of pain they were in. As medical science progressed in Idenau, healing magic did as well. Modern Idenian doctors use a combination of standard medical knowledge and tools with magic to accelerate the more minute natural healing processes.

For example, a broken arm might be healed more quickly by setting the bone using a spell. Instead of having a clunky cast around the arm, a spell can create a more precise “cast” around the break itself. Because the spell is more flexible, it can keep the break together without requiring the patient to limit motion at all. In time, the bone would heal itself as usual, but the patient would never really notice a difference.

Of course, Idenian doctors can also accelerate a bone’s healing process if they understand how it works at an even more granular level. The same goes for diseases, if the disease actually has a cure; a doctor can use magic to manipulate the body’s response to a sickness and possibly cure it from within. However, this is considered to be a very high level of healing magic; a doctor would usually have to specialize in a certain type of care and do a lot of research to understand how best to manipulate a patient’s body with magic.

Medical research in Idenau isn’t much different from our own world’s, but once a disease or other ailment is better understood through science an Idenian doctor can usually use magic to make the healing process much faster and easier. As such, you rarely find doctors in Idenau who can’t use magic.