(Melody remembers to give Leareth his sleeping drug that night, at a sensible time even. She tries #5 in the sampler since they might as well, and she's also nervous about trying to break the previous one for a half-dose, what if she somehow does it wrong.) 

It doesn't work as thoroughly as #4, Leareth still has nightmares that wake him several times during the night and on one occasion he wakes Melody as well, but he manages to get back to sleep without too much difficulty, and he wakes up at a reasonable time in the morning. 

When Dree gets in the next day, he's at the kitchen table with their current loaner laptop, poking around at the source code of the reminder app that Shory suggested he use for now and try to take inspiration from. The reminders were a good idea; he's managed to remember to let Forgiver outside every 4 hours like clockwork since setting that up. 

Forgiver appreciates this very much. She chases bugs and finds a Good Stick.

They are very adorable but the stick is still not allowed inside. 

Melody goes over to answer the door and let Dree and the visiting pharmacist in.

(She did not, in fact, pack a hairbrush for Leareth due to space limitations and the fact that Leareth cared more about dedicating that space to his notes for later review; she has a comb, which takes less space, but Leareth has just given her a very tired look on the handful of occasions she asked if he could maybe fix his hair. She's kind of embarrassed about this but hasn't yet felt like pressing him on it or doing it for him, he doesn't really like it when she touches him and also she has maybe, perhaps, slightly absorbed the Quendi attitudes about hair being kind of private.) 

Well, now he has a hairbrush and if that doesn't work Dree will have to consider further escalatory steps.

Idrial the retired pharmacist can go over the stimulant pack with Melody!

Melody has many questions! What are the differences between the six of them and what makes them different from just having lots of tea? 

Tea's good, and she can go on drinking as much as she likes, but this one here is a caffeine pill, a little more straightforward and convenient - and there's extended release, and some people rotate different stimulants so they don't build up a tolerance for any one, and of course everybody tolerates different side effects -

This is really interesting! Melody is aware that the one herb that helps for depression in Velgarth has some weird side effects, and she's quickly becoming familiarized with the random side effects of different sleeping drugs here, but she hadn't actually considered whether or not tea (or caffeine, she supposes) had side effects in the same way? She knows some people don't like it but she's always thought of it more like the thing where some people don't like particular foods. But it sounds like they've done actual scholarship on this topic here! Dree offered to read her a treatise on it the other day, which seemed like a dubious use of Dree's time but Melody would appreciate a summary!

Idrial can sure give her one of those. Though he does consult a website about it.

Melody is fine with that and it's arguably even better because she can ask which website and then have it to refer to later! Probably in a few weeks she'll be comfortable reading the language, but right now it's still really valuable even if literally all he's doing is reading a website to her. 

:- Also, this is a bit less topical and more general curiosity, but I'm curious what the range is of, er, things your world has drugs for, that are well studied and definitely work. For physical illnesses as well, not just the kind of problems you go to a Mindhealer about. Velgarth does have a lot of herbs, but only some of them definitely work, and Gifted Healers are almost always better: 

Idrial apparently used to run a blog about his favorite drugs! Drugs make it onto the blog for definitely working and being particularly dramatic improvements over their absence. They have painkillers and stimulants and sleep aids and anaesthesia and antibiotics and SSRIs and birth control and vaccines!

Melody recognizes some of those, at least as general categories, but others she doesn’t recognize at all! Velgarth does have painkillers although the really effective ones are generally dangerous or addictive or both. She thinks she’s following what ‘birth control’ means; if she’s right and it means a drug that prevents women from conceiving children, Valdemar does have access to a herb for it but it is very much not reliable, and not widely available to villages and smallholdings. Heralds who get pregnant by accident will generally be interacting with Healers enough that someone will notice it early, within the first three or four weeks, which is also early enough that a Healer can safely end the pregnancy.

She’s not sure she’s following what anesthesia means - the concept coming across sounds like it’s to do with making people sleep, but different from normal sleep aids? - and she has absolutely no recognition of what antibiotics or vaccines could be.

Antibiotics kill infections and vaccines prevent them! Anaesthesia makes someone totally unconscious if you have to do major surgery on them.

That’s INCREDIBLE! Melody is appropriately awed!

(And noticing how much Shavri would have wanted to know everything about this right away - and then deciding not to think about that just now because she doesn’t want to explain to Idrial why she’s sad -)

Velgarth doesn’t have a way to directly treat infections other than Gifted Healers burning them out, which can be hard on the patient since Healing inevitably uses their life-energy as well as the Healer’s reserves, and also it takes a lot of skill and precision to only hit the infection and none of the patient’s living tissues and organs. As far as she knows there’s no way to prevent infections, except for obvious measures like quarantining sick people and thoroughly cleaning wounds.

Healers can knock patients out and it’s fairly safe for short periods? Sometimes you can use surgery to save patients but usually by the time they’re badly off enough to leave that as the best option, they’re pretty unlikely to survive it. 

Melody can technically also keep people unconscious with Mindhealing, and this is physically safer than the Healing-Gift version? It is generally not a good use of her time even in Velgarth, though, since it needs her ongoing attention and there aren’t many Mindhealers.

It sounds like she can do a whole lot of really cool things which would be great if there were ten thousand of her and not so much if there's just one.

That sounds about right! It would be kind of amazing if something that their world has at some point studied and come to understand would somehow let them copy Velgarth Gifts or give them to people as adults, but Melody isn't really expecting this to work or anything. 

There's obviously no prior art on it, since they don't have magic, but maybe!

Nod. 

:- Oh, right, and I didn't actually manage to ask about 'SSRIs'? I don't think Velgarth has a word for that whatever it is. I vaguely have the sense that it's related to - depression, or other mental problems - but I didn't get much more than that?: 

Idrial can explain SSRIs*.

*No, they don't actually call them "SSRIs".

:That’s really neat! It sounds like they’re a little like the herb from Seejay that helps with depression, but - there are multiple kinds and you can make as much as you want? The herb we found is hard to grow in our climate…:

Pause.

:- Are there drugs here that help people who have to the problem where they’re very jumpy and panic easily and find it hard to calm down again?:

"Yup!" Some SSRIs work for that and there are other things too; he can find his old blog posts on his favorites.

Melody is paying such close attention! 

(She doesn’t say anything out loud, obviously, but it would be really great if there were a treatment to help Leareth be less twitchy and emotionally reactive and easily driven to panic. It would be good for Leareth - she knows he hates how the predictable after-effects of his time in Angband make it harder for him to accomplish things - and it would also be convenient for Melody, who is doing her best but is not exactly qualified or well-placed for what Leareth needs.)  

Idrial is happy to natter on about pharmaceuticals for a while.

Melody takes detailed notes (in Valdemaran, on the notepaper she brought.) 

Leareth, still mid-programming-attempt, stares at his laptop screen and, after several seconds, starts quietly crying.