Medicae is the term in High Gothic that is commonly used in the Imperium to refer to any type of biomedical knowledge or practice.
Medicae specialists in the Imperium can include the civilian chirurgeons, medicae servitors, physicians, nurses and other healers of the state-controlled hospitals and clinics of the Administratum's Officio Medicae present on many of the more advanced Imperial worlds; the sisters of the Orders Hospitaller of the Adepta Sororitas who provide medical charity care to many Imperial citizens who cannot otherwise afford it; and the military medics like the Field Chirurgeons and Combat Medics of the Astra Militarum.
Perhaps the most skilled practicioners of medicae in all the Imperium are the Apothecaries of the Adeptus Astartes, who must master the complicated gene-science required to create new Firstborn and Primaris Space Marines, as well as heal their injured battle-brothers in the field or recover their precious gene-seed after their deaths.
Imperial Medical Care[]
The expertise and training of local chirurgeons and other medicae professionals varies enormously across the Imperium and depends on a wide range of factors, from Feral World herbalists to hive city sawbones to the field medics of the Astra Militarum. On those Imperial worlds possessed of a relatively advanced technological base, the population might have access to many different forms of health care, though in practice this is normally drastically limited by social station, socioeconomic class, personal wealth, and other hierarchical factors.
The one resource the Imperium is not lacking in is numbers and so life is cheap on even the most developed world. Only those who are valued by the monolithic local and Imperial institutions of power are generally afforded treatment for any ailment they might contract, while those deemed of little or no worth are denied it out of hand. In the most extreme of cases, individuals are kept alive long past their years using rejuvenat treatments simply because they have been classified by some impenetrable rating system as vital to some process, which itself might be obsolete.
On the most primitive of worlds, medical care takes the form of all manner of potions, balms and herbal cures made from whatever sources are to hand. Those recruits taken from these worlds for the Astra Militarum with proper (or any) experience in basic medical skills and procedures, frequently find themselves continuing to propagate the practices of their homeworld on the battlefield as part of the Imperial military. Troopers also often prefer treatments to which they are accustomed, and a guardsman tithed from one of the many primitive or low-technology Imperial worlds is likely to refuse unfamiliar treatment but welcome a familiar folk remedy, even if the former is far more likely to save their life. Of course, there are many field medics who ignore their charges' wishes on the matter, using any and all knowledge they possess to save the lives of their stubborn comrades and apologising for saving their lives in a manner which they find uncomfortable later.
See Also[]
Sources[]
- Codex: Witch Hunters (3rd Edition), pg. 16
- Only War: Core Rulebook (RPG), pp. 78-79, 201-202
- Only War: Hammer of the Emperor (RPG), pp. 66-69