Re: OT: Corpses, etc. (was: Re: Gender in conlangs (was: Re: Umlauts (was Re: Elves and Ill Bethisad)))

--- Isidora Zamora <isidora@...> wrote:
> >Naturally, in old Hoopelle, they had no such
> >scruples either. Even in modern cities around,
> >criminals are sometimes used; but of course,
> >Daine are always plentiful and there are no
> laws
> >protecting them.
>
> Well, as I wrote in one of my other posts,
> there aren't a lot of laws
> protecting Trehelish criminals.
Well, I mean there's no laws protecting Daine in
general. According to human law, they're soulless
animals.

> The two capital crimes are theft and
> murder, and Trehelish people have even less
> respect for thieves than they
> do for murderers.  Ordinary Trehelish citizens
> tend to feel that thieves
> deserve no respect and no mercy.  In talking
> with average Trehelish
> citizens about the treatment of prisoners, it
> doesn't work to use the
> humanitarian arguement, "How would you like to
> be treated like that,"
> because you will almost invariably receive the
> response, "I didn't do
> anything to deserve it; they did."  Trehelish
> tend to feel that, as long as
> you mind your manners, you'll be treated
> decently, and, if you don't mind
> your manners, you deserve whatever you get.
Is that the case? A Man of old Hoopelle doesn't
even have the lame excuse that "I didn't do it".
The best he can say is "they're just animals".

> >Interesting. In Hoopelle, a Man charged with
> >theft could be whipped, flogged, rat-tailed
> >and/or thrown in gaol.
>
> The Trehelish don't bother with jail as
> punishment; there is no such thing
> as sentencing someone to time in prison; a jail
> is just a place to hold
> criminals until they can be tried and punished.
I suspect that, had Hoopelle survived the War,
they would have arrived at this sort of system
eventually. At least for Daine, who as a race
were considered incorrigible and a waste on the
gaolers' resources. By the last years of the
Empire, they were only beginning to see the sense
in forgoing prison for Daine and sending them off
for some kind of summary punishment.

>  Though a man can end up in
> prison for life under the right circumstances.
That doesn't happen. Any crime warranting such a
long sentence would most likely be a capital
crime.

> Anyone condemned to death
> has the right to appeal his sentence to the
> Tefin, a panel of five judges
> in Sovchilen.  (The word "tefin" is plural and
> means "merciful.")  The
> Tefin may not do anything, in which case, he
> will hang anyway.  They may
> exonerate him, if they feel that the original
> court made a mistake.  They
> may pardon him, if they feel that that would be
> a good idea.  They may also
> "protect" him.  If they protect him, he won't
> be killed, but he becomes,
> essentially, slave labor for the rest of his
> life - and he'll still be
> buried when he dies, not cremated.  So the
> Trehelish government does keep
> prisons, but no one is sentenced to them
> directly; it's actually seen as a
> priveledge to get into one.  In some ways, the
> prisoners aren't treated too
> badly.  They are fed well, and there is
> excellent medical care available,
Yeah! Free surgery and herbal treatments! [Just
sign this release form so our students and
researchers can get to work!]

> >  Any punishment at all
> >could be levied on a Daine, including death.
> It
> >was very common to chop off a joint of the
> >fingers or toes each time; or else a few
> inches
> >of wing could be lopped off at a time.
>
> Can they actually fly with these wings?
No. They can help brake a fall or leap from high
places, though.

> Where are the wings
> attatched?  They're feathered, right?
Feathered, yes. Attached at the back on the
scapulas. Mostly they're used to communicate,
like how we gesticulate. Of course, they just
have two extra bits to point and wave with!

Originally, they may have been a sexual
attractant. Males almost always have longer
wings, and as I said, women go ape over slightly
curved ones.

> >  Creative
> >judges might order that the earlobe be snipped
> >off with scissors or that a Daine be turned
> over
> >to the medical college. This latter punishment
> >was generally considered worse than death, as
> it
> >almost always involved "practice surgery" or
> >vivisection, with or without anaesthesia.
>
> Now, the Trehelish physicians always use
> anaesthesia, at least for the
> surgery part of it.
I guess they figure a) it's a waste of the drugs
on a Daine and b) the subject is going to die
anyway. If not on the table then in the rubbish
bin.

> If they intentionally
> damaged something in order to
> repair it, that may or may not be done under
> anaesthesia, but the surgery
> is always done under anaesthesia, among other
> reasons because they want to
> simulate actual working conditions as closely
> as possible.
Yes, that is certainly a point! I suspect that
anaesthesialess procedures are mostly
vivisections. Practice surgeries would most
likely have some kind of anaes. delivered. They
need practice at that too!, since there are no
machines or monitors of any kind.

> >I don't think there are any guinea pigs in
> >Westmarche. There are several kinds of
> squirrels
> >and squirrel-like rodents. Naturally, they're
> >eaten; and the Daine make clothing out of
> their
> >hides.
>
> Well, the Cwendaso will eat almost anything
> that moves and tastes good,
> but, surprisingly, they dress themselves almost
> entirely in wool.  I wish
> very much that I could draw well, because I
> know that I could do some great
> drawings of Cwendaso.
Oh, can you draw them at all? I'm not very good
at drawing, but I've been meaning to put some
drawings up on the page. Even if they're not the
best, I'd like to see a picture!

> I do
> not know whether they have yet learned to
> sterilize things with heat.
I would be surprised if they didn't - but that
would be an interesting lack! Most surgeons in
East and West know that instruments must be
cleaned and cooked. Mind you, they're not
actually _sterilised_, as that requires high
temperature and pressure devices or else gas
impregnation that they simply don't have the
technology or materials for. Boiling will have to
do for them.

> >They need to learn how to use ligatures and
> >cauterising irons! This is a fundamental of
> >Eastern surgical practice and has all but
> >eliminated death on the surgical table. Due to
> >bleeding, that is.
>
> I'll need to give more thought to that,
> because, probably they have figured
> out how to stop bleeding if they have been
> experimenting with
> appendectomies.
They would need to know how to ligate the
appendix. Same basic idea applies to blood
vessels.

> In the particular case that I
> had in mind, though, the
> physician was dealing with a very nasty
> compound fracture of the tibia and
> fibula.  (A wagon wheel had rolled over it.)
> There was so much bleeding
> already (and it had taken them long enough to
> get the patient to him), and
> so much splintering of the bones that he felt
> that there was no way that he
> could possibly reconstruct the bone and not
> have the bone fragments
> severing important blood vessels when things
> were moved around.  But, under
> more normal circumstances, probably they can
> stop bleeding.
Yeah, that would be tough. A tourniquette might
be of use in such cases.

Padraic.


=====
fas peryn omen c' yng ach h-yst yn caleor peryn ndia;
enffoge yn omen ach h-yst yn caleor per la gouitha.
   [T. Pratchett]

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