Worldbuilding Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for writers/artists using science, geography and culture to construct imaginary worlds and settings. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
How can a species force an external body to heal itself and speed up the process without the use of magic and technology but by biological means?
Sanators are creatures who can force the body of a nearly dead person or animal to heal or stop bleeding, even on the edge of death or when they are unconscious. How can this be explained without the use of handwavium?
They need several things.
So, perhaps all of those factors could be in their saliva or claws, and when they scratch or bite someone, they heal faster? Along with a powerful sense of smell and excellent vision to diagnose where injuries are.
To handle the different species issue, they could have genetic splicers which analyzed cells and produced enzymes and hormones specific to each organism. To handle the evolution of bacteria and viruses issues, they could have a symbiotic relationship with fungi that produced novel antibiotics and chemicals to inhibit growth of rival organisms. Evolutionarily, these creatures would have evolved symbiotic relationships with a variety of organisms, using them as ways to replicate themselves. Like a virus they would take over other organism's cells, and use them to fill gaps and holes, and keep them alive.
You could have conflict and issues over this specificity, with some individuals being unable to heal certain species or races because of how their systems were adapted, or some species being too hard for their biological systems to interpret.
Very alien biologies would generally be impossible to fix with these.
Your Sanators have an ability like SOME SPECIES OF WASPS that can slow the metabolism of their prey through the injection of toxins.
However, your Sanators have learned to use this to help in healing as well. When a creature near death is stung, their metabolism slows to nearly nothing. At this point, a second injection inserts intelligent stem-cell like cells into the victim that read the DNA, and begin to repair the organism. Your Sanators could also wrap their patients in a cocoon like shroud that would help accelerate the healing.
This could also be used as a plot device to have your peaceful Sanators mistaken for predators while they were actually healing people.
It is most certainly possible to perform miraculous healing biologically, but it would probably not be as life-saving as you were envisioning.
The reason why it takes so long for an organism to heal itself is because of natural blocks on how often a cell can undergo mitosis to repair any missing or damaged cells. These natural blocks are a part of the organism's DNA and help to prevent many dangerous situations that may arise from uninhibited cell growth, including artery collapse, a loss of muscle function, and even starvation. Without these, however, the body can heal itself at an incredible rate, quickly replacing any missing cells as needed.
Even if your Sanators were able to target these DNA blocks with an extremely precise burst of radiation to enable rapid growth, there would still be the issue of stopping the growth before it eventually kills the organism. Since every cell produced via mitosis would be almost an exact copy of the original cell, they couldn't simply remove the altered cells, as that would undo all the work the body had done up to that point. The only way I can think of that would work would be to reverse the alteration in every single strand of DNA that was replicated, but it would require an insane amount of energy and precision to be able to pull off on the thousands or tens of thousands of cells needed to fix the problem.
Oh, and in order to pull this off, the Sanators would need to disable at least part of the organism's nervous system so it wouldn't destroy the altered cells before they spread, so it is possible they may die of their ailment anyways...
Few problems to biological healing :
Without any kind of cheating, you can't make the time go faster or make resources magically appear in the body of the anyone near.
But, what could be somewhat credible with still a bit of handwavium :
Your Sanators are somehow constantly emitting a cloud of UBERCELLS around them. These UBERCELLS have three particularities :
So what you obtain is what could be parent to a "stem cell spray".
Stem cells are (real) non-differentiated cells than can differentiate into every possible cells of an individual (they are the kind you find in an embryo) and are presently being researched and used to grow tissues for transplant or even fight some sicknesses. (Awesome stuff, really).
Stem cells would probably die if you directly sprayed them on an injury but UBERCELLS don't. Because they are very strong and hardworking, they just pick up the job of the closest cells and help them during the healing process. Which is exactly what you are looking for.
Disclaimer : The Sanator decline any responsibility concerning the following :
- In case of infection by a virus of the host, the UBERCELL may occasionnaly hasten death.
- If the UBERCELLS come into contact with a cancerous cell, the host won't like it either.
EDIT : UBERCELLS only work on eucaryotes, aka cells with nucleus. Which prevent any kind of bacterial disaster.
Traditional Chinese Medicine works with chi (often spelled qi) (a real thing that Western Science can't really explain very well) to help the body heal itself.
While this usually happens with the use of acupuncture needles or other direct stimulation to the points and channels (acupressure, massage, electrical stimulation, heat, etc), or with herbs/diet, there also exists energy work that a practitioner uses, with or without touch, to effect changes. The one I was personally trained is is called HoChi and is a form of Chi Gong. But there are others. (Note: it's the same teacher but the website doesn't have the same focus on medical healing I had and sounds more New Agey now, even though it's a very old modality).
As wonderful as TCM is, it's not magic and it won't solve all problems. In China all the hospitals are half TCM and half Western Medicine. Because different ailments require different treatments. Sometimes you really do need surgery or pharmaceuticals. But all the staff are trained in both modalities so they work together very effectively.
Obviously what you're asking for doesn't exist in the real world, or people would be doing it. But it would be reasonable to take a system like TCM and amp it up. Give your Sanators so much control over chi that they can make it seem like magic. And allow them to channel universal chi to boost that of others (something that practitioners can do now but only in very small amounts).
This is not a perfect answer because you seem to be asking for science that shows this miraculous healing. No one can give you that because it doesn't exist. But this is the closest I can come. TCM or similar systems from other countries.
Edited to add in some research links on TCM, as requested. Some talk about the need for better research studies and some quote skeptics. Some just present the research.
Sanators are creatures who can force the body of a nearly dead person or animal to (...) stop bleeding.
Sanators are army ants. You can get them to bite both sides of a wound, then chop off them buggers' heads. You get instant sultures without having to know how to sew.
I'm really serious. Try not to scratch the wound though, and I hope you are not alergic to ant bites.
