Writing Research Question: Diseases

[wolffyluna]

So, I have a problem. And I’m hoping it’s one other people have encountered, and have solutions for.

Sometimes, I want to know a lot about a disease* for writing purposes. And as such, I want to research that specific disease. Except, for a lot of diseases, the things you can find on the internet about it are maddeningly vague, because they are for people worried they may have that disease, not people that want to write about it. So they have lists of vague symptoms, and exhortation to speak to a medical professional if you are concerned.

And that’s not what I am looking for! I want details about the symptoms (including the gory ones)! I want to know the progression, in detail, with or without medical treatment! I want to know about the complications, and how likely they are! I want to know the treatments!-- especially important because I’m often writing medieval fantasy, and I want to know if treatment is even plausible with that tech base, and I also want to avoid giving a character something that is perfectly survivable in modern times (eg because we have antibiotics) that should all rights kill them dead in their setting.

Does anyone have any source suggestions?

*I’m lumping ‘infection’ and ‘poison’ and ‘injury’ under the umbrella ‘disease’ here.

Comments

[viktornowalsk]

How comfortable are you with technical language/academese? "Acquire a textbook on the topic (libgen is a wonderful thing) and skim for relevant information" might be an option. Also, some WebMD-style patient-focused websites do provide infosheets for clinicians (probably paywalled, though).

If you know any doctors/nurses/EMTs, asking them is obviously good. Internet forums e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/askdoctors could be as well, although of course accuracy varies.

The UK Medical Heritage Library (https://archive.org/details/medicalheritagelibrary, open access) has a lot of historical medical texts, which likely aren't accurate by modern standards but could help provide insight into lower-tech treatments? If you're looking at specific and relatively well-studied diseases/injuries/toxins, "history of [disease/treatment]" books might be worth looking for. Searching Google Books for the disease you're discussing and restricting to a specific time period might be useful as well.

[wolffyluna]

I'm...okay with academic language? (Also, I've just realised, I have access to journals via my uni's library. That might have things.)

And thank you for the suggestion of the Medical Heritage Library, that looks helpful!

[chocochipbiscuit]

Honestly, the more specific you can be, the better. It also helps to look at the search terms: if you're looking at symptoms, onset, mode of transmission, etc, then typing those into the search terms will narrow it down. Wikipedia has its limits, but is pretty good for a free resource. Your Google-fu may help expand that, as well as being able to be specific to the time, location, etc that you are setting the disease.

I also find it helpful to look for historical accounts of specific epidemics, because then you get an account of it as seen/written by people at the time, and you can compare it to modern accounts as well. Symptoms and presentation rarely change (even if the ways they're described do); treatment does.

[wolffyluna]

Thank you for the advice! I should definitely check out the historical accounts, they may be helpful.

[lb_lee]

Honestly, what I do is try to chase down a friend who has/had the condition. Or sometimes I try and chase down a blog about someone with it. (You'd be AMAZED what some folks liveblog, I'm just saying.)

That works better with longer-term conditions rather than, you know, the black plague or malaria or something, though.

[wolffyluna]

Thank you for the advice!

Hmm, it's quite possible someone has written about their experience with the thing I'm currently looking for. (I'm currently looking at chicken pox caught be adults-- but I'm also for more general research techniques because I'm almost certain to have to research a different disease in the future.)

[lb_lee]

Isn't chicken pox in adulthood shingles? One of my friends got that; it sounded pretty gnarly!

[wolffyluna]

Yeah, shingles is hell. (My mother managed to get it twice.) From my understanding, shingles is what happens when you had chickenpox previously, and the virus later recurs in your nerves. I'm looking at what happens when you catch chickenpox for the first time as an adult (generally nastier than if you catch it as a kid.)

[lb_lee]

Ah gotcha! Well, today I learned a new thing. But yeah, that'd be hard to find, with the vaccine and all, it seems like it'd be hard to find someone these days who'd get it as an adult for the first time...