Survival question

“If you were lost on an island and became deathly ill”

Usually then you need a hospital, maybe a surgeon, modern medicine. If there are no such things on the island, just a student who knows how to spell pencillin, and a witch doctor who don’t know what causes the problem, then you probably won’t get the help you need. Whether you choose the student or the witch doctor isn’t gonna do any good, or bad, it’s not gonna make any difference. Either you are lucky and you don’t die, or you are unlucky b/c you got seriously ill on a place where no one can help you.

And why not use both ? It’s like a lottery ticket but it’s the only hope.

I think using both is the ticket.  Assuming that both you and the medical student are new to the area, it would be beneficial to seek the advice of the local witch doctor.  Why?  Witch doctors will more than likely have knowledge of local medicinal plants.  This, of course, assumes the med student has no medication or implements on his/her person at the time.  He/she would definitely be useful to have on hand for objectivity and modern knowledge so that the, say, inflamed appendix would be diagnosed as such instead of the witch doctor claiming you have evil spirits or the like in your belly.  But he might know of a local plant with antibiotic properties.

@Uberlager:

I think using both is the ticket.  Assuming that both you and the medical student are new to the area, it would be beneficial to seek the advice of the local witch doctor.  Why?  Witch doctors will more than likely have knowledge of local medicinal plants.  This, of course, assumes the med student has no medication or implements on his/her person at the time.  He/she would definitely be useful to have on hand for objectivity and modern knowledge so that the, say, inflamed appendix would be diagnosed as such instead of the witch doctor claiming you have evil spirits or the like in your belly.  But he might know of a local plant with antibiotic properties.

I’m going with this one. There is primative medicine ‘bleeding with leeches’ and primative medicine ‘this plant crushed up with this bark and ingested reduces fever.’

The OP seems to be asking which analogy folks accept more:

witch doctor = doesn’t know anything about medicine

2nd year med student = doesn’t know anything about medicine

I went with the witch doctor.  Since he is from the island the tribe may have in their knowledge a cure or something to aid with this illness.  If I contracted it on the island then maybe there is a glimmer of hope they also contracted it and know some kind of cure for it.  Then again, the only cure might be to exterminate the person showing signs of the illness before it spreads to the rest, by having some crazy ceremonial sacrifice! :-o  Maybe I should have picked the student, at least he hopefully took biology haha.

Who cares.  I’m going to die anyway.

I had to go with witch doctor.  I read an article about a year ago discussing how pharmaceutical companies would prefer to go with roots and leaves from natural ingredients; however, what stops them is that they can’t put a patent on plants only manmade synthetic products that may mimic the same results.

I know this may be off topic but as an eagle scout (from Northern California) I found that wherever there is a plant that causes harm like poison oak for example there is another plant nearby that can counter act those effects.  In this case the little berries from a Manzanita bush.

The witch doctor being local would know things like this.  A good med student I would trust to assist a seasoned Basic EMT.

LT

as a former medical student, now a physician as mentioned on another thread, i picked the “witch doctor”.
Both would suck at treating most deathly illnesses - pneumonia, heart attack, pulmonary embolism, malaria, gushing hemorrhage etc.  Still, the “local witch doctor” would know what the most common maladies local to the locale might be, and the best treatment for them.  The medical student . . . depending on what his/her background was (assuming basic science degree) would likely be useless.  Now if you had a local hospital with nursing and medicines, the med student might barely edge out the local guy, i’m thinking.

LT04,

You are my new hero.  :-D

I agree with LT04 as well. You gotta go with the local help. The med student is probably not that adept any way, based upon what I have seen at our hospitals.
Good call LT04. 8-)

1. Why not both?

2. What if the 2nd Year Medical student is native to the island? There are medical schools on islands!

3. What if the Medical Student can take you to the nearest Hospital on the island, and you can be treated by people who graduated medical school?

The phrase “lost on an island” suggests (at least to me) the image of a relatively small and isolated island somewhere in the tropics, with a very small population and no modern technology – an image reinforced by the reference to the island having a local witch doctor.  Let’s say, something along the lines of Skull Island in King Kong.  What I’m having trouble understanding is: why would there be a second-year medical student on such an island?  Did he get shipwrecked too (which is how I’m assuming that I got lost on the island in the first place)?

On the other hand, if we’re talking about a large island the size of, let’s say, Java, with a population of 143 million people, and that I’m lost on it simply because the GPS on my rented car broke down, and that there are enough witch doctors and second-year medical students among its inhabitants to make it plausible that I’d run into both types of persons simultaneously, my guess is that this would only be likely to occur close enough to a developed area that I’d simply choose to ask these fellows for directions to the nearest medical clinic or hospital.

@ABWorsham:

Flashback to 2009.

I knew that thread necro over in the D-Day forum was trouble.  :lol:

Witch doctor probably knows something.

I would eat the witch doctor, and lay with the virgin 2nd year med student.

Just to make sure my bases were covered.

@Gargantua:

and lay with the virgin 2nd year med student. Just to make sure my bases were covered.

While we’re on the topic of covering all one’s bases, would you check first on what the student’s gender was?
:lol:

:| :| :| :|

@Gargantua:

I would eat the witch doctor, and lay with the virgin 2nd year med student.

Just to make sure my bases were covered.

yep. it’s all about the BASE