how do medicine cats do medicine?

[Sparrow]

I put up a post on Sparrowminder last night about how my kitties handle medicine, and I want to hear about how you guys do it. Do they pretty much just clean wounds? Do they use herbs, and to what extent? Are the plants ever eaten, or just applied externally? What about other methods, such as aromatherapy? Do they close wounds with cobwebs or similar? How did the clans learn this information, and is it ever experimented with or is that strictly disallowed?

Tell me all about your cat medicine! c:

[Honeystorm]

I'm thinking that my cats have a mixture of methods. I'm researching medicinal plants for humans in Lake Tahoe, as well as any other beneficial effects. Of course, med. cats still clean wounds.
In the early days of CherryClan, Brownpaw (Brownleaf) experimented with herbs and had the uncanny knack for knowing what was medicinal and what was poisonous. Her knowledge was passed down from med. cat to med. cat, and by the time FrostClan comes around, experiments are highly discouraged.

[Bittycat]

In my Clans, medicine isn't really backed by anything. There is some ability to heal in the Medicine Cat, but it's rudimentary. Cobwebs, sticks, external stuff. They only use plants when a cat had eaten something poison, and they need to push it back up. I'm going by the real life "every plant is Bad for cats." So while they can afford to dole out plants so poison cats throw up (also a prank laid out by apprentices), there is no other way to get the cats to injest/use plants.

[dreamweaver]

Friends, fellow countrymen!

I spent several days researching the most commonly used and vet approved herbal remedies for cats! I was going to suggest adding it to the useful links, but here it is if anyone is curious: docs.google.com/document/d/1bUDOTQqXDi2z7qNTlY-pFHTGGvZC_kSvssLcTcBtR_k/edit?usp=sharing

The link includes appearance, usage, dangers, and health benefits of many different herbs as well as where they grow. Again all of these are considered safe (or if not there is a warning on them about using only in certain circumstances), and upheld by various vets.

In my own clans they have developed several unique practices.

Coveclan: The most recent and younger medicine cat in the clan rediscovered the practice of making tinctures out of herbs. She created small isolated pools of water and soaked the herbs in them, and then dipped moss and treated the patients that way. Not only did it moderate the potency of some of the more dangerous herbs, but it made them more soothing and easier to ingest or apply.

Ridgeclan: They are more practical in their medicine, known to be experts at mending outward physical issues, like broken bones or sprains or ripped claws. They also are skilled at dealing with issues of eye sickness and disease, due to the grit which is more common to fall in their eyes from climbing up dusty pebbly slopes.

Bloomclan: They promote the inner and spiritual health of a cat, and all their medicine cats are trained councilors which help cats deal with mental health issues as well as helping provide generic herbs which help to strengthen and cleanse a cat's insides.

Ashclan: These are the experimenters. They never do it without consent, and often will very carefully dose themselves first. They are most commonly know for their use of controversial herbs, although their clan seems to maintain its health and well-being nonetheless. As part of their experiments, Ashclan is known to be the best at helping fight cancer or tumors, as it is often the slightly more controversial herbs which can more obviously affect those types of growths.

General: Cats very rarely chews herbs to make poultices, and even in general most herbs are not straight ingested without something to diminish the potency somewhat. Most often they are either diluted by water or prey, or applied outward after crushed and mixed with water and moss as a poultice. They have also found cobwebs to be ineffective, an some seal the wounds with pine sap (sticky sealant) and some forms of moss and poultice (still researching this). Cobwebs in general are just not substantial enough to make a difference.

I have some more thoughts on this, but I want to see what others say.