Maladies of Maleficence

[jallanite]

As I recall it, in the vanished thread Inziladun suggested that possibly scientific knowledge was always morally wrong in Tolkien’s legendarium. I pointed out various places in the books where what may be taken as scientific learning was not morallly wrong. One example was that Gandalf appears as possibly the inventor of gunpowder, or at least the most prominent user of gunpowder, in his famous fireworks. My post vanished with the thread.

One difficulty is that one might always claim that what looks like scientific knowledge in the books may in fact be supposed to be just magic. But since we cannot in most cases know that, it is impossible to prove either that it is or is not magic.

Originally Posted by Pervinca Took

I know the herb athelas is used, but in surgical terms Elrond would have had to practically cut Frodo in half to get that splinter out, and there is no evidence that he has done so when he wakes up in Rivendell, so the suggestion is that he has somehow "charmed" the splinter out.

I don’t see this. Surgery into where the splinter now was would be sufficient to remove the splinter and may have involved a very small amount of cutting. The difficulty would have been to first realize that the splinter existed, that the problem was not something like a spiritual influence from Frodo having the morgul-blade in his body for a short time. Second, the surgical technicians would have to determine exactly where the splinter was to be found so that Elrond knew precisely where to cut.

What techniques Elrond had to do either of these things the story does not get into. So any reader may imagine any techniques the reader wishes. The rest of Pervinca Took’s post I agree with, save that Faramir says nothing about the rivers of Mordor in general, but only that the Hobbits are not to drink from any stream that flows from Imlad Morgul. Presumably Faramir knows from experience of the area that most or all such streams are polluted, being either chemically polluted or carrying disease.