The Vúlsithórn

This article is adapted from the entry for the Vúlsithórn in The Sâryan Encyclopedia, Cárshǒhl University Press, 22nd edition (716).

The Vúlsithórn is an early medical institution in Sáharía established in the late -200s, still operating as a hospital and medical university to the present day. In addition to the main facility in Cráincavéna, subsidiary sites were later established in Thúroshó and Cárshaló. It served as a medical library, academic hospital, and a place where healers could gather to share their ideas and experiences, in a time when most healers in Sáharía were either associated with the military or a patron lord, or charged varying fees—furthermore many healers were transient, with small villages not having guaranteed access to a well-rounded professional when needed. The facility is financed by donations and official funding.

Purpose / Function

The Vúlsithórn’s library is supposed to contain a copy of every medical text produced in Sáharía, providing a centre at which any healer may conduct research and leave their findings to help others. Adjacent to the library is a scriptorium and bookstore, where scribes made copies for sale, either at by request, or of the most popular texts at the time. These scribes were known to take commissions of non-medical texts when normal business was slow.
The facility also provides opportunities for practical learning and research. Anyone ill or injured may seek treatment at the Vúlsithórn, without need to pay a fee, even if they require food and a place to sleep. The price is that their treatment is given either by apprentices for experience (under the supervision of experienced healers), or by professional healers seeking greater knowledge of their ailment or testing out a new course of treatment—not all people with access to the Vúlsithórn or its branch sites preferred it to paying a healer.

Architecture

The Vúlsithórn is mainly composed of half-timbered, unlimed wattle and daub single-story rectangular buildings, in the sparsely framed style of the -200s and early -100s, though it has a stone-built library and some later two-story dormitories with more intricate framing. It is one of the few instances of a courtyard layout in Sáharía—the low buildings with typical wide eaves often result in dark interiors, so many treatments would take place outside or under the protection of the eaves. Less is known about the structures in Thúroshó and Cárshaló, but they were likely planned and built similarly. There are several types of structures which comprise the facility:

• living quarters for healers and their apprentices
• treatment facilities
• storage areas
• the library
• the scriptorium and bookstore

History

The origin of the Vúlsithórn can be traced to the gathering of medical professionals in markets, and it grew along with Cráincavéna, as the town grew in size and importance through the Mid Sáharían period. When Cráincavéna claimed the title of Sáharía’s central market in the early -200s, it also became the main hub for healers to find patrons, buy and sell medical texts, and communicate with one another. The earliest evidence of a site associated with the medical profession comes from -261, in a municipal document which mentions the “place where healers and cures are found”, which is thought to have formed on the west edge of the area which became associated with book-sellers and scribes, with the medical text trade being the point around which the healers’ area formed.
It was only in the -230s that the healers who congregated in Cráincavéna had a specific building; with the gradual decrease in the military presence at Cráincavéna from the mid -200s onward, old barracks and warehouses fell out of use and were appropriated by other groups with the permission—and sometimes the encouragement—of the senior military commander in the town (who didn’t have the authority to officially gift such places). This earliest form of the Vúsithórn occupied a former warehouse (serving as a bookstore and scriptorium, with the library soon forming out of the collected texts of the copyists, augmented by donations from healers and benefactors) and barrack building (used as a medical clinic and place for healers to stay who could not find any other accommodation). Practical research (and the free treatment which accompanied it) was encouraged by King Fethórun during his reign (-229 to -220), probably when he considered moving Sáharía’s capital to Cráincavéna.
While Fethórun was the first ruler to provide funding to the Vúlsithórn, his donation was largely eclipsed by his successor Jénun’s in a decree dated to -207—a large plot of land formerly occupied by military structures, and funding for the construction of a facility according to the suggestions of the healers. After that, Jénun and his successor Cílfun primarily supported the facility by paying for building repairs; regular funding from the throne came with Thílhanun and his successor Talórun, in the wake of the -187 to -183 civil war, at a sufficient level to provide for healers and patients living there. Concomitant with this new funding, Thílhanun instituted a rule that if a healer’s occupation and right to use the Vúlsithórn was challenged, they and their medical knowledge had to be approved by at least a third of those practicing out of it.
The branch sites were established by Háyarun sometime during his reign (-119 to -92), both to provide similar medical services to Sáharía’s other two main population centres, and to mitigate the risk of storing so much knowledge in one place, which was brought to mind when a fire narrowly missed destroying the Vúlsithórn during the civil war of -131 to -125.

Type

University / Educational complex

Parent Location

Tílthoría

Etymology:
collapsed form of vúlnesíthare sátheórn (medical book-place)