Six Pillars

The six pillars is a pseudo-scientific medical theory steeped in the Atovist myth of the Law of Six. It is a widely accepted method of diagnosing illnesses in Landren, Prekha, Estaria and Sadrove, which all have medical cultures that subscribe to miasma theory. Though Southern and Eastern nations such as Narr and T'Ched are less likely to believe in the theory and more likely to practice the more scientifically sound principles of germ theory.

The Theory

The theory states that a Human body is made up of six etherial aspects, called pillars, which must be kept at constant balance in order to keep the flesh healthy. As such, doctors and medical scholars believe that death is caused by an imbalance of one or more of these pillars.
The pillars are:

• blood - which breathes life into flesh and gives the skin its vitality
• water - which purifies the body and cleanses disease
• electricity - which powers the body's mind and memory
• black essense/pus - which powers the muscles
• white essense/pus - which organizes the body and makes organ systems work in tandem
• spirit - which gives the mind sapience

Illnesses are diagnosed as a patient having too much or too little of one or more of these pillars. For example, mental illnesses with manic symptoms are identified as an excess of electricity- which powers the body's mind and memory. Mental illnesses that display depressive symptoms may likewise be seen as a deficiency of spirit. Organ failure is usually explained as a deficiency in the body's white pus. Muscle atrophy as a deficiency in black pus. An immune system failure would be classified as a deficiency in water. Etc.

Use in Medical Practice

Although there is a general understanding of each pillar's purpose, a doctors diagnosis may vary wildly since their exact meaning and what causes what ailment is up to interpitation.
The cure to diseases diagnosed with this theory in mind is typically to try and correct the balance by adding or removing essense from the body. For example, a deficiency in water is simply cured by drinking excessive water while an excess of water is cured by leaving a patient in a humid room to make them sweat until they're dehydrated. Deficiencies in electricity are cured by attaching copper nodes to the patient and jolting their bodies, usually at the fingertips or feet.
The more abstract essenses have more extreme cures. For example, an excess in spirit can, in some extreme cases, only be "cured" with trepanning, that is creating a hole in the patient's skull. Black essense is believed to be in the marrow of the bone, so it can only be accessed with bloody, dangerous surgery to cut open a bone to remove or inject marrow, usually without anisthetic and with catastrophic health risks.
These cures, obviously, rarely have a positive effect on the patient. The best case scenario is for a patient to survive their illness for some other reason, or because the cure prescribed was coincidentally correct. More often, the cures a doctor will give actually exasurbate the patients illness.