In the olden days, there were a lot of types of medicine and I’ve started to categorize them as: Made From, Made For, and Trade Name.

Bear Grease and Snake Oil were originally made from the fats of the two creatures.

Worm Powder is something you would take if you had worms.

Wizard Oil was made neither from Wizards nor to lubricate a squeaky Wizard, it was just a catchy trade name.

Matt made us a fine map of an Apothecary shop, and Jacob made us a traveling Medicine Show wagon based on Union Army doctor’s wagons.

The Chemist shop will feature as a location in an upcoming adventure, but we’re also creating Alchemy items for D&D 5e and Starfinder/Pathfinder-based Steampunk/Western supplements.

Arsenic is a Poison in D&D and Starfinder, you need to ingest it and in both systems, the sale of a single dose is restricted or costly, sometimes both.

In our own world, arsenic was very common and sold as a rat poison and the chemist was supposed to have a witness to the sale and to add color to the arsenic so it couldn’t be mistaken for a less deadly ingredient, both of these rules were broken from time to time. Arsenic was also sold innocently in a soap sold as a beauty product. People in the 1800s used arsenic to kill rats, commit murder, suicide, and sometimes they made hard candies and cake frosting with it. Arsenic was also used in green paint, wallpaper, and clothing dyes that sometimes killed people.

We’re not just writing about poisons though there will be other types of alchemy, some familiar from the works of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and other authors from the period.

If you have any feedback about this post or our books please feel free to contact us.

Paul

Evilrobotgames at Gmail.com