The medicine skill is mostly used for two purposes: To diagnose illnesses in a character and to help him, treat illnesses with the drugs made by biochemists.
In order to examine a character thoroughly, the character operating the bicorder must have at least level 1 medicine. There is no quality involved in the medical diagnosis based on a higher medicine level, just level 1 is enough. The patient must be near a medical examination table and he must be naked. The doctor then selects the character and double clicks the bicorder. This will give the doctor an analysis of the character's state, including abilities and illnesses. It will also inform him what causes a temporary loss of abilities like an addiction. Visiting a doctor is generally the best way to find out what's wrong with a character if he doesn't perform like he used to do.
A doctor heals a character by giving him drugs. In order to do so, the character must stand near a medical table and must have his guard lowered. the doctor then selects the character in his paperdoll view and drags one potion on the character's paperdoll.
Each drug has a minimum medicine level required to administer them. You can see this level in the drug list in the items table. If the character giving the drug does not have the minimum level required, the drug can not be given at all.
In order to heal an illness the character must take the right drug for the stage the illness is in. Some drugs heal only a certain stage of an illness, others can heal an illness in any stage. The character must take the right drug, either given by a doctor or taken alone and the illness will be lowered by one stage. If the illness was at a higher state, the procedure must be repeated the next day with the correct medicine. When the illness was at stage 0, taking the correct drug will completely heal the character.
As you see, healing an illness is more complicated than just swallowing a pill, but when done right, it will lead to success. Often it's better and easier to heal an illness at an early stage rather than at a later stage.
A doctor can proof that he has a certain level of medicine by invoking a server controlled certificate that is shown to other characters. To do so, the doctor bring sup his skill dialog box and clicks on the Proof Medicine Level button. This will show a text to everyone in the room in a form that can not be duplicated by players, so everybody can be sure the doctor has the given level of medicine. When in doubt, ask a potential healer to show you his certificate.
Some drugs require that a doctor administers them to a patient, others can be taken by a character without any help. Those, that don't need a doctor, never produce side effects. Those that require a doctor have a chance of creating side effects which is always 10% regardless of the doctor's medicine level. So all doctors have the same chance of creating a side effect when treating a character.
Addictions can occur in any case, they have nothing to do with the doctor's medicine level since it's a pure chemical effect that is not influenced by the doctor's skill.
A doctor can make XP by applying drugs to characters but only if there are no side effects or addictions created. In that case doctors receive some XP. A doctor can also walk through low morality districts and try to heal characters with sexual diseases. Mostly prostitute customers (NPCs can be told by the nickname "A Horny John") have sexual diseases but also prostitutes and even hostile characters. When a doctor wants to treat an NPC, the conditions are simplified. The patient need not be naked or be held or be next to an examination table. All the doctor needs to do is stand next to the NPC, select hi in his paperdoll and drag the cure on him.
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