Medicines of Gor – Aging
One of the most important medicines for the Gorean is the Stabilization Serum. This serum slows the aging process, there fore allowing the Goreans to live for hundreds of years. It is administered in a series of four, painful, injections.
Age, on Gor, interestingly, was regarded, and still is, by the Castes of Physicians as a disease, not an inevitable natural phenomenon. Assassin
The Physicians of Gor, it seemed, had addressed themselves to the conquest of what had hitherto been a universal disease, called on Gor the drying and withering disease, called on Earth, aging. Slave Girl
The Player was a rather old man, extremely unusual on Gor, where the stabilization serums were developed centuries ago by the Caste of Physicians in Ko-ro-ba and Ar, and transmitted to the Physicians of other cities at several of the Sardar Fairs. Assassin
The Stabilization Serums, which are regarded as the right of all human beings, be they civilized or barbarian, friend or enemy, are administered in a series of injections, and the effect is, incredibly, an eventual, gradual transformation of certain genetic structures, resulting in indefinite cell replacement without pattern deterioration. Assassin
I had stood in the cage, startled, trembling. “Why are serums of such value given to slaves?” I asked “Are they of such value?” she asked. “Yes,” she said, “I suppose so.” She took them for granted, much as the humans of Earth might take for granted routine inoculations. She was unfamiliar with aging. The alternative to the serums was not truly clear to her.“Why should slaves not be given the serums?” she asked. “Do the Masters not want their slaves healthy and better able to serve them?” “It is true,” I said, “Sucha.” On Earth animals were given inoculations by farmers to protect them from diseases; on Gor it would be a matter of course, provided the serums were readily available, to administer them to slaves. Slave Girl
“She requires the Stabilization Serums” said the physician.The guard nodded.“They are administered in four shots” said the Physician. He nodded to a heavy, beamed, diagonal platform in a corner of the room. The guard took me and threw me, belly down, on the platform, fastening my wrists over my head and widely apart, in leather wrist straps. He similarly secured my ankles. The physician was busying himself with fluids and a syringe before a shelf in another part of the room, laden with vials. Captive
We returned,similarly,to the physicians house on the next four days.On the first day I had been examined, given some minor medicines of little consequence,and the first shot in the Stabilization Series. On the second, third and fourth day I received the concluding shots of the series. On the fifth day the physician took more samples.“The serums are effective,” he told the guard. Captive
But different human beings respond differently to the Stabilization Serums, and the Serums are more effective with some than with others. With some the effect lasts indefinitely, with others it wears off after but a few hundred years, with some the effect does not occur at all, with others, tragically, the effect is not to stabilize the pattern but to hasten its degeneration. Assassin
I had spent eight days in the slave pens, waiting the night of the sale. I had been examined medically, in detail, and had had administered to me, while I lay bound, helplessly, a series of painful shots, the purpose of which I did not understand. They were called the stabilization serums. Slave Girl
