Essential medicines
The basic set from the WHO list: what each treats, what it is made from, and the earliest tier that can make it. No doses, on purpose.
Home: Medicines, Level 2 · Forge, level 1 of 2 in its track. Serves 7 steps across 3 subjects.
The WHO Model List of Essential Medicines names the medicines a basic health system needs; the 24th list, of September 2025, holds more than 500. What follows is the basic set a rebuilding community should know about: what each one treats, what it is made from, and the earliest tier of the ladder that could make it (the tier is this site's estimate, not WHO's).
There are no doses here, deliberately. A dose depends on weight, age, pregnancy, kidney function and the other medicines a person takes, and a wrong one kills. Take doses from the WHO list and formulary or from Where There Is No Doctor, linked below. Medical content on this site has not yet been reviewed by a qualified practitioner (CIV-054).
The ones that save the most lives cost the least
Most deaths these medicines prevent come from diarrhoea, infection, malaria and childbirth. The first three rows below need no factory: clean water, salt, sugar and distilled alcohol.
The basic set
Grouped roughly by how early a rebuilding community could make them.
| Medicine | Treats or prevents | Made from | From tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oral rehydration solution | Dehydration from diarrhoea, the commonest killer of young children | Clean water, salt and sugar; the WHO sachet adds potassium and citrate. See separating waste from water | 0 |
| Vitamin A (retinol) | Night blindness; given to children with measles | Fish-liver oil is the natural source | 1 |
| Alcohol hand rub | Spread of infection by hands | Ethanol distilled to 80% by volume, with a little glycerol and hydrogen peroxide (WHO formula). See fermentation and distilling | 3 |
| Chlorine solution | Infection from water, wounds and surfaces | Sodium hypochlorite: chlorine passed into caustic soda | 3 |
| Iodine antiseptic | Wound and skin infection | Iodine from seaweed ash (1811). The list names povidone-iodine; iodine tincture is the older form | 3 |
| Zinc | Shortens childhood diarrhoea, given with rehydration | Zinc sulfate: zinc dissolved in sulfuric acid | 3 |
| Magnesium sulfate | The seizures of eclampsia in pregnancy | Epsom salt: magnesium mineral treated with sulfuric acid | 3 |
| Iron with folic acid | Anaemia in pregnancy | Ferrous sulfate from iron and sulfuric acid; folic acid is synthesised later | 3 |
| Morphine | Severe pain | Latex of the opium poppy; morphine was first isolated in about 1804 | 3 |
| Quinine | Severe malaria, where newer drugs are not available | Cinchona bark; isolated in 1820 | 3 |
| Acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) | Pain, fever; prevents heart attack | Salicin from willow bark is the old remedy; aspirin is made by acetylating salicylic acid | 4 |
| Benzylpenicillin, amoxicillin | Bacterial infections: pneumonia, wounds, syphilis | Penicillium mould grown in deep tanks. See antibiotics and vaccines | 5 |
| Paracetamol | Pain, fever | Synthesised from coal-tar and petroleum chemicals | 5 |
| Oxygen | Low oxygen in pneumonia and surgery | Liquefied and distilled from air (1895), or concentrated from it | 5 |
| Vaccines | Measles, tetanus, polio, whooping cough and more | Grown and purified in biological plants | 5 |
| Oxytocin, misoprostol | Bleeding after childbirth, a leading cause of maternal death | Oxytocin was first synthesised in 1953 | 6 |
| Artemether with lumefantrine | Malaria, first choice | Artemisinin from sweet wormwood, Artemisia annua, isolated in 1972 | 6 |
| Insulin | Type 1 diabetes, fatal without it | First extracted from animal pancreas in 1922; now made by engineered microbes | 6 |
Where to go next
This page covers what you are most likely to meet. It is not a field guide, and on identification that difference can kill you. These are the works that go further — chosen because they can be held offline.
Still to come
Illustrations carry a technique further than prose, but some things only move well. Recorded here rather than left implicit.
- Which medicines on the list a tier-3 or tier-4 community can make safely, with the purity tests for each