Bleeding to Improve Health

Quick Cure For That Headache?

Bloodletting (or typically called Phlebotomy by today’s medical community) was once the practice of withdrawing sometimes large quantities of blood from a patient to cure or prevent illness or a disease.    Historically, bloodletting was based on an ancient system of medicine in which blood (and other bodily fluids) was considered to be 1 of 4 "humors" that kept the proper “balance” within an individual which maintained good health. For a long time it was the most common medical practice performed by doctors and barbers alike (yes, barbers were once practitioners of the medical trade as well as doctors … remember the Sweeny Todd movie a little while back?), from ancient times up to the late 1800’s; a time span and medical practice believed by most medical historians to have lasted for nearly 2,500 years and is even implemented today but only on very rare occasions.

In fact bloodletting is one of the oldest medical practices known; the technique was practiced by many ancient peoples including the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, Romans the Aztecs and the Mayans.  But as I’m sure you have guessed in the overwhelming majority of cases, bloodletting was harmful to patients. It was once used however to "treat" a wide range of diseases, eventually becoming a standard treatment for almost every ailment.

"Bleeding" a patient to health, as it was once called, was modeled after the process of menstruation experienced by mature women. It seems that doctors believed menstruation occurred so as to purge women of bad humors; which consisted of any of the four main fluids of the human body, blood, yellow bile, black bile, or lymph; either of which determined a body’s mood and temperament, according to medieval science and medicine any way.

Those ailing patients who visited the doctors and barbers of the day were thought to have an imbalance of their humors, and bloodletting was a sure way to restore the balance.

Here’s an interesting side note: Although bloodletting was often recommended by physicians or doctors, as I’ve already indicated the procedure was carried out by barbers as well. In fact, the red-and-white-striped pole that is typically displayed signifying a barbershop, is derived from this practice; the red strip represents the blood being drawn, the white stripe represents the tourniquet used to stop the bleeding, and the pole represents the stick the patient squeezed in his hand to dilate the veins so the barber could locate the blood source easier for the necessary poke or cut required to allow the blood to escape.

Although barbers of today no longer practice medical treatments, doctors have determined that bloodletting is not effective for most disease treatments. Indeed it is generally considered harmful, since it can weaken the patient and thereby increase the likelihood of an infection.     

But if you think the procedure is a complete thing of the past, then you’re wrong!  Bloodletting is used today in the treatment of at least two diseases, the first is called hemochromatosis, which is a medical condition described as being an “iron overload” or an over accumulation of iron in the body’s organs; and a second condition that’s called polycythemia which is generally described as  a disease state in which the blood volume that is occupied by red & white blood cells increases dramatically with red cells, which could be characterized by the typical layman as being the opposite of leukemia in which the white blood cells are over produced.  Modern medicine has determined that controlled bleeding actually helps in these cases.

Historically speaking it appears that bloodletting / Phlebotomy was once as trusted and popular as aspirin is today.   It was common for medieval monks to bleed each other several times a year for general maintenance of good health, while doctors of that era devised elaborate charts that were used for assisting practitioners, some of which even displayed the most favorable astrological conditions that were needed for bleeding.

Sources …

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodletting                  http://www.pbs.org/wnet/redgold/basics/bloodletting.html