Medicine Through Time Gallery: Bleeding - Hell?
Bloodletting is one of the oldest medical treatments. The followers
of Hippocrates in the fifth century B.C. strongly believed in bleeding
patients, and it is likely that this was done in Egyptian times and probably
even before that.
An early theory of health and illness was that there were four main bodily humors: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. An imbalance in these humors was postulated as the need for bloodletting, purging, vomiting, etc. Virtually every known medical condition at one time or another was treated by these methods. Bloodletting was used to treat everything from fever and madness to anaemia and debility. As one can imagine, treating an anaemic patient by removing even more blood was not really a very good idea.
Through the Middle Ages and into the 18th and 19th century there were many strides in medical knowledge with regards to disease states, and anatomy. However, there was not much that could be done in terms of treatment. There were no antibiotics and surgery was not very advancec. One of the only therapeutic modalities was to let some blood. It is probably true to say that this almost never benefited the patient. Perhaps the biggest benefit was to the doctor and family, who felt that at least they were doing something, and if the patient died anyway, it was meant to be.
In the gallery on the right you can see some of the items used in blood letting.