Bloodletting

Bloodletting, the process of removing blood, was a common treatment for centuries, supposedly addressing several symptoms of disease. Bloodletting was often used for fevers. The belief was that fever involved too much blood in the body, thus making the body too hot. The response to the problem was to remove some blood from the patient to reduce fever and restore homeostasis. One process was to place a tourniquet on a person’s limb, blocking the blood’s egress into the central blood system and causing their veins to become more visible. Under pressure, physicians could open up the vein causing it to bleed. There were various instruments to accomplish this. Most commonly was a small knife, or lancet, similar to a surgeon’s scalpel.  

Other commonly used devices for bloodletting included the fleam and the scarificator. The fleam featured larger, triangular or right-angled blades. It was positioned over the vein and struck with a fleam stick to facilitate a swift and sufficient puncture.  The scarificator was a box with multiple spring-loaded blades for an effective and efficient way to open veins. This was often used in conjunction with cupping to aid in the removal of blood. 

Bloodletting was a common treatment well into the 19th and even early 20th centuries. However, after Louis Pasteur discovered bacteria in 1854 and Robert Koch helped develop germ theory in 1884, bloodletting as a treatment was abandoned for the most part. Germ theory has now replaced the four humors as the predominant medical theory to explain disease. Modern medicine now only uses blood analysis to diagnose illness, and bloodletting is only used in a rare blood disorder called polycythemia vera. The rare blood disorder is caused by a genetic mutation that leads to the overproduction of red blood cells and bloodletting is one of the few ways to treat it.  

After viewing this case, if you look to your right, you will see an old barber pole. You might wonder what its purpose was in medicine. For centuries, a barber was the person who would perform the bloodletting procedure and the barber pole was mounted outside the storefront and was used to hold and dry the bloody rags and torniquets that were required for the procedure.