Bloodletting as Medical Care

From the Middle Ages until the early Nineteenth Century, many doctors felt that the bleeding of a patient might release the sickness that the poor individual was inflicted with. Various methods of cutting, leeches and blistering were all applied in the treatment of patients suffering from a variety of ailments. From a simple headache to a severe case of consumption, bleeding was usually prescribed. Although men dominated the profession from about 1700 on, there were still many women doctors and apothecaries that practiced their wares in villages and cities. For the most part, the women did not employ the bleeding cures as much as the male doctors did. This is interesting from a gender perspective. The female doctors chose not to bleed a patient, even when it was widely renowned as a cure for many, many problems. An examination of the development of bleeding as a practice, and a male invented cure, seems to be a factor in woman's non-use of the method.

The first instances of bleeding, or phlebotmoy, as a medical cure are probably unrecorded. Not entirely a Western mode of practicing medicine, the first recorded instance that historians can locate occurs in both ancient Egypt and Greece. According to Henry Clutterbuck, M. D., "Like most other branches of the healing art, its [bloodletting] origin is involved in impenetrable darkness. It is certain, however, that the practice is of great antiquity, and was in general use long before the time of Hippocrates." Phlebotomy flourished all over India and the Arabian countries and stands today as the longest consistently used form of medical treatment. Bloodletting was used for any and every ailment possible. Also very prevalent was the process of blistering. A caustic substance would be laid over the chest, arm or other inflicted part of the body and left there until blisters would rise. The blisters were then broken and drained, releasing the disease from the body.