There Will Be Blood

Myth:  Bloodletting, the medical practice of withdrawing small amounts of blood in order to ostensibly cure or relieve patients’ suffering from anything from tuberculosis to the common cold, had been practiced throughout the millennia.  Utilized by the likes of the Mesopotamians to the Medieval Europeans to 19^th century Americans, it was not until quite recently that bloodletting was believed to have an adverse effect on the majority of cases throughout the annals of history.  Prior to his death in 1799, George Washington asked to be bled heavily after contracting a severe throat infection, losing some four pounds of blood before expiring soon after.  Galen of Rome, famed physician and student of the methods of Hippocrates, popularized the technique in Ancient Greece and Rome, insisting that it provided the same benefits as menstruation among women – that is the systematic release of toxins found in “used-up blood.”  The more severe the illness, the more blood the physician would withdraw.  It seems absolutely ludicrous to our modern day sensibilities, but even as anatomical knowledge exponentially increased most cures still eluded physicians and so bloodletting was, simply put, better than doing nothing.

Fact:  Contrary to modern medicine and the so-called fact that bloodletting did more harm than good, bloodletting actually saved the majority of patients on whom it was practiced.  Firstly, Galen was no pioneering physician more than a man who desperately wished to menstruate.  “I am a woman trapped in the shell of a man,” Galen wrote to his subsequently outraged father in 166 A.D.  “Mother does nothing but weep, and I have been disowned by mine own father – it is now in my hands to come into happiness.”  Galen would often wear women’s undergarments and make a small incision near the hip so as to create the illusion of menstruation.  One of Galen’s friends, who was totally cool with his life choice, was still saddened by Galen’s inability to be a woman:  “Two things: Galen doesn’t comprehend the fact that he can’t menstruate every single day – that and the fact he is Greek, so the hair thing doesn’t help.  But, having seen his happiness, many physicians began to believe that bloodletting might have positive psychological, as well as physiological, effects on their patients.  Secondly, bloodletting is well documented as having near miraculous outcomes on patients.  Most notably, a private fighting for the Union during the American Civil War at Antietam lost all his limbs --- and his head.  Believing him to be dead, his comrades dropped him off at the surgeon’s tent to later be buried, but an optimistic doctor asked for the private to be put on the operating table.  After a few arguments with his assistants about the loss of the soldier’s head, the exasperated assistants yielded and put the body on the table.  The doctor announced he would be letting some more blood from his severed head.  One of his assistant’s later remarked, “What happened next was beyond my comprehension.  Of course I’m well aware that the more severe the wound, the more blood should be let – like obviously.  But I had no idea that after a few minutes of heavy letting the soldier would bound away with great enthusiasm, grab his rifle and kill some fifty-odd Rebs that day.”  Lastly, I take the example of George Washington’s bloodletting prior to his death as a completely muddied case of history.  Just as the aforementioned soldier became reinvigorated after heavy bloodletting, as did Washington become reinvigorated after losing some four pounds of blood.  Washington even went so far as to sardonically use his blood as a mixture for some fine sausages.  Rather it was John Hancock and his damn belief that a baby aspirin a day can reduce the risk of heart attack.  Hancock, recently hired as a pharmaceutical rep due to his grandiose handwriting and cocky disposition, coaxed Washington into the daily regimen.  Washington had an allergic reaction the next day and perished.  Thus, in instances such as Washington’s, bloodletting was tagged as the reason for his death.