Bloodletting Instruments in the National Museum of History and Technology

Volume 197, Number 12 (september 1927), Pages 437-477. for a Detailed

account of ancient bloodletting, see RUDOLPH SIEGEL, "Galen's Concept of Bloodletting in Relation to His Ideas on Pulmonary and Peripheral Blood Flow and Blood Formation" (chapter 19 in volume 1 of Science, Medicine and Society in the Renaissance edited by Allen Debus, New York: Science History Publications, 1973), pages 247-275.

ROBERT MONTRAVILLE GREEN, "A Translation of Galen's Temperaments and Venesection" (manuscript, Yale Medical Library, New Haven, Connecticut), page 102.

Ibid., page ii-iv.

CELSUS, De Medicina, translated by W. G. Spencer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), volume 1, book 2, page 155.

HENRY E. SIGERIST, A History of Medicine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), volume II, pages 317-335.

GREEN, op. cit. [note 4], page 105.

PETER H. NIEBYL, "Galen, Van Helmont and Blood Letting," (chapter 21 in volume 2 of Science, Medicine and Society in the Renaissance edited by Allen Debus, New York: Science History Publications, 1972); PETER NIEBYL, "Venesection and the Concept of the Foreign Body: A Historical Study in the Therapeutic Consequences of Humoral and Traumatic Consequences of Diseases" (doctoral dissertation, Yale University, 1969), page 156.

GREEN, op. cit. [note 4], page 171.

Ibid., page 114.

Ibid., page 173.

Ibid., pages 174, 180.

CELSUS, op. cit. [note 6], page 163.

CHARLES H. TALBOT, Medicine in Medieval England (London: Oldbourne, 1967), pages 127-131.

CHARLES D. O'MALLEY, Andreas Vesalius of Brussels 1514-1564 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964), pages 66-67.

See, for example, M. DAVID, Recherches sur la maniere d'agir de la saignee et sur les effets qu'elle produit relativement a la partie ou on la fait (Paris, 1762), page iv.

LORENZ HEISTER, Chirurgie, in welcher alles, was zur wund artzney gehoeret ... (Nuremberg, 1719).

GREEN, op. cit. [note 4], page 179.

JOSEPH T. SMITH, SR., "An Historical Sketch of Bloodletting," Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, volume 21 (1910), page 312.

MARSHALL HALL, Observations on Bloodletting Founded upon Researches on the Morbid and Curative Effects of Loss of Blood (London, 1836), page 280.

ROBLEY DUNGLISON, Medical Lexicon--A Dictionary of Medical Science (Philadelphia, 1848), page 820.

JAMES E. BOWMAN, "Blood," Encyclopaedia Britannica (Chicago: William Benton, 1972), volume 34, pages 795-800.

GREEN, op. cit. [note 4], page 187.

KARL SUDHOFF, Deutsche medizinische Inkunabeln (Leipzig, 1908); Studien zur Geschichte der Medizin heft 2/3. SIR WILLIAM OSLER, Incunabula Medica: A Study of the Earliest Printed Medical Books, 1467-1480 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923).

FRANCISCO GUERRA, "Medical Almanacs of the American Colonial Period," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, volume 16 (1961), pages 235-237. The number of veins illustrated in the vein man varied a great deal but became fewer after the seventeenth century.

TALBOT, op. cit. [note 15], pages 127-131.

GUERRA, op. cit. [note 26], pages 237; MARION BARBER STOWELL, Early American Almanacs: The Colonial Weekday Bible (New York: Burt Franklin, 1977). The latter work contains numerous illustrations of "anatomies" from colonial almanacs.

"Original Letters," General William F. Gordon to Thomas Walker Gilmar, 11 December 1832, William and Mary Quarterly, volume 21 (July 1912), page 67.

TALBOT, op. cit. [note 15], pages 50, 51. For another view of the religious impact upon medieval medical and surgical practices, see JAMES J. WALSH, The Popes and Science (New York: Fordham University Press, 1908), pages 167-198.

THORNDIKE, op. cit. [note 3], page 477.

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA, Don Quixote de la Mancha, translated by Walter Starkie (New York: Mentor, 1963), pages 91, 92.

CHARLES ALVERSON, "Surgeon Abel's Exotic Bleeding Bowls," Prism,

Volume 2 (july 1974), Pages 16-18; John K. Crellin, "medical Ceramics," in

A Catalogue of the English and Dutch Collections in the Museum of the Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine (London: Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine, 1969), pages 273-279.

THORNDIKE, op. cit. [note 3], page 477; CAREY P. MCCORD, "Bloodletting and Bandaging," Archives Environmental Health, volume 20 (April 1970), pages 551-553.

LEO ZIMMERMAN and VEITH ILZA, Great Ideas in the History of Surgery (New York: Dover Books, 1967), page 126.

WILLIAM HARVEY, Works, edited by Robert Willis (London: Sydenham Society, 1847), page 129. Harvey reaffirmed later: "I imagine that I shall perform a task not less new and useful than agreeable to philosophers and medical men, if I here briefly discourse of the causes and uses of the circulation, and expose other obscure matters respecting the blood" (page 381).

HENRY STUBBE, The Lord Bacons Relation of the Sweating-Sickness Examined ... Together with a Defense of Phlebotomy ... (London, 1671), page 102.

FIELDING H. GARRISON, "The History of Bloodletting," New York Medical Journal, volume 97 (1913), page 499. Magendie was firmly opposed to bloodletting and ordered physicians working under him not to bleed. However, their belief in the practice was so strong that they disobeyed his instructions and carried out the procedure. See ERWIN ACKERKNECHT, Therapeutics from the Primitives to the 20th Century (New York: Hafner, 1973), pages 111-112.

AUDREY B. DAVIS, Circulation Physiology and Medical Chemistry in England, 1650-1680 (Lawrence, Kansas: Coronado Press, 1973), pages 135, 167, 219. For the history of injecting remedies into the blood, see HORACE M. BROWN, "The Beginnings of Intravenous Medication," Annals of Medical History, volume 1 (1917), page 182.

ARTURO CASTIGLIONI, A History of Medicine, translated from Italian by E. B. Krumbhar, 2nd edition, revised and enlarged (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958), page 444; NIEBYL, "Venesection" [note 9], page 414.

JOAN LILLICO, "Primitive Bloodletting," Annals of Medical History,

Volume Ii (1940), Page 137.

C.J.S. THOMPSON, Guide to the Surgical Instruments and Objects in the Historical Series with Their History and Development (London: Taylor and Francis, 1929), page 40.

JOHN STEWART MILNE, Surgical Instruments in Greek and Roman Times (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1970), reprint of 1907 edition, pages 32-35. A bronze knife of this type is illustrated in THEODOR MEYER-STEINEG, Chirurgische Instrumente des Altertum (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1912), page iv, figure 9. The instrument was donated by Dr. Nylin of the Kardinska Institute in Stockholm, who used a lancet until 1940. Replicas of the early bronze medical instruments were sold in 1884 by Professor Francesco Scalzi of Rome. He exhibited 45 of them at the Exposition Universelle de Paris in 1878. He won an honorable mention award, "Collezione di Istrumenti Chirurgici de Roma Antica," 1884.

S. HOLTH, "Greco-Roman and Arabic Bronze Instruments and Their Medico-Surgical Use," Skriften utgit an Videnskapsselskapet I Kristrania (1919), page 1 (below). Holth lists the content of lead, tin, zinc, iron, copper, and cobalt found in a number of ancient bronze medical items in his collection, which formerly belonged to Baron Ustinov of Russia. These instruments were unearthed in Syria and Palestine from 1872 to 1890.

An occasional curious item like the spring lancet on display in the Welch Medical Library of the Johns Hopkins University is an exception.

MILNE, op cit. [note 43], pages 35-36.

LAURENCE HEISTER, A General System of Surgery in Three Parts, translated into English (London, 1759), 7th edition, page 294.

GURLT, op. cit. [note 1], volume III, page 558.

G. GAUJOT and E. SPILLMAN, Arsenal de la Chirurgie Contemporaine (Paris: J. B. Bailliere et fils, 1872), pages 274-276.

MILNE, op. cit. [note 43], page 33.

GARRISON, op. cit. [note 38], page 433.

SIR WILLIAM FERGUSON, Lectures on the Progress of Anatomy and Surgery during the Present Century (London: John Churchill & Sons, 1867), page 284.

JAMES EWELL, The Medical Companion (Philadelphia, 1816), pages 405, 406.

For an illustration of incisions, see HEISTER, (1759), op. cit. [note 47].

MILNE, op. cit. [note 43], page 36.

GURLT, op. cit. [note 1], volume III, page 556.

P. Hamonic describes an eighteenth-century Naples porcelain figure of a woman being bled that illustrates the elegant manner in which the operation was performed. P. HAMONIC, La Chirurgie et la medecine d'autrefois d'apres une premiere serie d'instruments anciens renfermes dans mes collections (Paris: A. Maloine, ed., 1900), pages 91, 93.

THOMAS DICKSON, A Treatise on Bloodletting with an Introduction Recommending a Review of the Materia Medica (London, 1765), page 1.

SIR D'ARCY POWER, editor, British Medical Societies (London: The Medical Press Circular, 1939), page 23.

Wakeley was a heretic wealthy doctor who led the campaign in Britain against the monopoly of surgical training and practice held by the Royal College of Surgeons of London. ALAN ARNOLD KLASS, There's Gold in "Them Thar Pills" (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1975), pages 158-159.

JOHN HARVEY POWELL, Bring Out Your Dead (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1949), page 123.

See, e.g., RICHARD SHRYOCK, Medicine and Society in America: 1660-1860 (New York: New York University Press, 1960), pages 67, 111-112.

JAMES T. FLEXNER, George Washington: Anguish and Farewell (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), pages 457-459.

BARBARA DUNCUM, The Development of Inhalation Anesthesia (The Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, Oxford University Press, 1947), page 195.

HAMONIC, op. cit. [note 57], pages 95-96.

DONALD D. SHIRA, "Phlebotomy Lancet," Ohio State Medical Journal,

Volume 35 (1939), Page 67.

HEISTER, (1719) loc. cit. [note 18].

Encyclopedia or Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences, 1st American edition (Philadelphia, 1798).

RISTELHUEBER, "Notice: sur la flammette, phlebotome des Allemands, Fliete, Schnepper oder gefederte Fliete, phlebotomus elasticus, Flamme ou flammette," Journal de Medecine, chirurgie et pharmacologie, volume 37 (Paris, 1816), pages 9-17.

JOHN SYNG DORSEY, Elements of Surgery: For the Use of Students,

Volume 2 (philadelphia, 1813), Pages 279-281.

Patent specifications, U.S. patent 16479.

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