Transfusion, Cupping, and Counterirritation
Early transfusions were based on the notion that receiving blood could be yet another way in which to help balance the humours.
Early transfusions were based on the notion that receiving blood could be yet another way in which to help balance the humours.
Following the application of a tourniquet, physicians withdrew blood using a number of instruments including a thumb lancet that might be carried in a small case, a single bladed spring-loaded lancet, or perhaps a multiple bladed scarificator.
The word leech is derived from the Old English word “laece,” or doctor, and Syrian physicians reportedly first used leeches for bleeding as early as 100 B.C. This was a painless and efficient way of drawing blood since the leech excretes several hormones including one to anesthetize the bite, one to dilate vessels to insure flow, and a third, hirudin, to act as an anticoagulant.
Physicians have used instrumentation from the earliest times to aid in their investigation of diseases, and similar interest in documenting the vital signs remains important in modern diagnosis.
When early physicians had little more to offer than herbs, potions, and minor surgical procedures, the art of physical diagnosis played a very important role in the practice of medicine.
"Learn to see, learn to hear, learn to feel, learn to smell, and know that by practice alone can you become expert. Medicine is learned by the bedside and not in the classroom. Let not your conceptions of the manifestations of disease come from words heard in the lecture room or read from the book. See, and then reason and compare and control. But see first."
William Osler, MD (1919)
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"...daily experience satisfies us that bloodletting has a most salutary effect in many diseases, and is indeed the foremost among all the general remedial means..."
Sir William Harvey (1847)
In the fifth century B.C., Hippocrates established a unified theory regarding the etiology of various diseases that subsequently influenced medical care for centuries. In his proposed rules of harmony, he taught that all body systems were represented by four humours which were naturally balanced and that disease was a result of an interruption in those relationships. Bleeding has been practiced since the time of the Egyptians, and was a way of balancing those humours.
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