Bloodletting
Gems from Fielding Garrison’s 1911 “The History of Bloodletting:”
“Someone has said that when prehistoric man first hit upon the expedient of picking up a stick or a stone with which to smite his fellow-man, he had already made his first step in the direction of civilization. If he drew blood on that momentous occasion, in some degree short of manslaughter, we should already have an instance of bloodletting. It was in some such empirical way as this that early man first changed upon venesection as a reliable mode of treatment.”
….quoting from the Salernitan Regimen sanitatis (12th C.):
“Bleeding soothes rage, brings joy unto the sad, and saves all lovesick swains from going mad.”
“To mortals there will come superior gain, from tapping off the Salvatella vein; it frees the voice, spleen, liver and the chest, And heard, where’er abnormally distressed.”
