This morning I sat in the blood donor chair again and gave one unit of red blood cells and two of plasma. It takes awhile, probably an hour counting the intake interview, then they want you to sit in their waiting room for fifteen minutes before leaving. I don’t mind sitting the extra time because I partake of lots of their free pop and snacks. While the pump was drawing blood out of my body and circulating solution back in I had time to look around. One gentleman came after I was settled in and I couldn’t help but notice that he wore something remarkable - jeans with patches on the knees.
My mind turned to the archaic system of blood letting to cure sick people of their ailments, and those procedures weren’t very sophisticated. In fact, the barbers did a lot of the work including tooth extraction. Today’s barber poles with their red and white stripes reflect that. The pole represents the stick that the patients gripped in misery, and the stripes the bloody bandages that were wrapped around to dry. The shaped bottom of a pole represents the leech pot.
One of the first medical clinical trials on record took place in France in 1836. There a doctor treated pneumonia with blood letting, and some he didn’t. After a period of time he noticed the pile of dead bodies stood taller where they were stacked by the blood letting sink than the untreated pile. He determined that blood letting probably harmed the patients. Quite an epiphany, I’d say.
As far as famous people treated with the procedure I read where Andrew Jackson submitted. My history said, “Periodically, he experienced episodes of hemorrhaging and difficulties breathing, for which he was bled.”
