The term ‘Phlebotomy’ Essay

Phlebotomy comes from the Hellenic word phlebos, meaning venous declination vessels, and tome, meaning incision. gore is one of the humanitys oldest health check designs, dating back thousands of years and is cerebrate to many antique cultures, including the Mayans, Aztecs, Egyptians and Mesopotamians. Evidence suggests battue for therapeutic lands whitethorn have begun in Egypt around 1400B.C. Tomb paintings from this time usher the application of a leech to a forbearing. The pattern was to mend a someone suffering from some kind of debility (leprosy, plague, pneumonia, stroke, and inflammation, pretty much anything). The patient was pierced or issue and then run out of several ounces of kind until they fainted.In antique Greek culture, a physician named Galen of Pergamon took the practice in a more(prenominal)(prenominal) scientific direction when he disc all overed that arteries were modify with farm animal, not air. Galens approach to bloodbath was based on two strike ideals. First, Galen believed that blood didnt circulate, but stayed smooth in the body until it either went stagnant or was let out. Secondly, he mind the balance of the quartette humors (blood, phlegm, black crust and yellow bile) was the source of health or illness. Mapping out the blood vessels of the body, Galen would cut his patients in different cranial orbits, depending on what area he wanted to breed. For example, the right top would be cut and bolted in pasture to negotiate liver problems. He was similarly cognize to give his patients drugs in order to induce vomiting or urination. battue was also prominent in the early long time of some of the humans most practiced religions.The Talmud (a profound text of Judaism) included rules for days where battue could be practiced. Early Christian literary works outlined which saints days were the best for the ritual. Bloodletting is also reference as a sermon for fevers in some early Islamic texts. k eep into the middle ages both surgeons and barbers were specializing in this spread over practice. Barber punts which still decorate the outsides of barber shops are a leftover customs dating back to the days of barber gore. The swirling red line on the pole represents the blood itself, the white represents the tourniquet, and the pole itself represents the begin the patient would squeeze in his/her choke in order to dilate the veins.Bloodletting as a aesculapian affair migrated to the Americas along with the European colonists, stretching in time from the residents of Plymouth to the Founding Fathers. Physician gum benzoin Rush (one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence) recommended bloodletting to his patients on a consistent basis. As a matter of fact, George Washington, the front U.S. president, died in 1799 from a throat infection after having 3.75 liters (9 pints) of blood removed from his body within a 10 hour period as reportment for a throat infec tion. The draining of 16-30 ounces (1-4 pints) of blood was typical. Blood was often caught in a shallow bowl. When the patient became faint, the treatment was stopped. Bleeding was often encouraged over large areas of the body by threefold incisions. By the end of the 19th nose weeddy (1875-1900), Phlebotomy was declared quackery.The main surgical operation of bloodletting in 19th coke medicine included the use of leeches to drain blood from a patient. During the 1830s, France imported around 40 million leeches for the purpose of bloodletting. Francois-Joseph-Victor Broussais, a French physician, would reportedly recommend his patients be treated with as many as 50 leeches at a time. Bloodletting, also known as venesection, managed to survive into the first part of the 20th light speed it was scour recommended in a 1923 edition of a textbook called The Principles and Practice of Medicine. During those days, there were four main bloodletting methods practiced by physicians. The first was the continued use of leeches as a bloodletting source.The second was called arteriotomy, a process in which the arteries in the temples would be punctured and bled. The third was phlebotomy (also known as breathing a vein) where a large external vein would be cut in order to draw blood. The last was scarification a particularly stomach-turning method which involved one of a varied set of tools made for the purpose of attacking superficial blood vessels. such(prenominal) frauds included spring-loaded lancets and a circular, mutli-bladed, device known as a scarificator. The scarificator had a series of twelve blades. The device was cocked and the institution released spring-driven rotary blades that caused many shallow cuts. The scarificator seemed more merciful than opposite bloodletting instruments.The reason bloodletting died comes as no awe to ultra ultramodern readers that bloodletting killed far more wad than it cured. Still, it wasnt until the 19th ampere -second that members of the medical examination community seriously questioned the merits of this practice. In the 1830s, Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis convincingly argued against the perceived strong point of phlebotomy for the treatment of pneumonia and fever. Ironically, with the gradual mitigate of bloodletting there was an increase of other dangerous and ineffective treatments, such as the use of electricity, elixirs and potions.These medications gained popularity for the same reason that bloodletting had in earlier times it sometimes worked as a placebo. Because the patients believed that receiving electric coldcock therapy would heal their illness, the psychological factor may have been enough to actually collapse them feel better. As the 20th snow brought a myriad of new medical knowledge, technology and medicine, however, these archaic practices (including bloodletting) died out nigh entirely within a hardly a(prenominal) decades. With the advent of modern medi cine, bloodletting was remembered as a historical fad, similar to the guillotine as a form of expiry penalty.After nearly a century of new medical knowledge and leaps of win that include the development of electron microscopes, social function the human genome and cloning living tissue, how is it accomplishable that the medical field is reconsidering the use of this ancient practice? The answer is fairly transparent Where ancient bloodletting was used to treat and prevent almost every disease imaginable, modern bloodletting (or phlebotomy) is used except to treat specific medical sees of which medical research has proven the benefits. Research has shown that bloodletting could improve cholesterol, blood pressure and blood glucose levels for people suffering from metabolic syndrome. metabolous syndrome is a term used to throw a line the list of medical problems facing people who are obese, such as hypertension, insulin resistance and glucose intolerance.People with this c ondition are at risk for clots and strokes. Bloodletting thins down the patients blood, helping to prevent these problems. possibly the most common use for modern bloodletting is a hereditary push-overload condition known as hemochromatosis. As iron builds in the patients blood, it send word have a negative invasion on various areas of the body, including the heart and the joints. This can eventually lead to disease and reed organ failure. Bloodletting, now commonly referred to as a blood donation, is applied as the main treatment for hemochromatosis, with patients having their blood interpreted on at least an annual basis for life.There is another modern form of bloodletting worth noting, if nought else, because it never actually went away in the first place. Leeches have continued to be used for certain medical treatments end-to-end the 20th century right up to the present day. Whereas leeches were formerly used to treat all sorts of injuries and sicknesses, today they are more often than not used by doctors in the reattaching of cut off body parts such as fingers and toes. Attaching leeches is effective because they can help to get rid of any extra blood that might start problematically flood in the tissue.Phlebotomy plays a major role in preventive healthcare, diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Although the instruments and methods used for obtaining blood in the beginning may appear oil colour in comparison to the instruments and methods we use today, the concept remains the same. The exception being, instead of victimization bloodletting as a cure to remove the illness we use it as a way to analyze, diagnose and treat the illness. Without phlebotomy the process of accurately study diseases and infections would be impossible.