- medieval hospitals
- [bloodletting]
- Burton Abbey and its monks
- St Modwen
- the Manor House
bloodletting in the Middle Ages
Bloodletting -- the systematic removal of a quantity of blood from the body for medical reasons, formally called phlebotomy -- was carried out from at least the time of ancient Greece.
It was believed that there were four specific bodily fluids -- or humours -- essential to the correct functioning of the body. These fluids were: blood, phlegm, bile (or choler) and black bile (or melancholy). Blood was particularly special. The substance found in the body was thought to be pure humour blood mixed with lesser amounts of the three other humours. Proof of this was found by letting blood stand in a glass container: the changes in colour and the partial separation of the blood into clear and coloured parts were seen as evidence of the presence of the biles and phlegm.
The balance of the humours was held to be responsible for a person's well-being, not only physical but also psychological. (This belief is today enshrined in the English words 'sanguine' (literally 'blood red'), 'phlegmatic', 'choleric' and 'melancholy'.) Too much or too little of one or the other could lead to disease and psychological distress.
Bloodletting was one of the most frequently used forms of general therapy carried out by medieval doctors, to remove 'corrupt' matter from the body and simply as a health maintenance practice. Practitioners had a variety of textbooks and manuals that gave advice on when and how to perform bloodletting and how much to take. (Astrology was also employed to pinpoint the correct times.) Usually blood was drawn from one of the three major veins of the arm, but it could be taken from other veins for particular conditions -- for example, from a vein in the forehead to treat melancholy.
Bloodletting as a medical therapy lasted right up to the 19th century. Mrs Beeton included instructions for it in her Book of Household Management of 1861. Critics of it believed that George Washington was bled to death during his last illness in 1799.
bloodletting and the Abbot
In the winter of 1150/51, Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, wrote to a doctor called Bartholemeus, complaining about his previous medical treatment and hoping for better advice from this new practitioner.
He told Master Bartholemeus that, owing to pressure of monastery business, he had postponed his regular bimonthly bloodletting -- with, for him, disastrous consequences. He developed catarrh and began to fear that an overabundance of blood and phlegm would bring on a fever. But he had been warned that bloodletting while he had catarrh might cause him to lose his voice and might also be life-threatening. So he waited for four months, and then had two large amounts of blood drawn off within three weeks. But as he had been warned, his catarrh remained and his voice suffered, which prevented him from celebrating the liturgy and preaching.
Peter had been told by the doctors that he had consulted locally that his continued ill health was the result of a loss of the heat of the blood taken during the bloodletting, which left cold and 'sluggish phlegm diffused through the veins and vital channels'. Peter continued:
There were many and varied discussions about my case among the medical practitioners in attendance. And although what they were saying didn't seem very reasonable to me, I gave in to them. I have used the diet and medicines they recommended for almost three months already, but up to now I feel very little, indeed scarcely at all, better.
Bartholemeus recommended hot baths, inhaling medicated steam, poultices for the chest, lozenges to dissolve in the mouth, gargles and, for good measure, laxatives.
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