Bloodletting Instruments in the National Museum of History and Technology Part 13

Toby Appel, Charles Willson Peale Papers, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Inst.i.tution, Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. 20560._

[B] "White metal" is the technical term for an undetermined silver colored metal alloy. See discussion of materials at beginning of index.

NOTES

[1] Julius Gurlt's bibliographical essay on bloodletting, originally published in 1898, is a prime source for tracing in detail the specific contributions of European and Asian authors in the ancient, medieval, and Renaissance periods. See JULIUS GURLT, _Geschichte der Chirurgie und ihrer Ausuebung_ (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1964), volume 3, page 556-565.

[2] GEORGE F. KNOX, _The Art of Cupping_ (London, 1836), page 30.

[3] For a general history of bloodletting, see TOWNSEND W. THORNDIKE, "A History of Bleeding and Leeching," _British Medical and Surgical Journal_, volume 197, number 12 (September 1927), pages 437-477. For a detailed account of ancient bloodletting, see RUDOLPH SIEGEL, "Galen's Concept of Bloodletting in Relation to His Ideas on Pulmonary and Peripheral Blood Flow and Blood Formation" (chapter 19 in volume 1 of _Science, Medicine and Society in the Renaissance_ edited by Allen Debus, New York: Science History Publications, 1973), pages 247-275.

[4] ROBERT MONTRAVILLE GREEN, "A Translation of Galen's Temperaments and Venesection" (ma.n.u.script, Yale Medical Library, New Haven, Connecticut), page 102.

[5] Ibid., page ii-iv.

[6] CELSUS, _De Medicina_, translated by W. G. Spencer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), volume 1, book 2, page 155.

[7] HENRY E. SIGERIST, _A History of Medicine_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), volume II, pages 317-335.

[8] GREEN, op. cit. [note 4], page 105.

[9] PETER H. NIEBYL, "Galen, Van Helmont and Blood Letting," (chapter 21 in volume 2 of _Science, Medicine and Society in the Renaissance_ edited by Allen Debus, New York: Science History Publications, 1972); PETER NIEBYL, "Venesection and the Concept of the Foreign Body: A Historical Study in the Therapeutic Consequences of Humoral and Traumatic Consequences of Diseases" (doctoral dissertation, Yale University, 1969), page 156.

[10] GREEN, op. cit. [note 4], page 171.

[11] Ibid., page 114.

[12] Ibid., page 173.

[13] Ibid., pages 174, 180.

[14] CELSUS, op. cit. [note 6], page 163.

[15] CHARLES H. TALBOT, _Medicine in Medieval England_ (London: Oldbourne, 1967), pages 127-131.

[16] CHARLES D. O'MALLEY, _Andreas Vesalius of Brussels 1514-1564_ (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964), pages 66-67.

[17] See, for example, M. DAVID, _Recherches sur la maniere d'agir de la saignee et sur les effets qu'elle produit relativement a la partie ou on la fait_ (Paris, 1762), page iv.

[18] LORENZ HEISTER, _Chirurgie, in welcher alles, was zur wund artzney geh.o.r.et ..._ (Nuremberg, 1719).

[19] GREEN, op. cit. [note 4], page 179.

[20] JOSEPH T. SMITH, SR., "An Historical Sketch of Bloodletting," _Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin_, volume 21 (1910), page 312.

[21] MARSHALL HALL, _Observations on Bloodletting Founded upon Researches on the Morbid and Curative Effects of Loss of Blood_ (London, 1836), page 280.

[22] ROBLEY DUNGLISON, _Medical Lexicon--A Dictionary of Medical Science_ (Philadelphia, 1848), page 820.

[23] JAMES E. BOWMAN, "Blood," _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ (Chicago: William Benton, 1972), volume 34, pages 795-800.

[24] GREEN, op. cit. [note 4], page 187.

[25] KARL SUDHOFF, _Deutsche medizinische Inkunabeln_ (Leipzig, 1908); Studien zur Geschichte der Medizin heft 2/3. SIR WILLIAM OSLER, _Incunabula Medica: A Study of the Earliest Printed Medical Books, 1467-1480_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923).

[26] FRANCISCO GUERRA, "Medical Almanacs of the American Colonial Period,"

_Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences_, volume 16 (1961), pages 235-237. The number of veins ill.u.s.trated in the vein man varied a great deal but became fewer after the seventeenth century.

[27] TALBOT, op. cit. [note 15], pages 127-131.

[28] GUERRA, op. cit. [note 26], pages 237; MARION BARBER STOWELL, _Early American Almanacs: The Colonial Weekday Bible_ (New York: Burt Franklin, 1977). The latter work contains numerous ill.u.s.trations of "anatomies" from colonial almanacs.

[29] "Original Letters," General William F. Gordon to Thomas Walker Gilmar, 11 December 1832, _William and Mary Quarterly_, volume 21 (July 1912), page 67.

[30] TALBOT, op. cit. [note 15], pages 50, 51. For another view of the religious impact upon medieval medical and surgical practices, see JAMES J. WALSH, _The Popes and Science_ (New York: Fordham University Press, 1908), pages 167-198.

[31] THORNDIKE, op. cit. [note 3], page 477.

[32] MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA, _Don Quixote de la Mancha_, translated by Walter Starkie (New York: Mentor, 1963), pages 91, 92.

[33] CHARLES ALVERSON, "Surgeon Abel's Exotic Bleeding Bowls," _Prism_, volume 2 (July 1974), pages 16-18; JOHN K. CRELLIN, "Medical Ceramics," in _A Catalogue of the English and Dutch Collections in the Museum of the Wellcome Inst.i.tute of the History of Medicine_ (London: Wellcome Inst.i.tute of the History of Medicine, 1969), pages 273-279.

[34] THORNDIKE, op. cit. [note 3], page 477; CAREY P. MCCORD, "Bloodletting and Bandaging," _Archives Environmental Health_, volume 20 (April 1970), pages 551-553.

[35] LEO ZIMMERMAN and VEITH ILZA, _Great Ideas in the History of Surgery_ (New York: Dover Books, 1967), page 126.

[36] WILLIAM HARVEY, _Works_, edited by Robert Willis (London: Sydenham Society, 1847), page 129. Harvey reaffirmed later: "I imagine that I shall perform a task not less new and useful than agreeable to philosophers and medical men, if I here briefly discourse of the causes and uses of the circulation, and expose other obscure matters respecting the blood" (page 381).

[37] HENRY STUBBE, _The Lord Bacons Relation of the Sweating-Sickness Examined ... Together with a Defense of Phlebotomy ..._ (London, 1671), page 102.

[38] FIELDING H. GARRISON, "The History of Bloodletting," _New York Medical Journal_, volume 97 (1913), page 499. Magendie was firmly opposed to bloodletting and ordered physicians working under him not to bleed.

However, their belief in the practice was so strong that they disobeyed his instructions and carried out the procedure. See ERWIN ACKERKNECHT, _Therapeutics from the Primitives to the 20th Century_ (New York: Hafner, 1973), pages 111-112.

[39] AUDREY B. DAVIS, _Circulation Physiology and Medical Chemistry in England, 1650-1680_ (Lawrence, Kansas: Coronado Press, 1973), pages 135, 167, 219. For the history of injecting remedies into the blood, see HORACE M. BROWN, "The Beginnings of Intravenous Medication," _Annals of Medical History_, volume 1 (1917), page 182.

[40] ARTURO CASTIGLIONI, _A History of Medicine_, translated from Italian by E. B. Krumbhar, 2nd edition, revised and enlarged (New York: Alfred A.

Knopf, 1958), page 444; NIEBYL, "Venesection" [note 9], page 414.

[41] JOAN LILLICO, "Primitive Bloodletting," _Annals of Medical History_, volume II (1940), page 137.

[42] C.J.S. THOMPSON, _Guide to the Surgical Instruments and Objects in the Historical Series with Their History and Development_ (London: Taylor and Francis, 1929), page 40.

[43] JOHN STEWART MILNE, _Surgical Instruments in Greek and Roman Times_ (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1970), reprint of 1907 edition, pages 32-35. A bronze knife of this type is ill.u.s.trated in THEODOR MEYER-STEINEG, _Chirurgische Instrumente des Altertum_ (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1912), page iv, figure 9. The instrument was donated by Dr. Nylin of the Kardinska Inst.i.tute in Stockholm, who used a lancet until 1940.

Replicas of the early bronze medical instruments were sold in 1884 by Professor Francesco Scalzi of Rome. He exhibited 45 of them at the Exposition Universelle de Paris in 1878. He won an honorable mention award, "Collezione di Istrumenti Chirurgici de Roma Antica," 1884.