curiouser and curiouser

Well, she looks happy.

For the past few months, either because I just haven't had the time to get a new book, or simply through sheer laziness, I've been reading and re-reading Madame Bovary inside out. It was the book that just happened to be at hand when I was stuck in bed, and it never left. I'd read it several times over in the past, so now I honestly think I must know the thing inside out haha... I cannot help being fascinated by Flaubert's observations of human character and weakness; his study of human relations and domestic life are to me surpassed only by Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.

But this is not a post about Madame Bovary -- it is a post about bloodletting. Yes, bloodletting. You see, there's this pivotal part in the novel where Emma meets Rodolphe for the first time; on that occasion, he is bringing his ploughman to Emma's husband to be bled. Well, anyone who's read anything from antiquity till the late 19th century will surely have come across the curious practice; I think we all have some vague notion of what it's about, sometimes even seeing it done in the odd movie or two.

In the English translation, the man insists on being bled because he "felt a tingling all over". I remember reading the original French in school, which said that he "voulait etre saigne parce qu'il eprouvait des fourmis le long du corps" -- something like "he felt ants all along his body". I wasn't quite sure I understood how bloodletting would help; however, considering that all the characters in the novel went ahead with it quite willingly, I think it's obvious that this was a common treatment for general vague things like that.

Well, having read it again and again and again over the past months, I finally decided to look it up. And this was what I discovered: "Bloodletting was based on an ancient system of medicine in which blood and other bodily fluid were regarded as "humors" that had to remain in proper balance to maintain health. It was the most common medical practice performed by physicians...

"It is conceivable that historically, in the absence of other treatments for hypertension, bloodletting could sometimes have had a beneficial effect in temporarily reducing blood pressure by reducing blood volume. However, since hypertension is very often asymptomatic and thus undiagnosable without modern methods, this effect was unintentional. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the historical use of bloodletting was harmful to patients...

"Bloodletting is one of the oldest medical techniques, having been practiced among ancient peoples including the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Mayans, and the Aztecs... "Bleeding" a patient to health was modeled on the process of menstruation. Hippocrates believed that menstruation functioned to "purge women of bad humors"...

"Even after the humoral system fell into disuse, the practice was continued by surgeons and barber-surgeons. Though the bloodletting was often recommended by physicians, it was carried out by barbers... The red-and-white-striped pole of the barbershop, still in use today, is derived from this practice: the red represents the blood being drawn, the white represents the tourniquet used, and the pole itself represents the stick squeezed in the patient's hand to dilate the veins. Bloodletting was used to "treat" a wide range of diseases, becoming a standard treatment for almost every ailment...

"A number of different methods were employed. The most common was phlebotomy, or venesection (often called "breathing a vein"), in which blood was drawn from one or more of the larger external veins, such as those in the forearm or neck... Leeches could also be used. The withdrawal of so much blood as to induce syncope (fainting) was considered beneficial, and many sessions would only end when the patient began to swoon...

"Today it is well established that bloodletting is not effective for most diseases... However, in the case of hemochromatosis, which is now recognized as the most common genetic, or inherited, disorder, frequent bloodletting has become an essential, and life-saving procedure" (sourced from Wikipedia).

I was particularly intrigued by the reference to the barber pole -- who knew?