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84-415: Andries van Wezel (31 December 1514 – 15 October 1564), latinised as Andreas Vesalius ( / v ɪ ˈ s eɪ l i ə s / ), was an anatomist and physician who wrote De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem ( On the fabric of the human body in seven books ), which is considered one of the most influential books on human anatomy and a major advance over the long-dominant work of Galen . Vesalius

168-455: A call for a "fair trial for blood-letting as a remedy" in 1871. Some researchers used statistical methods for evaluating treatment effectiveness to discourage bloodletting. But at the same time, publications by Philip Pye-Smith and others defended bloodletting on scientific grounds. Bloodletting persisted into the 20th century and was recommended in the 1923 edition of the textbook The Principles and Practice of Medicine . The textbook

252-640: A contemporary Greek physician, Archagathus , one of the first to practice in Rome , did believe in the value of bloodletting. "Bleeding" a patient to health was modeled on the process of menstruation . Hippocrates believed that menstruation functioned to "purge women of bad humours". During the Roman Empire , the Greek physician Galen , who subscribed to the teachings of Hippocrates, advocated physician-initiated bloodletting . The popularity of bloodletting in

336-419: A human pelvis I pass a stout rope tied like a noose beneath the lower jaw and through the zygomas up to the top of the head... The lower end of the noose I run through a pulley fixed to a beam in the room so that I may raise or lower the cadaver as it hangs there or turn around in any direction to suit my purpose; ... You must take care not to put the noose around the neck, unless some of the muscles connected to

420-556: A lecturer at the Royal College of Physicians would still state that "blood-letting is a remedy which, when judiciously employed, it is hardly possible to estimate too highly", and Louis was dogged by the sanguinary Broussais , who could recommend leeches fifty at a time. Some physicians resisted Louis' work because they "were not prepared to discard therapies 'validated by both tradition and their own experience on account of somebody else's numbers'." During this era, bloodletting

504-528: A mere barber surgeon instead of an academic working on the respected basis of theory. In the 1540s, shortly after entering in service of the emperor, Vesalius married Anne van Hamme, from Vilvorde, Belgium. They had one daughter, named Anne, who died in 1588. Over the next eleven years Vesalius traveled with the court, treating injuries caused in battle or tournaments, performing postmortems, administering medication, and writing private letters addressing specific medical questions. During these years he also wrote

588-505: A pilgrimage. That story re-surfaced several times, until it was more recently revised. The decision to undertake the pilgrimage was likely just a pretext to leave the Spanish court. Its lifestyle did not please him and he longed to continue his research. Given that he could not get rid of his royal service by resignation, he managed to escape asking for the permission to go to Jerusalem. In 1543, Vesalius asked Johannes Oporinus to publish

672-513: A specific day of the week and days of the month for bloodletting in the Shabbat tractate , and similar rules, though less codified, can be found among Christian writings advising which saints' days were favourable for bloodletting. During medieval times bleeding charts were common, showing specific bleeding sites on the body in alignment with the planets and zodiacs. Islamic medical authors also advised bloodletting, particularly for fevers. It

756-484: A spring-loaded mechanism with gears that snaps the blades out through slits in the front cover and back in, in a circular motion. The case is cast brass, and the mechanism and blades steel. One knife bar gear has slipped teeth, turning the blades in a different direction than those on the other bars. The last photo and the diagram show the depth adjustment bar at the back and sides. Leeches could also be used. The withdrawal of so much blood as to induce syncope (fainting)

840-449: A student of Titian. It was with van Calcar that Vesalius published his first anatomical text, Tabulae Anatomicae Sex , in 1538. Previously these topics had been taught primarily from reading classical texts, mainly Galen , followed by an animal dissection by a barber–surgeon whose work was directed by the lecturer. No attempt was made to confirm Galen's claims, which were considered unassailable. Vesalius, in contrast, performed dissection as

924-420: A total of 40 more leeches. The sergeant recovered and was discharged on 3 October. His physician wrote that "by the large quantity of blood lost, amounting to 170 ounces [nearly eleven pints] (4.8 liters), besides that drawn by the application of leeches [perhaps another two pints] (1.1 liters), the life of the patient was preserved". By nineteenth-century standards, thirteen pints of blood taken over

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1008-536: Is a common practice for scientific names . For example, Livistona , the name of a genus of palm trees, is a Latinisation of Livingstone . During the age of the Roman Empire , translation of names into Latin (in the West) or Greek (in the East) was common. Additionally, Latinised versions of Greek substantives , particularly proper nouns , could easily be declined by Latin speakers with minimal modification of

1092-459: Is a plant genus in the honeysuckle family Caprifoliaceae and it was named in Vesalius's honour. Latinisation of names Latinisation (or Latinization ) of names , also known as onomastic Latinisation , is the practice of rendering a non - Latin name in a modern Latin style. It is commonly found with historical proper names , including personal names and toponyms , and in

1176-571: Is dismissed by modern biographers. It appears the story was spread by Hubert Languet , a diplomat under Emperor Charles V and then under the Prince of Orange , who claimed in 1565 that Vesalius had performed an autopsy on an aristocrat in Spain while the heart was still beating, leading to the Inquisition's condemning him to death. The story went on to claim that Philip II had the sentence commuted to

1260-439: Is internationally consistent. Latinisation may be carried out by: Humanist names, assumed by Renaissance humanists , were largely Latinised names, though in some cases (e.g. Melanchthon ) they invoked Ancient Greek . Latinisation in humanist names may consist of translation from vernacular European languages, sometimes involving a playful element of punning. Such names could be a cover for humble social origins. The title of

1344-649: Is often referred to as the founder of modern human anatomy . He was born in Brussels , which was then part of the Habsburg Netherlands . He was a professor at the University of Padua (1537–1542) and later became Imperial physician at the court of Emperor Charles V . Vesalius was born as Andries van Wesel to his father Anders van Wesel and mother Isabel Crabbe on 31 December 1514 in Brussels, which

1428-604: The Ebers Papyrus may indicate that bloodletting by scarification was an accepted practice in Ancient Egypt . Egyptian burials have been reported to contain bloodletting instruments. According to some accounts, the Egyptians based the idea on their observations of the hippopotamus , confusing its red secretions with blood and believing that it scratched itself to relieve distress. In Greece, bloodletting

1512-612: The Fabrica , he wrote his Epistola rationem modumque propinandi radicis Chynae decocti , commonly known as the Epistle on the China Root. Ostensibly an appraisal of a popular but ineffective treatment for gout, syphilis, and stones , this work is especially important as a continued polemic against Galenism and a reply to critics in the camp of his former professor Jacobus Sylvius, now an obsessive detractor. In February 1561, Vesalius

1596-565: The Ionian Sea , he was shipwrecked on the island of Zakynthos . Here he soon died, in such debt that a benefactor kindly paid for his funeral. At the time of his death he was 49 years old. He was buried somewhere on the island of Zakynthos (Zante). For some time, it was assumed that Vesalius's pilgrimage was due to the pressures imposed on him by the Inquisition . Today, this assumption is generally considered to be without foundation and

1680-434: The ductus venosus . He described the omentum and its connections with the stomach, the spleen and the colon ; gave the first correct views of the structure of the pylorus ; observed the small size of the caecal appendix in man; gave the first good account of the mediastinum and pleura and the fullest description of the anatomy of the brain up to that time. He did not understand the inferior recesses, and his account of

1764-472: The occipital bone have already been cut away. In 1538, Vesalius wrote Epistola, docens venam axillarem dextri cubiti in dolore laterali secandam ( A letter, teaching that in cases of pain in the side, the axillary vein of the right elbow be cut ), commonly known as the Venesection Letter, which demonstrated a revived venesection , a classical procedure in which blood was drawn near the site of

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1848-422: The sphenoid bone , he showed that the sternum consists of three portions and the sacrum of five or six, and described accurately the vestibule in the interior of the temporal bone . He not only verified Estienne 's observations on the valves of the hepatic veins , but also described the vena azygos , and discovered the canal which passes in the fetus between the umbilical vein and the vena cava, since named

1932-759: The " Wilhelmus ", national anthem of the Netherlands , preserves a Latinised form of the name of William the Silent . In English, place names often appear in Latinised form. This is a result of many early text books mentioning the places being written in Latin. Because of this, the English language often uses Latinised forms of foreign place names instead of anglicised forms or the original names. Examples of Latinised names for countries or regions are: Latinisation

2016-440: The 17th century, the key to curing disease remained elusive, and the underlying belief was that it was better to give any treatment than nothing at all. The psychological benefit of bloodletting to the patient (a placebo effect ) may sometimes have outweighed the physiological problems it caused. Bloodletting slowly lost favour during the 19th century, after French physician Dr. Pierre Louis conducted an experiment in which he studied

2100-435: The 1880s and onwards, disputing Bennett's premise that bloodletting had fallen into disuse because it did not work. These advocates framed bloodletting as an orthodox medical practice, to be used in spite of its general unpopularity. Some physicians considered bloodletting useful for a more limited range of purposes, such as to "clear out" infected or weakened blood or its ability to "cause hæmorrhages to cease"—as evidenced in

2184-463: The Emperor. The Fabrica emphasized the priority of dissection and what has come to be called the " anatomical " view of the body, seeing human internal functioning as a result of an essentially corporeal structure filled with organs arranged in three-dimensional space. His book contains drawings of several organs on two leaves. This allows for the creation of three-dimensional diagrams by cutting out

2268-520: The Epistle on the China root , a short text on the properties of a medical plant whose efficacy he doubted, as well as a defense of his anatomical findings. This elicited a new round of attacks on his work that called for him to be punished by the emperor. In 1551, Charles V commissioned an inquiry in Salamanca to investigate the religious implications of his methods. Although Vesalius' work was cleared by

2352-576: The Holy Land, some said, in penance after being accused of dissecting a living body. He sailed with the Venetian fleet under James Malatesta via Cyprus . When he reached Jerusalem he received a message from the Venetian senate requesting him again to accept the Paduan professorship, which had become vacant on the death of contemporary Fallopius . After struggling for many days with adverse winds in

2436-504: The On the fabric of the human body ) more commonly known as the Epitome , with a stronger focus on illustrations than on text, so as to help readers, including medical students, to easily understand his findings. The actual text of the Epitome was an abridged form of his work in the Fabrica , and the organization of the two books was quite varied. He dedicated it to Philip II of Spain , son of

2520-516: The ailment. He sought to locate the precise site for venesection in pleurisy within the framework of the classical method. The real significance of the book is his attempt to support his arguments by the location and continuity of the venous system from his observations rather than appeal to earlier published works. With this novel approach to the problem of venesection, Vesalius posed the then striking hypothesis that anatomical dissection might be used to test speculation. In 1546, three years after

2604-567: The area in pain than vice versa. This suggests that colocalized bloodletting could be a cultural attractor and is more likely to be culturally transmitted, even among people in the US who are likely more familiar with non-colocalized bloodletting. Bloodletting as a concept is thought to be a cultural attractor, or an intrinsically attractive / culturally transmissible concept. This could explain bloodletting's independent cross-cultural emergence and common cross-cultural traits. The Talmud recommended

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2688-399: The board, the attacks continued. Four years later one of his main detractors and one-time professors, Jacobus Sylvius, published an article that claimed that the human body itself had changed since Galen had studied it. In 1555, Vesalius became physician to Philip II, and in the same year he published a revised edition of De humani corporis fabrica . In 1564 Vesalius went on a pilgrimage to

2772-567: The bones, finally donating the skeleton to the University of Basel . This preparation ("The Basel Skeleton") is Vesalius' only well-preserved skeletal preparation, and also the world's oldest surviving anatomical preparation. It is still displayed at the Anatomical Museum of the University of Basel . In the same year Vesalius took residence in Basel to help Johannes Oporinus publish the seven-volume De humani corporis fabrica ( On

2856-400: The book De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem ( On the fabric of the human body in seven books ), a groundbreaking work of human anatomy he dedicated to Charles V and which many believe was illustrated by Titian 's pupil Jan Stephen van Calcar . About the same time he published another version of his great work, entitled De Humani Corporis Fabrica Librorum Epitome ( Abridgement of

2940-425: The cadavers of executed criminals. Galen had assumed that arteries carried the purest blood to higher organs such as the brain and lungs from the left ventricle of the heart, while veins carried blood to the lesser organs such as the stomach from the right ventricle. In order for this theory to be correct, some kind of opening was needed to interconnect the ventricles, and Galen claimed to have found them. So paramount

3024-401: The classical Mediterranean world was reinforced by the ideas of Galen, after he discovered that not only veins but also arteries were filled with blood, not air as was commonly believed at the time. There were two key concepts in his system of bloodletting. The first was that blood was created and then used up; it did not circulate , and so it could "stagnate" in the extremities. The second

3108-578: The doctor had something tangible to sell. Bloodletting gradually declined in popularity over the course of the 19th century, becoming rather uncommon in most places, before its validity was thoroughly debated. In the medical community of Edinburgh , bloodletting was abandoned in practice before it was challenged in theory, a contradiction highlighted by physician-physiologist John Hughes Bennett . Authorities such as Austin Flint I , Hiram Corson, and William Osler became prominent supporters of bloodletting in

3192-620: The early 19th century, Europe had largely abandoned Latin as a scholarly language (most scientific studies and scholarly publications are printed in English), but a variety of fields still use Latin terminology as the norm. By tradition, it is still common in some fields to name new discoveries in Latin. And because Western science became dominant during the 18th and 19th centuries, the use of Latin names in many scholarly fields has gained worldwide acceptance, at least when European languages are being used for communication. Bloodletting Today,

3276-428: The effect of bloodletting on pneumonia patients. A number of other ineffective or harmful treatments were available as placebos— mesmerism , various processes involving the new technology of electricity, many potions, tonics, and elixirs. Yet, bloodletting persisted during the 19th century partly because it was readily available to people of any socioeconomic status. Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English write that

3360-488: The fabric of the human body ), a groundbreaking work of human anatomy that he dedicated to Charles V. Many believe it was illustrated by Titian 's pupil Jan Stephen van Calcar , but evidence is lacking, and it is unlikely that a single artist created all 273 illustrations in a period of time so short. At about the same time he published an abridged edition for students, Andrea Vesalii suorum de humani corporis fabrica librorum epitome , and dedicated it to Philip II of Spain ,

3444-677: The family tradition and enrolled him in the Brethren of the Common Life in Brussels to learn Greek and Latin prior to learning medicine, according to standards of the era. In 1528 Vesalius entered the University of Leuven ( Pedagogium Castrense ) taking arts, but when his father was appointed as the Valet de Chambre in 1532 he decided instead to pursue a career in medicine at the University of Paris , where he moved in 1533. There he studied

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3528-448: The first work of this era, the production quality, highly detailed and intricate plates, and the likelihood that the artists who produced it were clearly present in person at the dissections made it an instant classic. Pirated editions were available almost immediately, an event Vesalius acknowledged in a printer's note would happen. Vesalius was 28 years old when the first edition of Fabrica was published. Soon after publication, Vesalius

3612-446: The infiltration of Galen. In Bologna, Vesalius discovered that all of Galen's research was restricted to animals, since the tradition of Rome did not allow dissection of the human body. Galen had dissected Barbary macaques instead, which he considered structurally closest to man. Even though Galen was a qualified examiner, his research produced many errors owing to the limited anatomical material available to him. Vesalius contributed to

3696-439: The lower jaw ( mandible ) was composed of only one bone, not two (which Galen had assumed based on animal dissection) and that humans lack the rete mirabile , a network of blood vessels at the base of the brain that is found in sheep and other ungulates . In 1543, Vesalius conducted a public dissection of the body of Jakob Karrer von Gebweiler, a notorious felon from the city of Basel , Switzerland . He assembled and articulated

3780-493: The more blood would be let. Fevers required copious amounts of bloodletting. Therapeutic uses of bloodletting were reported in 60 distinct cultures/ethnic groups in the HRAF database, present in all inhabited continents. Bloodletting has also been reported in 15 of the 60 cultures in the probability sample files (PSF) list. The PSF is a subset of eHRAF data that includes only one culture from each of 60 macro-culture areas around

3864-436: The morning of 13 July 1824. A French sergeant was stabbed through the chest while engaged in single combat; within minutes, he fainted from loss of blood. Arriving at the local hospital he was immediately bled twenty ounces (570 ml) "to prevent inflammation". During the night he was bled another 24 ounces (680 ml). Early the next morning, the chief surgeon bled the patient another 10 ounces (285 ml); during

3948-473: The nerves is confused by regarding the optic as the first pair, the third as the fifth, and the fifth as the seventh. In this work, Vesalius also becomes the first person to describe mechanical ventilation . It is largely this achievement that has resulted in Vesalius being incorporated into the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists college arms and crest. When I undertake the dissection of

4032-542: The new Giunta edition of Galen's collected works and began to write his own anatomical text based on his own research. Until Vesalius pointed out Galen's substitution of animal for human anatomy, it had gone unnoticed and had long been the basis of studying human anatomy. Unlike Galen, Vesalius was able to procure a steady supply of human cadavers for dissection. In 1539, a judge at the Padua criminal court had been interested by Vesalius' work and had agreed to regularly supply him

4116-445: The next 14 hours, he was bled five more times. Medical attendants thus intentionally removed more than half of the patient's normal blood supply—in addition to the initial blood loss which caused the sergeant to faint. Bleedings continued over the next several days. By 29 July, the wound had become inflamed. The physician applied 32 leeches to the most sensitive part of the wound. Over the next three days, there were more bleedings and

4200-444: The onset of childbirth, blood was removed to prevent inflammation. Before amputation, it was customary to remove a quantity of blood equal to the amount believed to circulate in the limb that was to be removed. There were also theories that bloodletting would cure "heartsickness" and "heartbreak". A French physician, Jacques Ferrand wrote a book in 1623 on the uses of bloodletting to cure a broken heart. He recommended bloodletting to

4284-482: The opening of hostilities between the Holy Roman Empire and France and returned to the University of Leuven. He completed his studies there and graduated the following year. His doctoral thesis , Paraphrasis in nonum librum Rhazae medici Arabis clarissimi ad regem Almansorem, de affectuum singularum corporis partium curatione , was a commentary on the ninth book of Rhazes . On the day of his graduation he

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4368-405: The organs and pasting them on flayed figures. This was in stark contrast to many of the anatomical models used previously, which had strong Galenic/Aristotelean elements, as well as elements of astrology . Although modern anatomical texts had been published by Mondino and Berenger , much of their work was clouded by reverence for Galen and Arabian doctrines. Besides the first good description of

4452-651: The original word. During the medieval period , after the Empire collapsed in Western Europe , the main bastion of scholarship was the Roman Catholic Church , for which Latin was the primary written language. In the early medieval period, most European scholars were priests and most educated people spoke Latin, and as a result, Latin became firmly established as the scholarly language for the West. By

4536-422: The patient or give them an emetic to induce vomiting, or a diuretic to induce urination. Galen created a complex system of how much blood should be removed based on the patient's age, constitution, the season, the weather and the place. "Do-it-yourself" bleeding instructions following these systems were developed. Symptoms of plethora were believed to include fever, apoplexy , and headache. The blood to be let

4620-493: The point of heart failure (literal). Leeches became especially popular in the early 19th century. In the 1830s, the French imported about 40 million leeches a year for medical purposes, and in the next decade, England imported 6 million leeches a year from France alone. Through the early decades of the century, hundreds of millions of leeches were used by physicians throughout Europe. One typical course of medical treatment began

4704-481: The popularity of bloodletting and heroic medicine in general was because of a need to justify medical billing. Traditional healing techniques had been mostly practiced by women within a non-commercial family or village setting. As male doctors suppressed these techniques, they found it difficult to quantify various "amounts" of healing to charge for, and difficult to convince patients to pay for it. Because bloodletting seemed active and dramatic, it helped convince patients

4788-402: The practice was continued by surgeons and barber-surgeons . Though the bloodletting was often recommended by physicians, it was carried out by barbers. This led to the distinction between physicians and surgeons. The red-and-white-striped pole of the barbershop , still in use today, is derived from this practice: the red symbolizes blood while the white symbolizes the bandages. Bloodletting

4872-615: The primary teaching tool, handling the actual work himself and urging students to perform dissection themselves. He considered hands-on direct observation to be the only reliable resource. Vesalius created detailed illustrations of anatomy for students in the form of six large woodcut posters. When he found that some of them were being widely copied, he published them all in 1538 under the title Tabulae anatomicae sex . He followed this in 1539 with an updated version of Winter's anatomical handbook, Institutiones anatomicae. In 1539 he also published his Venesection Epistle on bloodletting . This

4956-507: The removal of small quantities of blood for diagnostic purposes . However, in the case of hemochromatosis , bloodletting (by venipuncture ) has become the mainstay treatment option. In the U.S., according to an academic article posted in the Journal of Infusion Nursing with data published in 2010, the primary use of phlebotomy was to take blood that would one day be reinfused back into a person ( blood donation ). Though bloodletting as

5040-406: The son of the Emperor. That work, now collectively referred to as the Fabrica of Vesalius , was groundbreaking in the history of medical publishing and is considered to be a major step in the development of scientific medicine. Because of this, it marks the establishment of anatomy as a modern descriptive science. Though Vesalius' work was not the first such work based on actual dissection, nor even

5124-527: The space of a month was a large but not an exceptional quantity. The medical literature of the period contains many similar accounts-some successful, some not. Bloodletting was also popular in the young United States of America, where Benjamin Rush (a signatory of the Declaration of Independence ) saw the state of the arteries as the key to disease, recommending levels of bloodletting that were high even for

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5208-462: The standard binomial nomenclature of the life sciences. It goes further than romanisation , which is the transliteration of a word to the Latin alphabet from another script (e.g. Cyrillic ). For authors writing in Latin, this change allows the name to function grammatically in a sentence through declension . In a scientific context, the main purpose of Latinisation may be to produce a name which

5292-419: The term phlebotomy refers to the drawing of blood for laboratory analysis or blood transfusion . Therapeutic phlebotomy refers to the drawing of a unit of blood in specific cases like hemochromatosis , polycythemia vera , porphyria cutanea tarda , etc., to reduce the number of red blood cells. The traditional medical practice of bloodletting is today considered to be a pseudoscience . Passages from

5376-546: The theories of Galen under the auspices of Johann Winter von Andernach , Jacques Dubois (Jacobus Sylvius) and Jean Fernel . It was during that time that he developed an interest in anatomy and was often found examining excavated bones in the charnel houses at the Cemetery of the Innocents . He is said to have constructed his first skeleton by stealing from a gibbet . Vesalius was forced to leave Paris in 1536 owing to

5460-498: The time. George Washington asked to be bled heavily after he developed a throat infection from weather exposure. Within a ten-hour period, a total of 124–126 ounces (3.75 liters) of blood was withdrawn prior to his death from a throat infection in 1799. One reason for the continued popularity of bloodletting (and purging) was that, while anatomical knowledge, surgical and diagnostic skills increased tremendously in Europe from

5544-451: The world. The prevalence of bloodletting in PSF controls for pseudo replication linked to common ancestry, suggesting that bloodletting has independently emerged many times. Bloodletting is varied in its practices cross-culturally, for example, in native Alaskan culture bloodletting was practiced for different indications, using different tools, on different body areas, by different people, and it

5628-450: Was Galen's authority that for 1400 years a succession of anatomists had claimed to find these holes, until Vesalius admitted he could not find them. Nonetheless, he did not venture to dispute Galen on the distribution of blood, being unable to offer any other solution, and so supposed that it diffused through the unbroken partition between the ventricles. Other famous examples of Vesalius disproving Galen's assertions were his discoveries that

5712-474: Was a popular treatment for almost any illness, but there was some debate about where to take the blood from. The classical Greek procedure, advocated by Galen, was to collect blood from a site near the location of the illness. However the Muslim and medieval practice was to draw a smaller amount of blood from a distant location. Vesalius' pamphlet generally supported Galen's view but with qualifications that rejected

5796-553: Was central to Arabic surgery; the key texts Kitab al-Qanun and especially Al-Tasrif li-man 'ajaza 'an al-ta'lif both recommended it. It was also known in Ayurvedic medicine, described in the Susruta Samhita . Bloodletting became a main technique of heroic medicine , a traumatic and destructive collection of medical practices that emerged in the 18th century. Even after the humoral system fell into disuse,

5880-414: Was considered beneficial, and many sessions would only end when the patient began to swoon. William Harvey disproved the basis of the practice in 1628, and the introduction of scientific medicine , la méthode numérique , allowed Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis to demonstrate that phlebotomy was entirely ineffective in the treatment of pneumonia and various fevers in the 1830s. Nevertheless, in 1838,

5964-441: Was explained by different medical theories. According to Helena Miton et al.'s analysis of the HRAF database and other sources, there are several cross-cultural patterns in bloodletting. In a transmission chain experiment done on people living in the US through Amazon Mechanical Turk , stories about bloodletting in a non-affected area were much more likely to transition into stories about bloodletting being administered near

6048-578: Was given a copy of Gabriele Fallopio's Observationes anatomicae , friendly additions and corrections to the Fabrica. Before the end of the year Vesalius composed a cordial reply, Anatomicarum Gabrielis Fallopii observationum examen , generally referred to as the Examen . In this work he recognizes in Fallopio a true equal in the science of dissection he had done so much to create. Vesalius' reply to Fallopio

6132-425: Was immediately offered the chair of surgery and anatomy ( explicator chirurgiae ) at the University of Padua . He also guest-lectured at the University of Bologna and the University of Pisa . Prior to taking up his position in Padua, Vesalius traveled through Italy and assisted the future Pope Paul IV and Ignatius of Loyola to heal those afflicted by leprosy . In Venice he met the illustrator Johan van Calcar ,

6216-431: Was in use in the 5th century BC during the lifetime of Hippocrates , who mentions this practice but generally relied on dietary techniques . Erasistratus , however, theorized that many diseases were caused by plethoras, or overabundances, in the blood and advised that these plethoras be treated, initially, by exercise , sweating , reduced food intake, and vomiting. His student Herophilus also opposed bloodletting. But

6300-514: Was invited to become imperial physician to the court of Emperor Charles V . He informed the Venetian Senate that he would leave his post at Padua, which prompted Duke Cosimo I de' Medici to invite him to move to the expanding university in Pisa, which he declined. Vesalius took up the offered position in the imperial court, where he had to deal with other physicians who mocked him for being

6384-399: Was of a specific nature determined by the disease: either arterial or venous , and distant or close to the area of the body affected. He linked different blood vessels with different organs , according to their supposed drainage. For example, the vein in the right hand would be let for liver problems and the vein in the left hand for problems with the spleen . The more severe the disease,

6468-450: Was originally written by Sir William Osler and continued to be published in new editions under new authors following Osler's death in 1919. Therapeutic phlebotomy is used today in the treatment of a few diseases, including hemochromatosis and polycythemia . It is practiced by specifically trained practitioners in hospitals, using modern techniques, and is also known as a therapeutic phlebotomy . In most cases, phlebotomy now refers to

6552-533: Was practised according to seasons and certain phases of the Moon in the lunar calendar . The practice was probably passed by the Greeks with the translation of ancient texts to Arabic and is different than bloodletting by cupping mentioned in the traditions of Muhammad . When Muslim theories became known in the Latin -speaking countries of Europe , bloodletting became more widespread. Together with cautery , it

6636-714: Was published in May 1564, a month after Vesalius' death on the Greek island of Zante (now called Zakynthos ). The influence of Vesalius' plates representing the partial dissections of the human figure posing in a landscape setting is apparent in the anatomical plates prepared by the Baroque painter Pietro da Cortona (1596–1669), who executed anatomical plates with figures in dramatic poses, most of them with architectural or landscape backdrops. In 1844, botanists Martin Martens and Henri Guillaume Galeotti published Vesalea , which

6720-446: Was punctured, although generally only in the temples. In scarification (not to be confused with scarification , a method of body modification), the "superficial" vessels were attacked, often using a syringe, a spring-loaded lancet , or a glass cup that contained heated air, producing a vacuum within (see fire cupping ). There was also a specific bloodletting tool called a scarificator , used primarily in 19th century medicine. It has

6804-405: Was that humoral balance was the basis of illness or health, the four humours being blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile, relating to the four Greek classical elements of air, water, earth, and fire respectively. Galen believed that blood was the dominant humour and the one in most need of control. In order to balance the humours, a physician would either remove "excess" blood (plethora) from

6888-592: Was then part of the Habsburg Netherlands . His great-grandfather, Jan van Wesel, probably born in Wesel , received a medical degree from the University of Pavia and taught medicine at the University of Leuven . His grandfather, Everard van Wesel, was the Royal Physician of Emperor Maximilian , whilst his father, Anders van Wesel, served as apothecary to Maximilian and later valet de chambre to his successor, Charles V . Anders encouraged his son to continue in

6972-437: Was used to "treat" a wide range of diseases, becoming a standard treatment for almost every ailment, and was practiced prophylactically as well as therapeutically. 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. In arteriotomy , an artery

7056-503: Was used to treat almost every disease. One British medical text recommended bloodletting for acne, asthma, cancer, cholera, coma, convulsions, diabetes, epilepsy, gangrene, gout, herpes, indigestion, insanity, jaundice, leprosy, ophthalmia, plague, pneumonia, scurvy, smallpox, stroke, tetanus, tuberculosis, and for some one hundred other diseases. Bloodletting was even used to treat most forms of hemorrhaging such as nosebleed, excessive menstruation, or hemorrhoidal bleeding. Before surgery or at

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