17th Century Woodcut of Bloodletting
source: Wikimedia Commons
author: Wellcome Images
Description
A woodcut illustration depicts a medieval physician and his assistant drawing blood from a seated patient. An incision has been made on his exposed right forearm, a few inches below a tourniquet. A stream of blood pours from the incision into a bowl held by the assistant.
Date
Illustration: 17th century AD
Information
This illustration was scanned from Il barbiere libri tre (1626) by Malfi Tiberio, courtesy of Wellcome Images. Here, a physician can be seen draining blood from a patient. Bloodletting was a popular form of treatment in the Middle Ages, believed to help treat a wide variety of conditions from acne to cancer.
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Carter, K. C. (2012). The decline of therapeutic bloodletting and the collapse of traditional medicine. New Brunswick (U.S.A.): Transaction Publishers.
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