I’m taking a classical greek technology class, and I recently learned about some interesting surgical procedures and treatments in the classical age of Ancient Greece. I wanted to share some classical ways of dealing with inflammation. Most of modern medicine is based off of Hippocrates four humors. They are as follows: blood (air), phlegm (water), yellow bile (fire), and black bile (earth). Early classical medicine was focused on keeping these four humors in balance. You can learn more detail about these here.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/greek/index.html
It is also pretty interesting to see how surprisingly close our modern tools are to an ancient doctor’s medical toolkit. The scalpels, hooks, catheters, and forceps are designed similarly and are used for the same functions as they are today. You can view these here.
http://www.hsl.virginia.edu/historical/artifacts/roman_surgical/
One of the ways that they would treat ailments is by a process called bloodletting. Physicians would use blood cups to catch “excess” blood that was supposedly causing the pain in the patient. The process was started by opening a wound, and after heating the bloodletting vessel, they would apply the blood cup to the smooth skin surface. This stuck to the skin surface by suction and generated a vacuum to enhance the flow of blood. There was always prescribed amount of blood to draw out for different ailments. It is thought to have been a very common practice.
I'm not sure what the "treatment" or procedure is really called, but I believe it might be fire cupping or cupping therapy. My dad has done this before and during the procedure, they would essentially use fire or another form of heat to create an air tight seal acting as a vacuum before placing in on the body. Apparently practitioners believed that this would enhance blood flow and allow the body to heal faster. It would be interesting to know if what you mentioned is where this form of treatment came about.
ReplyDeleteBlood cups? I thought they used leeches?
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ReplyDeleteTranJ495, it sounds like the same concept and similar procedure that I am trying to describe. This is called bloodletting. What kind of wound did your father use this procedure on? I didn't think that people would still be using these procedures these days!
ReplyDeleteRickH7630, I'm in a technology class so that's what I focused on here. This probably let out more blood than leeches, so maybe different prescribed amounts of bloodletting used different techniques!
I was actually watching 'Pawn Stars' and someone brought in one of the devices used to bleed the people. It was a mechanism similar to the lancets used to test blood glucose, etc., except it did not have the spring inside. That specific one had 30 needles that caused the bleeding. The expert that went to verify the device explained all the ancient beliefs of why they believed blood had to be drained.
ReplyDeleteCupping is a treatment that is still done to treat many aches, pains and in conjunction with acupuncture. It's been a part of Traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years to stimulate blood flow and healing. If it historically had any connection to bloodletting, I'm not sure.
ReplyDeleteSome scientists now believe that there may be some credibility to the bloodletting technique. If the technique were done at the correct time, as indicated by a spike in fever, certain bacteria which may prefer iron in heme of red blood cells would be negatively influenced at the "letting of blood" ie. their preferred diet. It may be going too far to say that this treatment was very effective but there MAY have been some science behind it.