Bloodletting
therapy, now rarely used in medicine
Bloodletting (or blood-letting) is the deliberate withdrawal of blood from a patient to prevent or cure illness and disease. Bloodletting, whether by a physician or by leeches, was based on an ancient system of medicine in which blood and other bodily fluids were regarded as "humors" that had to remain in proper balance to maintain health. It was the most common medical practice performed by surgeons from antiquity until the late 19th century, a span of over 2,000 years. In Europe, the practice continued to be relatively common until the end of the 19th century. The practice has been abandoned by modern-style medicine for all except a few very specific medical conditions. In the beginning of the 19th century, studies had begun to show the harmful effects of bloodletting.
The modern 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 considered a pseudoscience, though the method is still commonly used in forms of alternative medicine.
In the ancient world
Passages from the Ebers Papyrus may indicate that bloodletting by scarification was an accepted practice in Ancient Egypt.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Bloodletting” as therapy, now rarely used in medicine. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as therapy, now rarely used in medicine. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q356405. The Library of Congress control number is sh85015033. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bloodletting” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.