Produced by Chris Curnow, Joseph Cooper and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. SMITHSONIAN STUDIES IN HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY/NUMBER 41 BLOODLETTING INSTRUMENTS IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY Audrey Davis and Toby Appel Smithsonian Institution Press City of Washington 1979 ABSTRACT Davis, Audrey, and Toby Appel. Bloodletting Instruments in the National Museum of History and Technology. _Smithsonian Studies in History and Technology_, number 41, 103 pages, 124 figures, 1979.--Supported by a variety of instruments, bloodletting became a recommended practice in antiquity and remained an accepted treatment for millenia. Punctuated by controversies over the amount of blood to take, the time to abstract it, and the areas from which to remove it, bloodletters employed a wide range of instruments. All the major types of equipment and many variations are represented in this study of the collection in the National Museum of History and Technology. OFFICIAL PUBLICATION DATE is handstamped in a limited number of initial copies and is recorded in the Institution's annual report, _Smithsonian Year_. COVER DESIGN: "Phlebotomy, 1520" (from Seitz, 1520, as illustrated in Hermann Peter, _Der Arzt und die Heilkunst_, Leipzig, 1900; photo courtesy of NLM). Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Davis, Audrey B Bloodletting instruments in the National Museum of History and Technology. (Smithsonian studies in history and technology; no. 41) Bibliography: p. Supt. of Docs, no.: SI 1.28:41 1. Bloodletting--Instruments--Catalogs. 2. Bloodletting--History. 3. National Museum of History and Technology. I. Appel, Toby, 1945--joint author. II. Title. III. Series: Smithsonian Institution. Smithsonian studies in history and technology; no. 41 [DNLM: 1. Bloodletting-- History. 2. Bloodletting--Instrumentation--Catalogs. 3. Bloodletting-- Exhibitions--Catalogs. RM182.D38 617'.9178 78-606043 CONTENTS Page Preface v Introduction 1 Sources 2 Bleeding: The History 3 How Much Blood to Take 5 When to Bleed 7 Barber-Surgeons 8 Bloodletting and the Scientific Revolution 9 Instrumentation and Techniques 10 Spring Lancets 12 The Decline of Bleeding 15