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Cupping Therapy and Immune System
Published in Mehwish Iqbal, Complementary and Alternative Medicinal Approaches for Enhancing Immunity, 2023
Significant information concerning the past of bloodletting (BL) has appeared from the tools utilised to carry out the course of action. Spikes, teeth of fish, thorns and sharpened stones were among the first tools utilised for cupping. Ultimately, two groups of equipment appeared: those utilised for common BL and those applied for local BL. For the procedure of common bloodletting, fleams, lancets and phlebotomes were quite famous. In the 15th century, the thumb lancet was established, and surgeons were shortly recommended to keep various sizes with them to be ready and equipped for different instances. For local or confined bloodletting, hirudotherapy and cupping have been the most extensively applied practices. The process of dry cupping includes applying suction to locomote blood away from the site of inflammation without making any scratch or incision. On the other hand, in wet cupping, suction is pursued by making small incisions in the skin that result in bleeding (Davis & Appel, 1979). The scarificator, an effortless octagon or square with numerous blades, was established somewhere close to 1715 and was shortly modified for bleeding cupping. The blades of the scarificator could be utilised up to 20 instances, being lubricated and dirt removed and wiped subsequent to each method by springing it into a part of sheep's fat (Figure 4.6).
The Medieval West
Published in Scott M. Jackson, Skin Disease and the History of Dermatology, 2023
Around the turn of the first millennium, the barbers began encroaching on the surgeon's field of practice. The first barbers were men hired by monasteries to trim the hair of monks (tonsure). The barber's skill with sharp instruments, coupled with papal decrees against churchmen spilling blood, soon created opportunities for barbers to do other procedures traditionally performed by surgeons: paring of warts and calluses, application of leeches, cupping, draining of boils, and pulling of teeth. Bloodletting remained one of the principal therapeutic methods for treating skin diseases and was performed by both barbers and surgeons. They opened a vein or veins with instruments such as a lancet, a fleam, or a scarificator. The blood would run out into a small ceramic bowl, and the barber would taste and smell the blood as a means of determining the diagnosis. Later, both barbers and surgeons could be found on the battlefields of Europe, tending to the maimed and performing amputations.
The history of circulation
Published in Dinker B. Rai, Mechanical Function of the Atrial Diastole, 2022
Bloodletting was practiced early on to eliminate the excess of humor in the blood and to establish equilibrium as a method of treatment to restore the health of a patient. This continued until the 2nd century AD, at which time there came a great mind in the history of medicine, a child prodigy, Claudius Galen was born in 129 AD in Pergamum, Asia Minor (presently Bergama, western Turkey) during the peak of the Roman Empire. At the age of 16 he became a medical student. He traveled abroad seeking knowledge, and his studies brought him to the famous School of Medicine in Alexandria, Egypt. Galen returned home and held the prestigious post of surgeon to the Gladiators. His ambitions took him on a quest to become a celebrity seeking fame and fortune. Galen was a voracious writer and covered subjects ranging from medicine, through logic, philosophy, and literature. He gave public demonstrations on the art of medicine. These activities catapulted him to such fame that he was appointed Physician of the Emperor.
New observations support William Osler’s rationale for systemic bloodletting
Published in Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, 2019
Bloodletting is perhaps the world’s longest-running observational therapeutic trial, although indications keep changing. Polycythemia vera was added to the short list of indications during Osler’s lifetime, and phlebotomy is now a treatment of choice for hemochromatosis and porphyria cutanea tarda (Figure 1). Proposed new indications for bloodletting still crop up. Perhaps the most intriguing proposal in recent years concerns metabolic syndrome, a highly prevalent but poorly understood condition with obesity, glucose intolerance, insulin resistance, hypertension, and dyslipidemia. From a randomized, controlled, single-blind trial involving 64 patients with metabolic syndrome, it was concluded that phlebotomy reduced systolic blood pressure, heart rate, blood glucose levels, hemoglobin A1c levels, and low-density lipoprotein/high-density lipoprotein ratios.58 These observations, if confirmed, would benefit blood banks and validate the old English adage, “A bleeding in the spring, is physic for a king.”
Venae spermaticae post aures: The early modern angiology-neurology of virility
Published in Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 2023
The argument trivialized the site of bloodletting, and relativized blood loss. A year later, Spanish physician-“psychologist” Juan Huarte de San Juan (1529–1588) sidestepped the angiological problem entirely while concurring with Hippocrates that both climate and living habits, at least among the Scythian upper class (the putatively affected class), conspired to render their seed cold and moist; hence, they beget few boys, and when boys, “a Eunuch or an Hermaphrodite” (Eunucho, o Hermaphodito; see Huarte de San Juan 1580, 362–363). Translated in 1594, this opinion was still echoed a century later in English midwifery books.
Stepping out of antiquity: An update on emerging drugs for the treatment of polycythemia vera
Published in Expert Opinion on Emerging Drugs, 2021
Franco Castillo Tokumori, Rami Komrokji, Andrew T. Kuykendall
Ongoing clinical research in PV either focuses on addressing a specific aspect of PV that is inadequately addressed with current therapies or demonstrating disease modification. With respect to the former goal, ruxolitinib demonstrated the ability to control spleen volume, hematocrit, and improve disease-related symptoms; ultimately leading to its approval. PTG-300 hopes to eliminate the need for TP while normalizing iron levels. Being able to consistently control hematocrit – a key variable associated with thrombotic risk – would provide clear benefit to patients currently encumbered by the need to undergo regular bloodletting.