Bleeding Patients

Doctor's supply shelf

For many years, the best way a doctor knew to rid his patient of maladies was to bleed them. This allowed enough of the harmful elements to be extracted from the body, so the body could make new, clean blood. Part of this theory stemmed from the old belief that humors determined much about a person, and one of the four humors was the blood.

A variety of implements were used to slit or puncture the sick individual, usually in the arm. Blood-sucking leeches were also kept and used. 

Leech jar and bleeding instruments

Blistering was a similar remedy. It used a hot glass or cup to blister the flesh. Then the blisters could be pieced to rid the body of maladies through the pus.

In Cleared for Planting, Part Two, Sarah does not like Clifton's method of bleeding.

           Clifton knew that Sarah didn’t like the medical practices of bleeding and blistering. He had been taught to rely on them for certain illnesses, but Sarah refused to participate in them. Coming from some knowledge of the medical practices of her Cherokee grandmother, she could not understand the presumed benefits.

            “How can causing new wounds on the body help heal anything?” she asked.

His mother would agree with Sarah, Clifton realized, but of course the same Cherokee woman that taught Sarah had taught Mama, so that was to be expected. Yet, when Clifton performed the procedures and a patient died, he couldn’t help but wonder if there might be some truth to Sarah’s opinion.

            Keeping up with developments in his field was important to Clifton. In doing so, he came across an essay written in 1815 by Dr. Ennalls Martin about an epidemical outbreak in Maryland. Dr. Martin had done his own study of bleeding and concluded that bleeding did more harm than good, and many of his patients who died might have lived had they not been bled.

            After consideration, Clifton became more skeptical of the procedure and used bleeding sparingly and only when the patient or the family requested it. The patients he didn’t bleed seemed to recover better than those he did, so he began to recommend skipping the use of bleeding and blistering altogether. Sarah grinned widely when he told her, as he had suspected she would.

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