Bloodletting Instruments in the National Museum of History and Technology

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
RM182.D38 617'.9178 78-606043


Among the many catalogs of museum collections, few describe objects related to the practice of medicine. This catalog is the first of a series on the medical sciences collections in the National Museum of History and Technology (NMHT). Bloodletting objects vary from ancient sharp-edged instruments to the spring action and automatic devices of the last few centuries. These instruments were used in a variety of treatments supporting many theories of disease and therefore reflect many varied aspects of the history of medicine. Beginning with an essay sketching the long history of bloodletting, this catalog provides a survey of the various kinds of instruments, both natural and man-made, that have been used throughout the centuries.