Why was bloodletting so popular? - Stephanie Honchell Smith

On December 14th, 1799, former US President George Washington woke struggling for breath, his throat searing with pain.

He died later that day, from what’s suspected to have been a badly infected epiglottis, but not before he was prescribed an enema, steam therapy, and rigorous bloodletting.

During four bleeding sessions, Washington lost approximately two liters— roughly 40%— of his body’s blood supply.

And yet this wasn’t totally out of the ordinary for the time.

Bloodletting was a pervasive medical practice that dated at least as far back as ancient Greece.

Physicians like Hippocrates believed good health came from balance among what they called the body’s four humors: yellow bile, black bile, phlegm, and blood.

They attributed bad health to humoral imbalance, so treatments included purging, peeing, enemas, and bloodletting.