According to The New Complete Medical and Health Encyclopedia the name phlebotomy was once referred to as bloodletting or venesection. To better understand phlebotomy the definition is “the opening of a vein for letting blood” (Wagman, 1982, p. 97).The history into how bloodletting was once performed to modern times now is intriguing. According to college textbook Phlebotomy Essentials during the 460-377 B.C. a medical professional would cut into a vein know as venesection in order to cleanse the body of impurities or rebalance the body. Tools called fleams were utilized to access a vein then wiped clean only by a rag, then stored to be used on another patient (McCall & Tankersley, 2012, pp.
