Bloodletting

From the very beginning of Homer's the Iliad, Achilles is depicted as vindictive, prideful, and trifling. As the book advances, the picture of Achilles as a resentful youngster is improved significantly. Towards the end of the epic, Achilles displays qualities that are viewed as courageous even in today's time. When his reliable and trusted companion Patroclus passes on, Achilles experiences an extreme change in character. When he goes up against the genuine repulsiveness of death, Achilles sets…

Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures examines the connections between the complications of medicine and one’s humanity. The author Vincent Lam does this by crafting a telling story that explains the subjective nature of practicing medicine. Firstly, he employs complex medical terminology that readers are unfamiliar with. This creates a feeling of detachment and unfamiliarity. As a result, he magnifies certain situations, highlighting their life-and-death nature. Lam also employs a creative approach…

History The plague was one of the most devastating widespreads in human history. It originated in China over 2,600 years ago and spread towards Western Europe along the silk road in October of 1347. The silk road was an international trade route between the Mediterranean and China. This was not an actual road, it was an interconnecting group of routes that ran across Central Asia. Although this route was very useful back then, it also had some negative effects to it, “the black death.” While…

During the 18th century around the time when bedside medicine shifted to hospital medicine and then consequently laboratory medicine, Nicholas Jewson wrote a paper that addresses the issue of how this shift affected the doctor-patient relationship, that ultimately the patient has disappeared in the equation. The tone of the paper suggested that the disappearance of the sick-man (as a catalyst that began the reductionism in medicine) would lead medicine in the wrong direction, somewhere…

began to turn towards unconventional methods of plague treatment, nearly all of which were unreliable and would have actually caused more harm than good. One of the methods commonly utilized by the few doctors still willing to treat patients was bloodletting. It involved making an incision in one’s arm or neck and letting quite a large amount of blood pour out. Not only did this make the patient even more susceptible to the plague and other diseases, but it was also extremely unsanitary.…

Dementia is a general term for a decline in mental ability severe enough to interfere with daily life (Alzheimer 's Association®, 2016). According to a study done at Erasmus University Medical School, the likelihood of dementia increases exponentially with age nearly one third of the population aged 85 and over has dementia (Ott et al., 1995). The most commonly heard of form of dementia is Alzheimer 's disease. And although this makes sense, considering it is the most common form, affecting…

As the renaissance artist, sculptor and anatomist Leonardo da Vinci said, “A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.” This maxim, though easily comprehensible, epitomizes the perfection of the human form that fifteenth century artists sought to immortalize. Driven by common humanist beliefs, sculpting a lifelike physique demanded knowledge and comprehension of anatomy beyond the barrier of human skin. Leonardo da Vinci along with many other artists used their fascination with…

centuries the mentally ill were treated so poorly. The abuse was non-stop and the living conditions were unbelievable. Many people believed “mental illness was attributed to some supernatural force” (Foerschner 8) and was to be treated by “purging, bloodletting, blistering, dousing patients in either boiling or ice-cold water to “shock” them, sedatives, and using physical restraints such as straitjackets (Foerschner 10). A majority of these treatments led to dangerous side effects and often…

much of the medical procedures doctors relied on then were unscientific. Many doctors at that time still followed primitive methods of curing illness, that dated back to medieval times. As examples, doctors still practiced procedures such as bloodletting, and herbal healing. Not only did these procedures not work, they also illustrated an inherent lack of medical knowledge and understanding of public health procedures. There was also no real public health system. Instead public health was…

one of the main health concerns and at the Flandreau Boarding School windows were kept open at night to keep dormitories cold. Advice was lavished such as disinfecting textbooks at the end of the school year, separating boys from girls or even bloodletting. There is no official reports regarding the average death at school, but death was not an unknown circumstance either. It was not uncommon to have cemetery near boarding schools because of the high mortality rate among native children and the…