EVOLUTION OF PHLEBOTOMY

• Stone Age - use of crude tools to cut vessels and drain blood
• Ancient Egyptians - practiced phlebotomy as a form of "bloodletting" at 1400 BC
• Hippocrated (460-377 BC) - Greek physician who believes that a person's health was dependent on the balance of the four humors
• 4 humors:

  • Earth - blood and brain
  • Air - phlegm and lungs
  • Fire - black bile and spleen
  • Water - yellow bile and gall bladder
• Middle Ages - when barber-surgeons performed bloodletting as treatment
• 17th/18th century - when phlebotomy was treated as a major therapy
• Fleams - other term for lancets
• Cupping - applies special heated suction cups on the patient's skin and the incision that is made with a fleam
• Leeches (hirudotherapy) - uses leeches for bloodletting by placing a drop of milk or blood on the patient's skin and introduces Hirudo medicinalis to the site
• 2 main methods of Phlebotomy:

  • Venipuncture
  • Capillary puncture