Page "Bloodletting" Paragraph 24

One typical course of medical treatment began the morning of 13 July 1824.

A French sergeant was stabbed through the chest while engaged in single combat ; within minutes, he fainted from loss of blood.

Arriving at the local hospital he was immediately bled twenty ounces ( 570 ml ) " to prevent inflammation ".

During the night he was bled another 24 ounces ( 680 ml ).

Early the next morning, the chief surgeon bled the patient another 10 ounces ( 285 ml ); during the next 14 hours, he was bled five more times.

Medical attendants thus intentionally removed more than half of the patient's normal blood supply — in addition to the initial blood loss which caused the sergeant to faint.

Bleedings continued over the next several days.

By 29 July, the wound had become inflamed.

The physician applied 32 leeches to the most sensitive part of the wound.

Over the next three days, there were more bleedings and a total of 40 more leeches.

The sergeant recovered and was discharged on 3 October.

His physician wrote that " by the large quantity of blood lost, amounting to 170 ounces eleven pints ( 4. 8 liters ), besides that drawn by the application of leeches another two pints ( 1. 1 liters ), the life of the patient was preserved ".

By nineteenth-century standards, thirteen pints of blood taken over the space of a month was a large but not an exceptional quantity.

The medical literature of the period contains many similar accounts-some successful, some not.