July 30, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



137 



tions and was translated into all the known 

 languages.* In general praise of blood- 

 letting the poem^ says 



Bleeding the body purges in disguise, 



For it excites the nerves, improves the eyes 



And mind, and gives the bowels exercise, 



Brings sleep, clear thoughts, and sadness drives 



away. 

 And hearing, strength and voice augments each 



day. 



Other verses give directions as to what 

 months are proper and what improper for 

 bleeding, tells what diseases are benefited 

 by blood-letting and in what quantities 

 blood should be drawn, and the effect of 

 age and other circumstances. 



Acute disease, or only so in part, 

 Demands bloodletting freely from the start. 

 In middle age, bleed largely without fear, 

 But treat old age like tender childhood here. 



In the latter part of the middle ages 

 blood-letting was carried to great excess. 

 During this period astrology strongly influ- 

 enced medical thought, and physicians 

 made diagnoses and bled their patients ac- 

 cording to the position of the planets, con- 

 stellations and single stars (horoscopic 

 medicine). For their greater convenience 

 semi-popular calendars were even prepared 

 with illustrations such as the so-called 

 venesection manikins of Johann Nider von 

 Gemiind (1470) and of Stoeffler (1518) 

 with directions as to the vein to be opened 

 for the cure of each malady. 



In the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 

 turies we come upon heated controversies 

 between the upholders of the Hippocratic 

 and of the Arabian theories of blood-letting. 

 By the former method it was thought that 

 the vein to be opened should be as near as 

 possible to the diseased part — in order that 

 the "foul and stagnant" blood might be 

 directly removed from the inflamed area 



* Garrison, ' ' The History of Blood-letting, ' ' 

 N. Y. Med. Jour., March 1 and 8, 1913. 

 5 Professor John Ordronaux 's translation. 



("derivation"). On the other hand, the 

 doctrine elaborated by the Arabians taught 

 that blood should be taken from a vein re- 

 mote from the inflamed part, for instance, 

 in inflammation of the lungs and pleura, 

 from the arm or even the foot of the oppo- 

 site side, with the idea that this process 

 ("revulsion") prevented good blood from 

 accumulating in the diseased part. 



This latter doctrine was in the ascendancy 

 in European countries in the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, but the learned Pierre Brissot (1478- 

 1522), basing his opinion on his own large 

 clinical experience in Paris in 1514, when an 

 acute affection of the lungs was prevalent, 

 revived the Hippocratic method of bleeding 

 and thus started the famous Brissot-vene- 

 section controversy in which most of the 

 great men of the century, including Vesa- 

 lius, took part. The importance attached to 

 the controversy at the time is shown in the 

 fact that the opponents of Brissot induced 

 the French Parliament to forbid the prac- 

 tise of his method, and their attacks were 

 so bitter as virtually to drive him from 

 Paris and his professorship. Haeser^ in- 

 forms us that the quarrel assumed such 

 violence that when the University of Sala- 

 manca took sides with Brissot, the Emperor 

 Charles V., who was called on to render a 

 "decision" in the matter was assured that 

 the new false doctrine was no less danger- 

 ous than the heresy of Luther. 



While Brissot was anything but a 

 "therapeutic nihilist" as to breeding, and 

 held firmly to the doctrine that the "foul 

 blood" of the inflamed area should be re- 

 moved, some of his followers rejected bleed- 

 ing altogether in acute disease of the lungs 

 and pleura (the pleuritis of that day). 

 Their moderation was looked upon as little 

 less than heretical, and toward the end of 

 the sixteenth century we find Leonardo 

 Botallo, a Piedmontese, an eminent prac- 



6 GeschicMe der Mediein, II., p. 64. 



