Understanding the history of a subject, any subject, is vital if you’re going to master it. Phlebotomy is no different. If you’re going into phlebotomy training, one of the things that you should set time aside for is looking at its past and how it came about. This article will touch very briefly on the major points in the evolution of phlebotomy, but make it a point to get into a lot more detail – it will certainly help you do better in your training than if you went in blind.
You must have heard of or seen blood letting on TV, when it was used in ancient times to draw disease out of the body. It was believed that whatever was causing the disease resided in the blood or that there was too much phlegm in the body, and letting out the blood would help to cure the person. It seems that it worked somehow because it was practiced for many centuries. It was a crude method though – cuts were made in the affected areas and blood drained into a shallow bowl until the patient started to look very weak. The treatment that followed after that was basically blood rebuilding using food.
Leeches were also used to suck blood, and in fact some medical quarters today seem to be trying to revive the practice as they claim that once the diseased blood is drained, the body is left to manufacture clean and healthy blood. This is yet to be proved though.
Until Louis Pasteur came along and proved that its germs that actually caused disease and not sick blood, and until he proved to the world that indeed penicillin was the cure, blood letting, today called phlebotomy, continued to be widely used. Phlebotomy training must have started at this point, with physicians teaching their apprentices how best to draw blood from patients.
Did you know that the famous American president, George Washington, died of blood letting that was done as a result of a throat infection that he suffered? The practice was to drain about 4 pints of blood, but his physician at the time decided to drain 9 pints; he was so weak that he died not long after. It didn’t take long after that for the practice of blood letting to be known as quackery.
It became a scientific practice in the early 19th century when it was discovered that one could tell what illness resided in a body by examining the components of blood. Fortunately, by this time needles were used, the word phlebotomy came along and with it the need to ensure a sanitary environment for each procedure to avoid passing disease.
Modern advances in technology have made it an every day practice that is safe. Phlebotomy training is now a commonly offered course and even with just a high school diploma, one can qualify to get the necessary accreditation.
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