PLASMA REMOVAL—PLASMAPHAERESIS

Abstract

Reference to text-books will make evident that venesection is by no means an entirely discarded practice. Bloodletting as a professional procedure is known to have been carried out long prior to the era of Hippocrates, who speaks of it as having been frequently performed. Hippocrates and Galen had advised copious bleeding largely from the arm on the affected side in pleurisy and pneumonia. That practice was gradually abandoned as Greek traditions were lost sight of, and finally the Arabs substituted something entirely different, the pricking of a vein in the foot in order to let blood flow drop by drop. The ancient Greek practice was later revived by a Parisian physician named Brissot; but it was "the modern Galen," Jean Fernel, who was especially responsible for the revival of bleeding during the first half of the sixteenth century. Something of the subsequent history of the time-honored but often debatable venesection