BLOODLETTING • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Bloodletting

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/blˈədlˌɛtɪŋ/ Listen

Bloodletting

noun

Formerly used as a treatment to reduce excess blood (one of the four humors of medieval medicine).

Indiscriminate slaughter. Synonyms: battue, bloodbath, bloodshed. "Ten days after the bloodletting Hitler gave the action its name" , "The valley is no stranger to bloodshed and murder" , "A huge prison battue was ordered"

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Etymology of 'Bloodletting'

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"Bloodletting" Quotes from Famous Books

... "Flebotomy! that is bloodletting: humph! Well, no matter, if 'tis sure to cure me, for I will not lie idle here." The doctor let him know that flebotomy was infallible, especially ...

— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... that he could remain in Worcester with impunity. The strength of a revolution lies in the fact that its first bloodletting releases the instincts of the animal in man hitherto restrained by law. He knew that Brown's cry of Liberty for the slave would become for millions the cloak to hide the archaic impulse to kill. He knew that while the purpose of civilization is to restrain and control these instincts ...

— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon

... morning had been bled in the arm, found himself better cured by this message than by any medicine or bloodletting he could have had, and he sent word that he would be at the place without fail at the hour she had appointed. He added that she had wrought an evident miracle, since with one word she had cured a man of a sickness ...

— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... something fine in his going out to face the snarling pack. A brigadier general of the regular army was quoted as lamenting the fact that the troops had not been called out to take the mob by the throat and shake law and order into it. "This is the time for a little healthful bloodletting," was the conclusion of his remarks, after deploring the pacific methods of the police. "For not until the mob has been thoroughly beaten and cowed will tranquil industrial ...

— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... galling satire of the century flowed from the pen of the French dramatist, Moliere, who had a medical student—not completely fictitious—swear always to accept the pronouncements of his oldest physician-colleague, and always to treat by purgation, using clysters (enemas), phlebotomy (bloodletting), and emetics (vomitives). These three curative measures followed the best Galenic technique: releasing corrupting humors from the body. Moliere's Le Malade Imaginaire confronted the audience with constant purgings and bleedings, and the caricature ...

— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes