The Corner Society- Bleeding Ink: Middle English Bloodletting Poetry in Late Medieval England

Caleb Prus, URMC Medical Student  

Bleeding Ink: Middle English Bloodletting Poetry in Late Medieval England

Bloodletting was the most common medical procedure in medieval England, used to treat anything from vision loss to the Black Death. This talk surveys the corpus of Middle English poetry that presents phlebotomy instructions in verse. While some have questioned the purpose and educational value of these bloodletting poems, I demonstrate how these verses were practically used, adapted, and valued by both professional barber-surgeons and lay readers. I also show how the poetic phlebotomy developed alongside and was incorporated into several “vein men,” visual guides to the practice. The invention of English bloodletting poetry was thus a unique and influential milestone in medieval medical education, instructing the growing number of medical practitioners unfamiliar with Latin.

Caleb Prus is a 2nd-year medical student at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. He has a Master’s in English (650-1550) from the University of Oxford and studies the transmission of Middle English medical texts in medieval England. His research on late-medieval medicine has been featured at the American Association for the History of Medicine Meeting and the Leeds International Medieval Congress.