Bleeding Kit

Transcript

Voiceover:

Now, in "A small piece of history", Andrew Robertshaw of the National Army Museum presents a favourite object from the Collection.

Andrew Robertshaw:

This box dates from the 1840s or 1850s. Inside it we've got the following objects.

Three little glass cups of different sizes. Then, a little spirit stove or a little spirit burner for heating something up. And with it we then have the bottle for the spirits.

And finally this object - made of brass, a series of slits and a handle. What's it for?

The answer is - in a period when leeches were unfashionable people felt it important to draw blood from patients for a variety of reasons. Could be anything from malaria through to fever or even after wounds.

So these cups would be heated up - not too hot, but warm - which meant that once these were heated they could be applied to parts of the body and they would draw up a blister as they cooled.

Then this object was loaded. In so doing, what we do is to take a series of steel blades, like little crescents, and load them inside. This would then be put on the area with its bruise engorged with blood.

When that is pressed, the blades fly round making a series of shallow cuts in the skin and the patient would begin to bleed.

So this is an artificial leech used on patients and demonstrating just how different medical knowledge is today from what was used in the 1840s or '50s.