Bloodletting, which is the withdrawal of blood from a patient to cure or prevent illness and disease, dates all the way back to circa 2500 BCE. It was used for centuries but not until the late 1800s was it questioned for its beneficiality, and it was still used in some forms during the 1900s. This practice first originated in ancient Egypt. Then it spread to Greece, Rome, India, and the Arab areas. It was part of the idea that blood was just a “humor” that had to be in harmony with the other “humors” of your body: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. If you had too much blood in your body that meant that your humors were out of harmony so blood had to be drained.