Nice Blue And White Barber's or Bloodletting Bowl

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This is a very nice barber's or bloodletting bowl, it's in excellent condition, we do not know if it is a reproduction or original, the maker's mark is very hard to make out but it IS t I saw one exactly like this listed before as a repro. on ebay but have been unable to find it listed anyw else online to verify that fact. It has no chips, cracks or other blemishes, it is 11" by 8". T is a thumbprint indentation and holes on the backside for hanging. A bit about this profession: barbers were also dentists and surgeons, versatile performers of tooth extraction and enemas, bloodletting and wound surgery. Back before the time when barbers were barbers and doctors were doctors, and t were electric razors and swivel chairs, barbers had another, darker role to play besides shaving beard bristles and cutting overgrown hair. Back then they also hacked people's arms open. To understand this horrifying practice, we must first go back further in time to the golden age of the Greeks. Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine was the first to conceive the notion that disease had a rational cause and tfore a rational cure. From borrowed knowledge he gatd from China and India, he stitched together the concept that bodies had four types of humours: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. He extrapolated from this knowledge his theory that disease caused imbalance in these fluids - others had thought that it was the imbalance of these humours that caused disease. Hippocrates reckoned that it was the bad diet, absence of exercise, poor air and injuries that were responsible for illnesses. From the theory relating disease with imbalance of the four humours came the idea that the disease could be cured if balance was restored. The four humours (blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile) were corresponded to the basic elements of air, water, fire and earth, and bodily fluids were made up of various combinations of these elements. Foods were also characterised based on the four basic elements. One way of 'curing' disease, then, was to prescribe foods that had properties opposite to those of the condition. For example, if a patient was diagnosed as cold and wet, then the doctor would prescribe a diet consisting of hot and dry foods. Of course, this seldom did the patient any good, but we won't go into that for now. The important thing is that the other method of curing disease was through the purging of whichever humour was causing it. Bloodletting was for patients who were too 'hot and wet' 7. Although this therapeutic method was equally useless at curing illness most wealthy Europeans willingly underwent painful bi-monthly bloodletting as a form of preventive medicine 9. This was because they believed that blood was made from food by their liver, and that overeating led to production of excess blood, which had to be removed. The grisly art of bloodletting flourished during the Dark Ages, when medicine degenerated, people were mostly illiterate and the physicians of the time were monks and priests, whose thinking was deeply intertwined with religion. Barbers were first appointed assistants to the physician-clergy. Later, in 1163 at the council of Tours, it was declared sacrilegious for the clergy to draw blood from the human body, and these ministers of God were then banned from medical practices. However, it was easier said than done w trying to stop barbers from their ghastly bloodletting business was concerned. Although the barbers were becoming crippled with the rise of medicine and developments in surgery, they nevertheless doggedly pursued their practice. The 1540 barber-surgeon merger was, in fact, in favour of the barbers because the diploma entitling a surgeon to practice was signed by two barbers and two surgeons. Moreover, barbers were much favoured by the monarchy at that time: Henry VIII even decreed that barbers were to receive the bodies of four criminals yearly for the purpose of dissection.Finally, in 1745, after a series of in... read more

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