Bloodletting Is Still Happening, Despite Centuries of Harm

illustration of bloodletting

Bloodletting Is Still Happening, Despite Centuries of Harm

Published October 27, 2015

In the shadow of India’s largest mosque, the gutters run red with blood.

It’s a bizarre scene, if you’ve never seen a modern-day bloodletting. First, men wrap patients’ arms and legs with straps as tourniquets, to control the blood flow. Then they use razor blades to make tiny pricks in the hands and feet, and blood trickles into a concrete trough stained red with the day’s work…