Trivia: The Gruesome Origin of the Barber Pole

• Rohin
  January 16th, 2008 at 6:31 am

  Barbers performed quite a lot of surgery (it was their role for hundreds of years, not doctors’) such as tooth-extraction, amputations (often war-related), excisions etc. Blood-letting was one of their duties. The fact we call surgeons ‘Mr’ and physicians ‘Dr’ in the UK is a legacy of the barbershop surgeons (who didn’t train in the same initial way).

• Miss Cellania
  January 16th, 2008 at 6:47 am

  I read once where they would hang their bloody rags and bandages outside to dry, and the wind would sometimes twist them around the signpost… and that’s how the sign originated.

• Tim
  January 16th, 2008 at 8:47 am

  Bloodletting was a barborous and superstitious practice; much like modern day psychiatry.

• Rohin
  January 16th, 2008 at 9:15 am

  That’s right Miss Cellania. The poles were initially used for patients to grip tightly with a tourniquet applied on the upper arm - this way the veins would appear more prominently. Bloodletting was believed to cure all sorts of ills (one of Hippocrates’ cockups). Blood would drip down the pole (leeches were subsequently used to increase the bleeding) and as you say MC, the poles would be hung out with bloody bandages that sometimes wrapped around. The ball represents the bowl (with leeches).

  Interestingly, the two groups of surgeons - the barber surgeons and the ‘real’ medically-trained surgeons - had their own coloured poles. The two groups were amalgamated by force and maintained their own identities. The barbers had a blue and white pole, whereas the surgeons had the familiar red and white pole. So it’s strange that the barbers later adopted this one. Some have interpreted the blue to mean venous blood and the red to mean arterial.

  Tim, there are still two occasions we perform blood letting. But come on, it’s a far more scientific than this psychiatry you talk of.

• Lo
  January 16th, 2008 at 9:31 pm

  Again, Tim, you misspelled your name.

• Louisa
  January 16th, 2008 at 11:03 pm

  LOL @ #5. Please don’t sue me Tim!

• ted
  January 16th, 2008 at 11:10 pm

  Tim, how can you be so opinionated about this, considering that you’ve never been a bloodletter, a barber, or a psychiatrist?

  Aren’t you just a puppet of the media?

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