The History of~The Barber Pole

Now, you are quite familiar what this is. Yes, a Pole with red and white colors on it. Do you know what this associates to?

Right, a Barber.

We all what a Barber's job is. give their customers haircuts, or sometimes even to dress the customer's hair and even give them a good shave.

But you may not know that back in Medieval Europe the Barber's job was much more prevalent.

Barbers didn't just cut or style hair or even just shaved people. They also were early generation dentists that looked at their patient's teeth and often times extracted bad teeth from their mouths (and without anesthetics)

They were also early generation surgeons who performed old fashioned (and sometimes dangerous) surgical procedures such as the following.

**Leeching:** The usage of leeches to suck out the impurities in the blood of the patient to cure what ails them.

**Cupping:** An old Asian medical procedure using cups to help with blood flow.

**Enemas:** Using water to flush out body waste.

And most prominently, *Bloodletting.*

This is where we need to talk about a brief history of bloodletting. Because it has a lot to do about the Barber Pole.

Initially, Bloodletting and other surgical procedures like such were performed by the Clergy (e.g., Priests, Monks, Friars). However this would change in 1162 by Pope Alexander the 3rd who during the *Council of Tours* declared surgical and medicine incompatible practiced by the clergy to be incompatible. This would open up a business for barbers.

During the bloodletting process, the patient would gab into a pole and squeeze it very tightly which would make the patient's veins visible and making it easier for the Barber to know where to make the incision, then the Barber would use a special cutting tool known as a Fleem and the blood would drain from the patient.

The idea behind bloodletting is that it was more efficient than Leeching because the blood would drain from the patient quickly, causing bad fluids such as phlegm (the green-ish yellow stuff that you can sometimes cough up when you're sick), bile (which comes in a variety of colors like green, yellow, and black) and even some kind of disease to drain along with the blood, allowing the bad blood to be replaced by new, fresh, healthy blood. Pretty soon, Bloodletting would be seen as the "go-to" medical procedure to cure whatever ails people, from common diseases like a cold or the flu to eventually the Bubonic Plague. But, even in these "lesser sanitary" times, the Barber wouldn't just let his patient just spill blood all over the place, during the bloodletting procedure a Barber would use a bowl to collect the blood, and when the procedure was finished would bandage the patient to stem the bleeding.

Barbers also wanted to advertise their business. At first, they would take a bowl full of a patient's blood and place it on the windowsill outside of their shop, they would also take the bad teeth of their patients and string them over the window.

Though leaving the blood bowl would eventually be banned in the early 14th century for sanitary reasons. With this Barbers had to find another way to advertise their business.

This is when Barbers took some bloodied bandages (carefully washed) and some spare fresh bandages and sawed off one of the surgical poles and wrapped the bandages around the pole and hung it above the door of their shop.

Soon bandages were replaced by paint, but the red and white colors were still used.

Which evolved to the pole we see today. So the Barber pole's features have history, from top to bottom.

**Pole:** The pole has red and white colors. The red is the blood (or the bloodied bandages) and the white is the fresh bandages.

Sometimes the red and white stripes would go on a downward spiral. This means either the bloodletting procedure or how the wind blows the bandages.

**Top:** The top represents the poleknob which was made of brass and where Barbers placed the leeches if he needed to do the leeching procedure.

**Bottom:** The bottom represents the bowl which collected the blood during the bloodletting procedure.

In the USA, the barber pole also has a blue stripe.

Now, If you think that the added blue stripe is to symbolize American Patriotism. Well there's actually more to the story.

That's because in the mid 16th century (at least in Britain) something called the "Barber-Surgeon Company" was established, and soon Barbers were only to extract bad teeth and perform other forms of dentistry.

With this, the pole also changed. Surgeons kept the red and white stripes, whereas Barbers had to use a pole with white and "blue" stripes.

But it wouldn't be until the mid 18th century when the barber and the surgeon would be officially separated due to the quick evolution of medicine.

Well, that is all for this page. Don't forget to check out my other pages on here as well as my Games and Movies wikis as well. Until next time, this is JohnnyOTGS signing out.