Ransom Riggs
The Lost Art of Bloodstopping
by Ransom Riggs - February 17, 2010 - 12:19 PM

faithhealer1Back in the days before modern medicine, in the parts of North America where the work was rough and a doctor might be a day’s ride away — the Ozarks, the mining towns of Appalachia, and among the lumberjacks of the great North woods — there existed a trade, a kind of faith-healing, really — called bloodstopping. Legends and folktales of bloodstoppers and their inexplicable medical miracles have been passed down through the generations, though I had never heard of it recently.

Here’s how the old-time bloodstoppers did their work. It was really rather simple, provided you had, you know, the Power. You simply recited the sixth verse of the sixteenth chapter of the book of Ezekiel in the presence of a bleeder, while walking to the East:

“And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou vast in thy blood, Live.”

And then the wound in question, it is said, would stop bleeding. This was standard practice, though from the legends it seems like every bloodstopper had their own patented technique. The Old Farmer’s Almanac quotes one bloodstopper explaining that he “forgot everything and concentrated on the person hurt,” imagining himself “right there holding the blood back and saying, ‘It’s stopping, it’s stopping, it’s stopped.’”

One old woman, reputed to be the best bloodstopper in McDonald County, Missouri,
would simply hold up her hands and say, “Upon Christ’s grave three roses bloom, stop, blood, stop!”

This 1986 article on bloodstopping details yet another technique:

Another tale of a blood-stopper’s compassion concerned the mother of a little boy who had suffered from nosebleeds for three days and nights, conventional medical science having failed completely to help the poor child. In a desperate gamble, she drove her son to the house of a well-known blood-stopper. The old man supposedly hobbled out onto his front porch when he saw the car pull up and “took the scene in at once – the wan little boy holding a bloody rag to his nose, the distraught mother. He raised his hand as in salute and said, ‘The bleeding is stopped.’ So it had. The little fellow did not have another nosebleed for two years.”

Just tuck this away in your “I can’t believe that existed” file.

« Previous Post   -   Next Post »
Click here to get a Risk-Free issue of mental_floss magazine
Comments (17)

  1. Rasputin anyone?

    posted by Big Jonny on 2-17-2010 at 12:27 pm

  2. ok, but based on this article…it all worked?

    posted by Nicole on 2-17-2010 at 12:31 pm

  3. bloodstoppers huh, interesting. i’ve never heard of this before. will google, this should make for an interesting read.

    posted by rein on 2-17-2010 at 12:39 pm

  4. My great grandmother was, according to some family stories, a bloodstopper. I was really young when I overheard the stories so I didn’t really know what they meant by a “bloodstopper” … until now. Wow.

    posted by lleachie on 2-17-2010 at 12:43 pm

  5. @ lleachie

    We’d love to hear some of those stories, if you can remember any of them!

    posted by Ransom Riggs on 2-17-2010 at 12:48 pm

  6. I have a couple of trauma nurse friends who likes to state the obvious joke that “ALL bleeding stops eventually.”

    posted by nihil on 2-17-2010 at 12:53 pm

  7. um…Ezekiel ch6 only has 14 verses!

    posted by Tim on 2-17-2010 at 1:39 pm

  8. I have an uncle who can talk fire out of you. I know that sounds weird, but my mother burned her hand and he literally whispered to her hand for 5, 10 minutes and it stopped hurting. There’s a more technical name for it, but he always said his mother had taught him.

    posted by Katie on 2-17-2010 at 1:40 pm

  9. what a bunch of BS

    posted by Mike on 2-17-2010 at 1:47 pm

  10. @ tim –

    Whoop, I meant ezekiel chapter 16 verse 6. Got ‘em reversed!

    posted by Ransom Riggs on 2-17-2010 at 1:48 pm

  11. There’s even a book: _Bloodstoppers & Bearwalkers: Folk Traditions of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (Third Edition)_ by Richard M. Dorson, James P. Leary (Editor)
    Synopsis (from Barnes and Noble website)Remote and rugged, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (fondly known as “the U.P.”) has been home to a rich variety of indigenous peoples and Old World immigrants—a heritage deeply embedded in today’s “Yooper” culture. Ojibwes, French Canadians, Finns, Cornish, Poles, Italians, Slovenians, and others have all lived here, attracted to the area by its timber, mineral ore, and fishing grounds. Mixing local happenings with supernatural tales and creatively adapting traditional stories to suit changing audiences, the diverse inhabitants of the U.P. have created a wealth of lore populated with tricksters, outlaws, cunning trappers and poachers, eccentric bosses of the mines and lumber camps, “bloodstoppers” gifted with the lifesaving power to stop the flow of blood, “bearwalkers” able to assume the shape of bears, and more.

    For folklorist Richard M. Dorson, who ventured into the region in the late 1940s, the U.P. was a living laboratory, a storyteller’s paradise. Bloodstoppers and Bearwalkers, based on his extensive fieldwork in the area, is his richest and most enduring work. This new edition, with a critical introduction and an appendix of additional tales selected by James P. Leary, restores and expands Dorson’s classic contribution to American folklore. Engaging and well informed, the book presents and ponders the folk narratives of the region’s loggers, miners, lake sailors, trappers, and townsfolk. Unfolding the variously peculiar and raucous tales of the U.P., Bloodstoppers and Bearwalkers reveals a vital component of UpperMidwest culture and a fascinating cross-section of American society.

    posted by Elizabeth on 2-17-2010 at 1:59 pm

  12. The future of government-controlled medicine in the US?

    posted by HTM on 2-17-2010 at 2:08 pm

  13. Well, there were little bits I overheard during poker games, so not much of a story, Ransom. My dad’s family was of French Canadian/Ojibwa/Scottish stock and lived in Canada, the UP, and Northern Wisconsin over the generations. My grandfather’s generation was the first to have to work in factory jobs; previous generations were hunters, trappers, and lumberjacks.
    All I remember was a hushed “Do you remember how grandma used to stop bleeding with the laying of hands?” from one uncle to his mom (my grandma) during an otherwise raucous game. I’m not sure I was supposed to hear this, because talk like this scared my mom a bit.
    My dad’s family also seemed to carry some uncanny sixth sense at times, with my dad’s whole family one time sitting at grandma’s table waiting for us to arrive for dinner even though we told them we were arriving a day later.
    I can’t explain it and I don’t expect you to believe it, but it’s part of my heritage.

    posted by lleachie on 2-17-2010 at 2:12 pm

  14. If you go up to the U.P. (the Upper Peninsula of Michigan) you will find stories of bloodstoppers all over the place. The folk tradition was alive and well until relatively recently – within the past 60 or 70 years or so. I would recommend the Marquette Historical Society for information; there also are some pretty cool accounts of it stored in the archives at Northern Michigan University.

    posted by Ophelia on 2-17-2010 at 3:11 pm

  15. One of my Grade 7&8 teachers was a blood stopper. I forget if he actually used his abilities on any of us (he was also our gym teacher), but somehow, the topic came up. He told us that he had gained it from a woman, and he himself had passed it on to another woman. He said it had to go from man to woman to man, etc. Of course, we all wanted to know more about it and how he did it, but he said that he had passed the secret already, so he couldn’t tell us, or else he would lose his powers. At the time, we all believed him, and frankly, 20 years later, I really don’t have any reason not to now either. He was a great teacher!

    posted by Ranger J on 2-17-2010 at 5:44 pm

  16. My father, a retired pastor, has requested this hermeneutical gem on his gravestone: “Context, context, context.” Those bloodstoppers would do well to have heeded Dad’s mantra; if they had read the rest of the chapter in Ezekiel they would know that the woman who was found in her own blood was raised by her savior as a queen, but then rebelled and was condemned. Fun stuff, also the center of a nosering-related controversy in a religious organization in which this reader was once involved.

    posted by PhoneticLorin on 2-18-2010 at 1:41 pm

  17. Both of my greatgrandmothers possesed the ability to stop bleeding and cure burns. I also posses this ability. It has been passed down through the bloodlines of my family for generations now.

    posted by Kimberlee Ketterman Edgar on 1-28-2011 at 3:57 pm

Comment

commenting policy