Most barber shops have the iconic and well-remembered rotating red, white, and blue poles outside. The reality and origin behind those tricolored poles are redder than the red on the poles. Barbers, in medieval times, did more than just cutting hair. They were known as barber-surgeons, where besides hair-cutting, they also performed minor surgery, pulled teeth, and amputated limbs.
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But it’s not the minor surgeries they performed that made the barber poles of today blue, red, and white, it’s the bloodletting that made these poles like that. Barbers performed bloodletting when Pope Alexander II ordered monks and priests to stop performing the service, as Reader’s Digest detailed:
At the time, people thought having too much blood in a certain area could cause diseases like fevers or the plague, and letting some out would make them healthy. During the treatment, barber-surgeons would give patients poles to hold, the original barber poles. Grasping the staff made their veins pop out a bit, making them easier to find while the barbers went all Sweeney Todd.
Even back then, people knew there was a limit to bloodletting, so barbers would stop the bleeding with a white cloth. They’d then tie those towels to the poles and hang them outside their shops, according to History. Some towels stayed blood-stained even after they were washed, so it was common to see a pole with white and red swirling around in the breeze.
These days, barbers leave the medical treatment to doctors, but their poles are a nod to their bloody past.
image credit: via wikimedia commons
Source: neatorama