Sept. 10, 2004 -- Score one for the medical experts of the distant past. The old practice of bloodletting may have worked, and new research may show us why.

Before antibiotics were developed, bloodletting was used to treat serious illnesses.

In fact, America's first president, George Washington, is said to have had 80 ounces of his blood drained from his body in a last-ditch effort to save him in his last hours of life.

He had fallen ill after being caught in sleet and snow while riding around his farm a few days earlier, according to biographer Jack Warren Jr.

It didn't work. Washington died on Dec. 14, 1799.

Some experts blame the bloodletting; others say infection was the problem.

Bloodletting was going out of style by then, but the fact that such an important person was given that treatment indicates it was once a state-of-the-art technique.

"As recently as 1942, Sir William Osler's highly regarded medical textbook advocated bloodletting as a treatment for acute pneumonia," writes Tracey Rouault, MD, of the National Institutes of Health in Science.