bloodletting

• Knowing that his recovery was impossible, I refrained, with his full concurrence, from having him tormented with miscalled alleviations, such as opiates, bloodletting, and so forth. —  Personal Recollections
• And in a failed attempt at reviving themselves, they've decided that bloodletting is the most effective treatment. —  Badger Herald: News Updates
• Its dance of revenge is an ironic perversion of individual initiative: Sweeney finds freedom and fulfillment in the obsessive joy of bloodletting, and he comes to his own bad end through the ironic twists of actions and consequences that come to resemble a capricious destiny. —  Rochester City Newspaper
• The jury remains out on whether the August figure signifies that the worst of the bloodletting is over, or whether last month was merely the calm before the storm. —  Business News
• Because there's a proven track record of international cooperation successfully stopping Congolese bloodletting, as it did in 2002 when a United Nations peacekeeping force helped end the four-year civil war. —  Nicholas D. Kristof

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the Same Context