In 2018 a story about Anthony Mancinelli, the oldest living barber, made the rounds. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/nyregion/worlds-oldest-barber-anthony-ma

In 2018 a story about Anthony Mancinelli, the oldest living barber, made the rounds. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/nyregion/worlds-oldest-barber-anthony-mancinelli.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/nyregion/worlds-oldest-ba... When he first began barbering he had to learn how to apply leeches and (AFAICT) cupping. (Mancinelli died last year: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/nyregion/anthony-mancinelli-dead.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/nyregion/anthony-mancinel...) The use of leeches seems very fringe today, but here in California Kaiser Permanente insurance covers cupping. In my neighborhood there's a local acupuncturist that does Hijama, aka "wet cupping"[1], which is literally bloodletting. Though advertised as an Islamic technique such bloodletting was (is?) widely practiced the world over and his clientele seem to be similarly diverse. (Many Chinese and Russians in my neighborhood, among others.) As far as I understand, insurers are slowly embracing acupuncture, cupping, etc as a cheaper alternative to patients using valuable physician time. Also, AFAICT there's a subset of chiropractors that basically apply modern physical therapy techniques (providing a reverse placebo effect?), and so medical doctors seem to be increasingly comfortable referring patients to chiropractors. Though, the distinctions among different types of chiropractors aren't distinguished in the medical literature so the quack chiropractors (i.e. the ones who diagnose everything as a spinal disorder, do regular x-ray imaging, and charge hundreds of dollars for tapping a couple of vertebrae) seem to be benefiting from the improved legitimacy. [1] As opposed to regular cupping, which uses suction to break capillaries, bruising the skin.