You spar don't you? Any trainer ever told you to keep you to keep your left hand down at/below your waist?
A trainer will never tell you to keep your hands low. People still do it though. Including ATGs. I don't think any ATG keeps their hands low all the time. I think they keep their hands low at times to enable better flexibility, and for luring/baiting.
I am not certain if you are joking or not. Leeches are used if a body part like a finger or ear is detached and reattached as the leeches get circulation going. Maggots are still occasionally used to clear dead tissue from infections of the mastoid bone. In the old days they were used to eat off gangrenous tissue. Weird as this might seem, they work. Bleeding is another matter.
Replacing blood is different from just bleeding. They used to open a vein to let out large amounts of blood. Modern thinking would be that they killed more people than they helped.
I don't think the idea in the ancient or medieval worlds was the same. It was not based on any real knowledge. Any modern use of bloodletting would be for specific, very rare conditions. "Take out the bad blood. Make clean blood." This presupposes they had any viable concept of what would make blood bad other than assuming if the person is sick his blood must be "bad."
"The advantage kicking a football from the side is not at all obvious a priori or from casual observation; the advantage of holding your hands up in a boxing match is." But all kinds of ATG's didn't hold their hands up. Why is that if there is an "obvious" advantage?
"Jeffries, Lewis, Klitschko, Ali" All guys with terrific physical advantages over the majority (even vast majority) of their opposition. Jeff, Lewis, and Klitschko were very big. Ali was quite big, but also faster than his opponents. These physical advantages in my judgment masked technique flaws. Part of heavyweight boxing. The big guy has size going for him and needn't be technically the boxer his smaller opponent is.
Yeah I know,I'm just amused with the justifications for Jeffries holding his left hand down on his thigh.
Why do you think Jeffries did it? Did he get a vicarious kick out of having his nose broken 3 times,his face turned into raw hamburger on occasion? Perhaps he was a secret masochist?
Ali's great reflexes and legs masked his deficiencies in technique as they did Roy Jones' .As you said, Lennox and Vitali were huge men who got away with their flaws because of their size.
??? But he didn't he was punished severely in his championship defences! Hype Igoe who was present at both said Jeffries absorbed a worst beating from Fitz than Willard did from Dempsey. Contemporary reports stated Jeffries only prevailed because he was : 1.So much bigger 2.13 Years younger 3.Fitz's hands went on him