Blood To Let

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 35, 11 February 1939, Page 3 (Supplement)

Blood To Let

THE leech is a strange part of X God's creation—it can be either a worm or a physician. Both were experts in bloodletting.

First of all there was the little animal, technically known to be of Herudinea family, a branch of the Chaetopod worms, and popularly known to have blood-sucking propensities.

Secondly, there was the doctor whose main medicinal feat wa« -to draw off a pint or two of blood. The former has not evolved greatly in the past thousand years, but we are thankful to say that the latter has. Xo longer do our medical men find it necessary to act the leech in cases of loss of blood.

Strange to say, it is not known which is the original leech. Even learned philologists cannot tell us whether the worm is named after the physician, or the physician after the worm. Suffice it to say that, in the past, one must have been as bad as the other. It is common knowledge that the animal in tropical countries is regarded in a serious light as the most noxious of parasites. It has been known to attack people unawares so as to cause death or serious injury.

ByGeorge Murliss

It is a long animal, often having a striped and glossy body, and moves in much the same way as a common garden worm. When it moves it can stretch its body to three times its normal length. With its small mouth it is capable of puncturing the skin and sucking off the blood. As it sucks from the skin, and not from the veins, it is found useful in drawing off discharges. Many people are of the opinion that leeches are no longer in use, but to-day they are still found beneficial by modern doctors. They are placed on the inflamed part until they bite and fill themselves. When full they are placed in & test-tube containing salt water, of such a strength that it makes .them vomit up all the blood. It is amazing watching the little animals getting rid of their human meal. The idea of thia is to prevent them from digesting too much, and thus to make them hungry all the sooner.

This very procedure is often adopted with inflamed legs or arms, and quite frequently with "black eyes." Instead of waiting for the darkness to vanish by means of pieces of raw steak, the superfluous fluid is abstracted in a few hours. A mosquito bite is often irritating enough, but a bite and continual sucking on the part of a big leeich is not only irritating, but painful and uncanny. This is the useful working of the leech, but in Ceylon, especially along the river banks, and in the jungle marshes, it. is almost impossible to walk without being attacked by them. Not only do thfey drop on the exposed neck or .head

Being a Treatise On the Ancient Art of the Leech

of the passer-by; not only do they creep up the bare legs; but they even spring out to attack their prey.

In Egypt and the surrounding countries there is a water leech, the Lininatis Nilotica, which inhabits streams and pools. Not only do they attach themselves to the bodies of men and animals, causing exhaustion through loss of vital blood, but also attack through drinking water. When swallowed, they fasten themselves to the interior of the throat, and sometimes the lungs, where they cause a constant hemorrhage. If they are not removed, they become living instruments of death. As far back as Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, and as near the British occupation of Palestine during the Great War we have examples of the scourge of this little animal. How many men died through its ravages before they even experienced any fighting in the front line ?

Last century, especially at the beginning, there was a great trade in leeches. It is said that in 1832, 57,000,000 of them were imported into France. It became so profitable that people turned leech farmers. Beginning at 2/6 for 100, the price rose rapidly to 30/.

Wordsworth wrote a very excellent poem on this topic—"The Leech Gatb erer. A few hundred yards from hie cottage he came across a strange sight:

I saw a man before me unawares; The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs.

The poet gazed at this apparition for a while. He was extremely old, bent double, looked as though he were in great pain, and propped his feeble limbs on a long, grey staff.

At length, himself unsettling, he .the pond Stirred with his staff, and fixedly did look Upon the muddy water, which he conned. As if he had been reading la a book. Plucking up courage, Wordsworth allowed his curiosity to get the better of him.

"What occupation do you then pursue?" >

"To gather leeches, being old and poor," came the shaky answer. From pond to pond, he roamed, from moor to moor; Housing, with God's good help, by choice or chance; And in this way he gained an hones: maintenance. Leeches have almost gone out of date because modern methods are beins applied. In the past, blood-letting was used to excess, being thought a cure for every known disease and complaint, but public opinion drove it into disuse. To-day this prejudice has disappeared, and the drawing of blood by leeches still brings relief in certain pathological conditions.