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Bloodletting, whether by a physician or by leeches, was based on an ancient system of medicine in which blood and other bodily fluids were regarded as "humours" that had to remain in proper balance to maintain health.
Sep 18, 2021 · The luckiest patients, however, were treated with leeches. In the 1830s, France imported forty million leeches a year for medical purposes. In the next decade, England imported six million from France alone.
By the early 19th century, many patients regularly submitted to various bloodletting practices as a means of preventing or treating infection and disease. Present-day surgeons occasionally use leeches after reattaching severed body parts, such as fingers, or after tissue graft procedures.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Dec 9, 2021 · In 1822 St. Thomas’ Hospital used over 50,000 leeches for medical bloodletting, over 31 times more than just four years previously. It is a remarkable increase in use, and one replicated across Europe which found itself in the midst of a “leech craze”.
Jan 25, 2024 · Greek physicians typically used the animals for bloodletting, to balance the humors, and also for conditions as varied as gout, fever, and hearing loss. Leech use reached new heights in the...
- Dina Fine Maron
Leeches used for bloodletting usually involved the medicinal leech, Hirudo medicinalis. At each feeding a leech can ingest about 5 to 10 ml of blood, almost 10 times its own weight.
Jul 17, 2011 · Today, leeches are still employed in surgical cases where skin grafts are used and there is a need for restoring the flow of blood. However, the following scenes, discovered on a clip of 1950's film from the excellent Quack Doctor site are, thankfully, only fictional!
