Dark Banquet (18 page)

Early use of leeches by man reflected the importance of bloodletting as a therapeutic tool. Leeches also gave practitioners an alternative when “breathing a vein” wasn't appropriate. For example, leeches could be applied to parts of the body that were difficult or impossible to bleed by lancing or other means. Inflamed tonsils might call for leeches to be attached to the back of a patient's throat or the bloodsuckers might be employed to drain persistent hemorrhoids. Leeches were applied to the scrotum to treat the swollen testicles that resulted from gonorrhea and they were also commonly used to treat maladies of the female reproductive system. Additionally, leeches were the preferred method of bleeding women and children “who required a gentle withdrawal of blood.”

In what is arguably the strangest use of leeches on record, the sixteenth-century French historian Pierre de Brantôme recounted how leeches were inserted into the vaginas of women on their wedding nights so that they could “seem like the virgins and maidens they used to be…so as the gallant husband who comes on his wedding night to assault them, bursts their bulb from where the blood flows.”

According to Brantôme, battering this bogus maidenhead (or having it battered for you) invariably led to an annelid-assisted version of postcoital bliss: “And both are bloody and (there is) a great joy for both and in this way the honor of the citadel is safe.”

Right.

Medicinal leech use reached its zenith in Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century, where Napoléon's chief surgeon, François-Joseph Broussais, ascribed to the idea that all diseases were a result of too much blood (Galen's plethoras again—fifteen hundred years later). As a result, Broussais prescribed leeches (and the always-popular “starvation”) in much the same way that a physician today might recommend aspirin and bed rest. Given Broussais' tremendous influence on European medicine, the use of leeches exploded in the 1830s, with over forty-one million used in 1833. French troops were bled for every conceivable ailment. Some of them were treated with as many as fifty leeches at a time—so many, in fact, that they were said to be wearing glistening “coats of mail.” Fashion-conscious ladies of the time even wore dresses “à la Broussais,” decorating them with imitation leeches. Leech use was so heavy that the medicinal leech was driven to the point of extinction (and it remains endangered today). Eventually, they had to be imported from places like Asia.
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Given the degree of crushing poverty that existed at the time, leech collection became a steady, if not particularly pleasant, way to generate income. Nearly all that was required to start a dynamic career harvesting
Hirudo
was access to a lake, pond, or swamp that had leeches living in it. Leech collectors simply rolled up their pants (or skirts) and waded into the nearest leech-infested body of water. Then they stood around (swamps suddenly became
the
place to hang out) until a hungry leech or two swam by and decided to latch on to a leg or foot. Once the parasite had secured itself, the “lucky” collector would gently pull the leech off and place it into a basket. Presumably, those folks with more time on the job were able to remove the leech after it had attached itself but before it had initiated a bite. For many, it appears that collecting leeches in this manner was far from a pleasant way to make a living. As described by the Reverend J. G. Wood in 1885:

The Leech-gatherers take them in various ways. The simplest and most successful method is to wade into the water and pick off the leeches as fast as they settle on the bare legs. This plan, however, is by no means calculated to improve the health of the Leech-gatherer, who becomes thin, pale, and almost specter-like, from the constant drain of blood, and seems to be a fit companion for the old worn-out horses and cattle that are occasionally driven into the Leech-ponds in order to feed these blood thirsty annelids.

“Today, leeches are raised in tanks partially filled with distilled water and refrigerated,” Rudy said.
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“They're hermaphrodites, so everybody gets pregnant. After
Hirudo
mates, it crawls out onto land to lay its cocoons—which look like foamy little footballs. The babies hatch from the cocoons in around three weeks.”

“Do you raise your own leeches here?” I asked.

“No. We get them as adults from a company called Ricarimpex. They've been in business since 1845.”

“Yikes,” I said, impressed that any company could stick around that long—no less one that sold leeches and whose name seemed to have been thought up during a night of drunken Scrabble. I even briefly thought about suggesting a motto (“With a name like Ricarimpex you
know
our product sucks!”), but I held back.

“There's another company, Biopharm, that was started by Roy Sawyer in South Wales.”

“Biopharm? Cool name,” I said, a bit too quickly and Rudy shot me a puzzled look.

Back in the early nineteenth century, several companies, including Ricarimpex, sprang up in the marshy regions near Bordeaux, France. (The former company name was actually Ricard-Debest-Bechade.) These leech suppliers flourished because of the sudden demand that resulted from Dr. Broussais' “if it's sick, stick a leech on it” brand of medicine. Leeches were now required in vast numbers and the old capture technique of “wade in and wait” was soon replaced by leech husbandry and the establishment of permanent breeding pools. New roads and rail links meant that leeches could be sent farther and farther afield. The practice of leeching spread to the United States, although American species were found to be deficient because of their relatively puny size.

Most, but not all, leech use by humans was related to bloodletting. In 1850 Dr. George Merryweather came up with a rather remarkable, nonmedicinal use for leeches. He did so after pondering a short section from Edward Jenner's poem, “Signs of Rain”:

The leech disturbed is newly risen;

Quite to the summit of his prison.

Merryweather interpreted this line as a reference to the medicinal leeches' sensitivity and response to the electrical conditions in the atmosphere, and he sought to use this to predict upcoming storms. The instrument he created was the Tempest Prognosticator, and it consisted of twelve pint bottles, containing about an inch and a half of rainwater. The bottles were set in a circle beneath a large bell. This arrangement, Merryweather stated, allowed the leeches to be within sight of one another, thus preventing them from “feeling the affliction of solitary confinement.” At the top of each bottle was a narrow metal tube and in each tube a tiny piece of carved “whalebone” attached to a wire.
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The twelve wires led up to the bell where they ended in miniature hammers. The contraption was designed so that the whalebone would be dislodged if a leech entered the tube—something it would do only when bad weather approached. A shift in the position of the whalebone pulled the wire, causing the bell to be struck by the hammer. The more leeches that rose, the more times the bell was struck, thus indicating the relative strength of the approaching storm. Although the Tempest Prognosticator functioned successfully, scientists actually think that the leeches were responding to changes in barometric pressure rather than sensing electrical activity.
^†76

Merryweather proudly displayed the instrument (also called a Leech Barometer) in the 1851 Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London. He implored government officials to utilize his design, envisioning a protective shield of bell-ringing leeches encircling England's coastline. He also lobbied that his Tempest Prognosticators should be placed aboard every ship in his country's great fleet. Instead, the Royal Navy opted for an annelid-free barometer (the storm glass) designed by Captain Robert Fitzroy. Fitzroy had used the device years earlier on the HMS
Beagle
—on a voyage that would become famous for entirely different reasons.

Aside from the unfortunate Dr. Merryweather, most people who came into contact with leeches did so because they were ill. A number of historical figures were bled by them—although none of them went on to become spokespersons for the treatment.

In April 1824 Lord Byron, who was on a military campaign in Greece, suffered a series of seizures, possibly related to the fact that he was addicted to drugs, had previously contracted both gonorrhea and malaria, and might also have had an eating disorder. Hospitalized and wracked with fever, the poet was disgusted to learn that his physicians had proposed attaching leeches to his brow to treat his elevated temperature.

“A damned set of butchers,” Byron called them, between bouts of delirium and paranoia. He was
somehow
convinced that his doctors were going to kill him.

Byron's condition continued to deteriorate until, in a weakened state, he submitted to his doctors' recommendations. One could almost hear a collective sigh of relief from the physicians: the great poet had
finally
come to his senses.

The healers acted immediately, withholding water and attaching somewhere between twelve and twenty leeches to Lord Byron's fevered forehead. The hungry creatures did their job, reportedly draining off two pounds of Byron's blood. Unfortunately, the pathogen-packed poet died the following day. He was thirty-six years old.
^*77

Leeches were also commonly used to treat strokes, and although there are discrepancies concerning Soviet strongman Joseph Stalin's last days, there is general agreement that he died on March 5, 1953, several days after being stricken by a massive cerebrovascular accident, the same ailment that had claimed FDR eight years earlier.

Summoned, some contend, up to thirteen hours after he was discovered in a puddle of his own urine, Stalin's terrified doctors
^†78
bled the dying dictator with a total of eight leeches, attaching them behind his ears. With trembling hands, the physicians sponged down “the Boss” with aromatic vinegar, then tried injecting him with camphor and caffeine (and, quite possibly, anything else they could find laying around the
dacha
). But the heroic efforts of Stalin's physicians were in vain. According to Stalin's daughter, Svetlana, the stricken despot reared up at the last moment, in what she interpreted as a final tirade against those present in the room. Then, Joseph Stalin dropped dead, urine soaked and oozing blood from behind his parasite-pierced pinna.