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A jar for keeping medicinal leeches Hirudo medicinalis, a medicinal leech, attached to the skin. A leech collector, leech gatherer, or leech finder was a person occupied with procuring medicinal leeches, which were in growing demand in 19th-century Europe. Leeches were used in bloodletting but were not easy for medical practitioners to obtain ...
Hirudiculture is the culture, or farming, of leeches in both natural and artificial environments. This practice drew the attention of Parisian savants and members of the French Société Zoologique d'Acclimitation in the mid-to-late 19th century as a part of a larger interest in the culture of fish and oysters. [1]
In the nineteenth century, demand for leeches was sufficient for hirudiculture, the farming of leeches, to become commercially viable. [64] Leech usage declined with the demise of humoral theory, [ 65 ] but made a small-scale comeback in the 1980s after years of decline, with the advent of microsurgery , where venous congestion can arise due to ...
The price of leeches varied between one penny and threepence halfpenny each. In 1832 leeches accounted for 4.4% of the total hospital expenditure. The hospital maintained an aquarium for leeches until the 1930s. [15] The use of leeches began to become less widespread towards the end of the 19th century. [5]
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This late Georgian Bedale Leech House in Bedale, North Yorkshire, England, is a unique example [1] of a building constructed to keep live medicinal leeches (Hirudo medicinalis) healthy prior to their sale by the local apothecary [2] to doctors and private individuals for the purpose of blood letting as a medical procedure to cure or prevent a variety of illnesses and diseases.
Haementeria ghilianii is a species of leech in the Glossiphoniidae family, comprising freshwater proboscis-bearing leeches. Colloquially, they are known as the Amazon giant leech . Following its initial description in 1849, additional details were provided based on specimens from French Guiana in 1899, after which the species was largely ...
During a blood meal, a leech rhythmically contracts its muscles to draw blood from a host animal into the crop for storage. It can consume over five times its own weight in blood in one feeding. Once satiated, a leech detaches from its host. Hirudo verbana uses anticoagulants when it feeds, so its bite wounds continue bleeding for some time ...