Dark Banquet - Bill Schutt [112]
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†76 This behavior is similar to that reported in a study of juvenile blacktipped sharks (Carcharhinus limbatus), schools of which were reported to respond to barometric pressure changes associated with approaching tropical storms by moving to deeper water. Darrin Lunde, of the American Museum of Natural History, suggested that the vertical migration of Merryweather’s leeches might be explained by the fact that aquatic leeches move out of the water and onto land only when conditions are humid and wet—as they generally are after significant drops in barometric pressure.
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*77Byron was long rumored to have been the true author of The Vampyre, a work credited to his former friend, the physician John Polidori. Evidently, Byron came up with the tale during the laudanum-fueled summer of 1816 as he and his friends (including Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley) spun tales of horror during their stay at Lake Geneva. After Byron discarded the idea, Polidori expanded it into a short story whose leading character, the aristocratic Lord Ruthven, would become an inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula.
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†78 Stalin had recently initiated a purge of physicians (including his own) after claiming that they were part of a sinister Jewish plot to destroy the Russian people. The traitorous doctors, Stalin claimed, were murdering Russian statesmen. According to rumors, mass deportation of Jews to Siberia was to begin on March 5, 1953.
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*79I wondered if any such contrivances had prevented the “wedding night” leeches described by Brantôme from bailing out when attacked by what must have seemed like a blind but energetic relative.
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*80Leech teeth are more accurately referred to as denticles since they don’t share an evolutionary origin with vertebrate teeth.
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†81 This necessitates a dorsally located anus.
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*82In a 1994 study, Norwegians Anders Baerheim and Hogne Sandvik proved that medicinal leeches took twice as long to bite after they had been briefly submerged in Guinness stout (187 seconds to 92 seconds for the water control). According to the authors, “After exposure to beer some of the leeches changed behaviour, swaying their forebodies, losing grip, or falling on their backs.” Presumably after the leeches sobered up, they were used to test an old wives’ tale that a little soured cream applied to the skin would encourage leeches to feed more readily. The results of their study did not support the claim. Finally, Baerheim and Sandvik applied the leeches to arms that had been smeared with garlic. The researchers reported that the leeches “started to wriggle and crawl without assuming the sucking position” and “did not manage to coordinate the process” of biting. The experiment was halted after two leeches dropped dead within two and a half hours of exposure to the garlic-swabbed limb. Lest the reader question the seriousness and scientific relevance of this study, the authors, in their acknowledgments, thanked a local brewery “for supplying sufficient amounts of their precious liquid to satisfy the needs of all participants of the study.” They also thanked the leeches for their enthusiasm, assuring readers that the worms were “by all accounts grateful to Hogne Sandvik for supplying his own precious liquid.”
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*83Not everyone is enamored with the therapeutic uses of leeches, as was recently illustrated by the development of an artificial leech by researchers at the University of Wisconsin. Basically, the device is a glass vacuum chamber with separate tubes for suction and the introduction of the anticoagulant heparin. Inserted just under the skin, the disk-shaped tip rotates to inhibit blood clotting.
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*84Less than three years after returning to work, my dad had a major stroke that crippled his body and brain for the last thirteen years