Dark Banquet - Bill Schutt [54]
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.*73
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.*74 “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