Dark Banquet - Bill Schutt [55]
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.*75 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