LEECHES
We kept hearing about wonderul advances in medical knowldge, then back comes the leech!
The initial thought was often:"Good! The.the old methods had some values after all!.Good! The old ways had some values we should not just toss out!"
But then, when I saw what the medical leech can looked like, I started backing off and started seeking ways to make some reservations.
Most of us expect to see a tiny critter not too far from the little weevil-like things which used to get in loose flour and corn meal when we were kids, or the maggots you see on a ham where the cure did not "take". But two leeches of today, my friend, literally make a hand full and they have been grown to a size eighteen-inches long.
So, put a hold on those scheduled leech connection visits for a time. I am not quite ready to believe ,for instance, that the bite of the leech is "painless" as it is said to be. It's going to take me a while, I think, to get acquainted with these suckers! Getting used do having them crawling aound is not an easy thing to do!
I'll get over the squeemishness, I think, but for now, if they have to attach a leech or two, they had best do it first and tell me about have done it later - much later.
The so-called medical leech is raised at professional leech labs all aound the world and one such farm in Swansea,Wales turns out about 15-thousand of the sippers per year. It call the "Biofarm", which seems logical enough because to raise herds of those blood-sucking worms with the built-in "yuk" factor is best done under laboratory conditons.
I'd say such operations might be hidden from sight by scholing ourselves to look the other way. I've never actually met a survivor of leech treatments, nor do I see it becoming a favorite home remedy any time soon, either.
Our modern medics started using the old-fashioned leech back in 1937, mainly to treat stroke patients. Then, the technique faded away again only to be revived suddenly in l960. And, this time the lowly leech seems to be gaining steadily and doing well. The bite of the leech,I am told, is not painful because the secretions in the saliva of the leech – five such substances with thereptic value - includes one that deadens any pain involved when the executed by the "bite-or" when nipping the "bite-ee"
After that, you're on your own. Include me out for the time being.
A.L.M.. January 14, 2003 .[c437wds]
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