Leech Smuggling for Dummies.

One of the neat things that history teaches me over and over is that things haven't been how they are for very long, all things considered.

Take for instance, medicine. It may seem like we're a long long way out of the dark ages, but it's not quite as far as you'd like to think. Doctors have only been encouraged to wash their hands before an operation for about 160 years.

It's kind of amazing that we went from some Hungarian doctor noticing that mothers giving birth didn't die of childbed fever as often when the doctor WASHED HIS HANDS BEFORE GOING NEAR THEIR LADY PARTS in 1847 to having low-level antiseptics readily available on every street corner in about a century and a half. A real testament to how quickly humans can move to make new technology and revolutionize once the creative scientific spark has been ignited.

Yeah, except for the fact that this Hungarian doctor, Ignaz Semmelweis, was roundly ridiculed for this theory by the rest of the medical community. Guess they weren't too happy at the suggestion that they'd spent their entire career carelessly offing patients because they were too harried to use a little chlorinated water on their hands between autopsies and deliveries. He was eventually committed while his findings laid there ignored for another few decades.

People aren't always as willing to give up their old ideas of what is effective as we'd all like to think. For centuries, European physicians considered the draining of blood to be an effective treatment of all manner of illnesses, and the leech to be the best way to drain the blood. In fact, leech was term used for doctor in medieval times. The leech has long been an endangered species in Europe because of overexploitation of it as a medical resource. When it became rare, this actually created a black market for it. There were leech smugglers. Think of THAT job description. Surely this was in the 16 or 1700s right?

Nope, mid 19th century. Darwin's writing the Origin of Species, the transatlantic telegraph is being laid, Reuters is just starting out, and people are paying top dollar to use contraband leeches to cure what ails 'em.

An article I found from an 1850s British periodical said a million and a half were still imported each year, and that was after they were a scarce resource. Only a few decades earlier, France was importing something to the tune of 42 million, and America 30 million. Why the reason for the sudden drop (to let's face it, still a fascinatingly high number)? Was it because the demand had dropped? Nope, it was because nations like Hungary and Russia had realized that their leech resources were dwindling and they needed to start conserving them.

So leech farming and leech smuggling began to make their ways as professions. Before that leech collecting was done by going into a pond, stirring it up with poles and then skimming up the leeches that had come up to feed. Or sometimes by angling with a bit of meat or leather and then collecting the leeches that came up for a meal. But those days ended, spawning a mournful Wordsworth poem about the dying trade and a crisis of resources.

One article I found described the process by which French traders came by their illegal leeches. The descriptions of the lengths that people went to importing this snake oil solution are pretty humbling. They would gather them "by the hundred weight", dry them up and put them in bags where they rolled themselves into a large ball and went into a torpid state. Yes, I am picturing both Night of the Creeps and Slither right now.

Then these leeches were put them into wagons. They had fresh horses ready for them at different villages along the way. Occasionally there were pit stops where they'd empty the leeches into a pond to refresh them and sort out the ones that had died along the way. If the weather was too hot or too cold, they could lose a good part of their cargo.

Then when they got to the border past which exportation was forbidden, the leeches would be smuggled in among small parcels.

I found a bit about a Spanish smuggling that elaborated on what these small parcels might be, when the author asked the smuggler just where the devil the leeches he was offering to sell were, the smuggler responded by "unstrapping an enormous handkerchief which was swathed round his waist next the skin. The handkerchief was streaming with water to keep the leeches alive, and had at least two thousand coiled within its folds."

Okay. Ew.

Once they got these leeches into the country, most were sold, but some were put in leech farming ponds to try to revive the dying population. Considering they're still endangered today, this didn't go so well. Particularly disgusting is that they'd sometimes drive ailing livestock into the lake to let their cash crops of leeches have something to feed on. Even nastier is in the article I read from the time describing the practice, the author objected to it, not because it was cruel to these poor workhorses, but because it would make the leeches less effective - "it being a rule that a leech, once gorged with blood loses much of his natural eagerness for it, and is ever afterwards slow to bite. The leech dealers can tell at a glance those thus fed, of whatever species they may be, because the body of a virgin leech which has never tasted blood has a rough granulated and clean surface, while that of one which has been fed is smooth and slimy."

Again. Ew.

Not that leeches don't have their uses, hell they're just starting to be used again in microsurgery for their circulation increasing and anaesthetic properties, but they aren't a catch-all fix.

Kind of amazing that people went to all that trouble to get these little buggers for purposes they weren't suited for. Smuggling them in using methods that could squander much of what they were bringing over and disregarding the fact that they could be depriving future generations of the ability to get their blood sucked properly. Just clambering for more while ignoring all signs that this thing they were seeking so fiercely was doing more harm than good, just because it was the way things had always been done. While in the background, people looking to practice more effective medicine were maligned and underfunded.

Humbling, isn't it?

Oh also, this one guy got in the World's Fair for thinking leeches could predict the weather. Many workhorses may have died so that he could build a Merry Go Round.

And on that note, I can only leave you with Weird Al.