Cheyenne transporter. [volume] (Darlington, Indian Terr.) 1879-1886, 1885-06-15
LEECIIES.
The History ana Present Condition Of q Pecu-
liar Trade

OF the two firms in London-and
there are only two-to whom the for
eign leeches are consigned from Ham
burg, one practices as q dental sur
geon and the other sells pipes,
tobacco, and other trifles. Both are
of sufficient standing to recall les
bedur joarS passes of the trade, the
great times of indiscriminate blood
letting, when, whether the patient
suffered from black eye, headache,
liver, or heart, he lost couple of
ounces of blood and was declared to
be better. Now scarcely one is used
where century ago a hundred flour
ished, and the sixpenny leech of even
SO recent date as 1860 has fallen to
something less than halfpenny at
wholesale price. No completer proof
of the proof of popularity of the
leech with the early practitioner can
be afforded than by the fact the verb
'to leech" means to treat with medl-
cine and to bleed, while the doctor
himself, even so late as the days of
Shakespeare, borrowed the name of his
favorite instrument of healing. The
slender, meager, hungry leech comes
from Turkey, within a radius OF fifty
miles of Constantinople, and from
Buda-Pesth, where the country peo-
pie bring them in, like watercress, by
thousands from the bitches and sell
them to the dealers. They are found
there in all bitches and ponds, and
wherever there is pure running water,
weeds for shelter, and muddy banks
and bottoms. They are, as rule,
netted in nets prepared with bait,
though we are also informed that it is
not rare for the hardy peasant to walk
barelegged through the water and
here to the calf. However they are
caught, by plain, honest fishing or
by human artiilce,-frOm Buda-Pesth,
without distinction of age or size, they
travel to Hamburg, where they lie in
vast ponds or reservoirs until the
time for their selection arrives. In
these reservoirs they lie generally for
year, and during all that time, if
they are properly cared for, they
should receive no food, or rather no
more than they can find for them
selves in the water. But this is rule
that is not always observed as it
should be, for there are many mer-
chants who give them blood, and
some liver, and some, SO that all tastes
may be satisfied, the entire body of a
horse thrown among them: with the
result that on arrival in this country
their appetites are fatigued, and they
are found to need certain stimulants
to performance. From Hamburg,
when their time of probation is over,
they are imported here direct in bags
and boxes, and at the back OF the
surgery in Pentonville or among the
pipes and tobacco of Houndsditch
they lie IN shallow earthen vessels
tightly covered with gauze or linen.
the hating stage on the way to the
wholesale druggist and the hos
pital. With the importer they rare
ly tarry for more than four or five
days, but are sent out almost as fast
as they come IN, in small wooden
boxes similar to those used by
iruiterers for honeycomb. From the
wholesale druggist they pass again to
the chemist and apothecary, and when
the perils of travel and the variations
of climate they GO through are con
sidered, the intending purchaser must
not be surprised If he finds himself
asked sixpence for an animal that cos
the first dealer a shilling for couple
of hundred. Many die on the voyage
and many in the short time they re
main with the importer, and though
in theory the select leech will stan'
an extreme heat or cold, many OF thu
ve-and-twcnties and fifties ORDERED
by the chemist, carefully treated a
they are, do not live to fulfill wha
seems to be the sole reason OF thei
, existence-that OF drawing blood
Thn leech should never properly b