The Durham daily globe. (Durham, N.C.) 1889-1894, 1893-06-10
4 DEAD TRADE.
The Raising OF Leeches Il No
Longer Profitable.
When the Old Fashioned Remedy of
Bleeding Was in Vogue the Squirmins
Things Were in Great Demand
How They Were Produced.

In the paImy days of leeching. when
bleed him. was the advice Of every
physician upon the slightest ovo
ton, a French peasant who had man
aged with difficulty to pay three hun
dred francs per year for some poor
marsh land sowed the land down in
leecheS and became a millionaire by
renting 1t at twenty-five thousand
francs per year. A noble Irish land
lord who rented forty acres of meadow
to some French leech farmers was in
terested and astonished to see how
they went about their business. Hav-
ing fenced and watered the meadow.
they proceeded to SOW it with leeches,
put on broadcast, like the old fashion
OF sowing wheat, from sacks contain
ing fifteen thousand leeches each. The
leech farmer must give his crop plenty
of water and plenty of blood. One
method of managing the latter, &C
cording to the New York Sun, is to
drive cattle into the water where the
leeches 7 breeding. Another is to
turn in fresh blood from a slaughter
house. A Partisan talist affirmed
that his leech crop returned him ff-
teen for one, and it is a matter of rec
ord that the monopoly of taking leeches
in Morocco was once sold for seventy
thousand dollars.
The usefulness of the leech has de-
clined since those days, as bleeding
has somewhat gone out of fashion.
When the trade wa at it's briskest the
natural production of leeches in
France and in several other European
countries was exhausted, so that leech
farming became a necessity. Leeches
then began to be brought from eastern
Europe, from Sweden, and even from
Australia. The African leech, too,
came to be greatly priced. He is a
beautiful green and black creature,
and as thirsty a devil as ever set
tooth in human flesh. The Australian
leeches were taken in enormous num-
berS from the rivers of that continent.
The method of catching them was and
is to throw a freshly removed sheep
skin into the water where they live.
When the skin is taken out the leeches
are found clinging to it by hundreds.
A H~imalayan traveller found that in
western India it was possible to catch
land leeches without any such bait. In
fact he found that the creatures chung
to him by hundreds and even got into
his hair. The wounds were five months
in healing and the scars were perma-
nent. A single company in Australia
used to export to England and Amer
lea from two million to three million
leeches per year, nOtaa specially large
expectation when it is remembered
that Ey,oroo a1D,o ,,rol
about thirty million per year. In
Ceylon the secret of growing leeches is
carefully guarded, but an English sur
geOn got at it and saved the army
heaps of money by growing his own
leeches.
1t has not%& been found necessary to
cultivate lceches in the United States.
They are especially plentiful here and
those of Pennsylvania were once
esteemed the best. When the tradi-
ton Of bleeding vas still in full force
Philadelphia physicians used Penn
syivania lceches, while the physicians
OF New York and Boston preferred the
imported varieties. AS a matter of
fact the European 1eech is a hungrier
fellow than our own native leech. 1t
is thought necessary to apply six of
the latter for every fluid ounce of
blood that the physician desires to
draw, while one really effective
leech will draw from half an
ounce to an ounce of blood all alone.
The leech still holds his place in the
materia medica, but he is a much less
important ~life-saving agency than he
was. Several devices were in
vented to take the place of the leech
before the doctors quit the business of
blood-letting at every turn. Now it is
a rare thing to see a bottle ot leeches |
in a doctors Office, and they are seldom
for at the druggists. AS to the
BARRIERS, none of them dares justify the
red streak in his pole by applying the
leech to the empimpled face of a full
habited customer, lest the laws come
down upon him for practicing surgery
without a license. With the decrease
in the demand for leeches they have
fallen in price, and it is doubtful
whether Farmer Grasso should not be
thankful that his leeches were thrown
overheard from the steamer that
carried them, as the loss MAJ have
him from embarking in an I'M
profitable occupation.
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