![]() “I’m not very attractive to leeches.” A bigger problem is leeches biting each other. “He’s sniffing around now.” Actually, it is more of a tasting: He thinks they sense the sugars and oils in the skin. He sticks his finger in the water and a leech immediately appears. The bulk of it is storage.”Ī fed leech can swell to up to five times its body weight. When they feed, because they have a huge reserve of blood, they’ll bury themselves in the mud or moss.” He describes the leech as a sort of oil tanker: all its reproductive organs are on the front where the cab would be. ![]() But BSE has ruled out cow blood, for leeches and humans.Īn employee, who has worked here for 24 years, points out an immobile leech on the bottom of the tank. The leeches ate it more readily, and one cow held the blood volume of 10 sheep. Biopharm used to feed its residents with cow’s blood, which was more successful. In the two years it takes to raise a European leech for medicinal use, it is fed sheep’s blood served in sausage casing once every six months. The menu at Biopharm is always black pudding. All the tanks and equipment are built to exact specifications.īreeding leeches is a sensitive process of feeding and starving and warming and cooling, and leeches can be spooked even by the click of a smartphone. The further in we go, the further along the path to the leech becoming a hospital device, the colder it gets. Biopharm’s leech raising is done in three large rooms, each kept at a different temperature. Not only is the leech a medicinal treasure chest, but that bite is spectacularly efficient, the tripartite shape much less damaging than a scalpel incision, which can tear surrounding tissue.įor an animal that biologists describe as rather simple, the leech needs complicated handling. Roy Sawyer, the American zoologist who founded Biopharm, likes to call the medicinal leech a “living pharmacy”. The leech is in many ways a simple animal, but its anaesthetic and anticoagulant have yet to be bettered by science. In a 2002 survey of 50 plastic surgery units in the UK, 80 per cent had used leeches in the previous five years. A leech can make the difference between a successful reconstruction or reattachment and failure and distress. In some surgeries that require rejoining tiny blood vessels - reattaching an amputated finger, ear, or lip, or reconstructing a breast - the blood can get stuck. Once their teeth are engaged, they emit the best anticoagulants known to exist, so their blood meal keeps flowing long after they have stopped feeding, often for up to 10 hours. Because of this, a leech bite will usually feel like a vague sensation, not a nip or scratch. Both Hirudo verbana and Hirudo medicinals have two characteristics in common: they inject their host with a local anesthetic so that their presence is rarely noticed until they have tucked in. These leeches are in demand all over the world. Thousands of years since leeches were first employed for medicinal purposes, and a century since “leech mania” saw blood-letting used to tackle everything from headaches to strangulation, these creatures are still used to clean wounds and improve circulation, especially after surgery. The UK’s only leech production business looks like a health farm. A long and winding drive passes sheds of unclear purpose and ends in a small yard beyond an imposing cream-colored manor house. Less than half a mile from the M4 motorway, in the south-west of Wales, there is a walled entrance off a road whose name I can’t pronounce, and a small sign saying Biopharm. You accept them equally calmly because it has been explained to you that these leeches may save your breast, or your finger, or your ear, or your life. But you are equally likely to be in a sterile room of a modern hospital, tended by nurses who attach these bloodsucking animals to you without a shiver. Are you wading through a tropical pond in fierce humidity? Have you returned to your guesthouse to find with horror a passenger on your leg? Possibly. After that, the jaws will activate, the hundreds of teeth will engage, the leech will begin to eat, and its meal is your blood.
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