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"While bloodletting and induced vomiting are not for everyone, many of us occasionally purge with laxatives or enemas, take diuretics, or sweat it out in saunas and gyms. And leeches are back in vogue, too. Our reproductive, digestive, urinary, and body-temperature regulating systems are wonders of nature but can also produce a myriad of disconcerting—and downright embarrassing—smells, sounds, and sights. Penises, for example, come in a wide variety of sizes, shapes, and colors that seem to change magically throughout the day and night." - Joan Liebmann-Smith, Ph. D., and Jacqueline Nardi Egan, Body Signs: From Warning Signs to False Alarms...How to Be Your Own Diagnostic Detective (Get the book.) "It's not just leeches and maggots that have recently caught on for medical treatments.The eggs of intestinal worms found in pigs are worming their way into the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease. A University of Iowa gastroenterologist has been successfully treating IBD patients with soft drinks mixed with 2,000 whipworm eggs. The eggs help regulate the body's immune system as well as reduce the intestinal inflammation in people with IBD. In the past, when most people harbored these and other parasites, the incidence of IBD was much lower." - Joan Liebmann-Smith, Ph. D., and Jacqueline Nardi Egan, Body Signs: From Warning Signs to False Alarms...How to Be Your Own Diagnostic Detective (Get the book.)

"Moreover, Busschof explicitly positioned moxabustion as preferable to the more usual western surgical remedies for gout—sudorifics, cupping, issues, leeches, or common caustics—the latter four would not reach the malignant vapour 'in its hole', and the former would not fully remove it. Asian moxa was also preferable (because more reliable, safer, and less painful) to the more familiar western cauteries, the hot iron, or the Egyptian method of cautery with nitre-soaked cotton." - Roberta Bivins, Alternative Medicine?: A History (Get the book.) "And of course, there were the leeches. One American patient, Emily Mason, wrote to her sister of the treatment she was due to receive for facial pain: 'Today, I am threatened with leeching—Don't you envy me having those sweet little worms in my mouth?'1 These harsh therapeutic tools formed the backbone of a rising medical trend: 'heroic medicine'." - Roberta Bivins, Alternative Medicine?: A History (Get the book.) "I cannot forgo the auxiliaries of the lancet, leeches, or the cupping-glass ... which in many cases I know to be certainly beneficial, and impossible to be injurious, for any new plan; but where there is great uncertainty, or where, though medicine may be applicable to the disease it may be of a nature to injure the constitution, there I should feel authorised, with close watchfulness to treat cases upon a system that cannot possibly do harm.23 All in all, Kingdon's contribution was a call to adaptation and to pragmatic adoption of any cure, from any system, if it worked." - Roberta Bivins, Alternative Medicine?: A History (Get the book.)

"At least there's no sign of the other pests I've been warned about: tiger leeches that gorge on blood, sharp-toothed ants that swarm up legs and man-eating crocodiles. While hiking through durian groves, Voon and I hear something plummet off a tree. Voon scampers through the tall grass like an excited little boy. Proudly bearing a spiky fruit, he explains that in Malaysia, the best durians are freshly fallen (as opposed to Thailand, where they're cut off trees before falling). We open it right up. It's a kuning durian, says Voon, handing me a piece of salmon-colored meat." - Adam Leith Gollne, The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce and Obsession (Get the book.)

"And so he explained it to me sort of like this: "You see, in the Middle Ages, they used to put leeches on people's bodies when they were ill, and they would get sicker and sicker. And you know what they would say? They would say, 'You know what's wrong? There's still blood.' So they would apply more leeches. And so that's how the globalization program works. You just keep applying leeches, and if a little deregulation seems to be making the system sick, what you need is more deregulation to try to cure the system." And I said, "You know what?" - The Disinformation Company, Everything You Know Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Secrets and Lies (Get the book.)

"A decoction made from the root is used to lower malarial fevers, and a poultice made from the fresh roots and leaves is applied to bites and stings from wasps, bees, mosquitoes, ants, and other insects as well as leeches. The seeds are mucilaginous (slimy) and have been used to soothe the urinary tract when urination is difficult or painful. In Thailand, holy basil is called bai gkaprow or kaphrao daeng. It is used as a spice in cooking and as a medicine for people with gas, intestinal cramps, ulcers, colds, influenza, headaches, coughs, and sinusitis." - David Winston, RH(AHG), and Steven Maimes, Adaptogens: Herbs for Strength, Stamina, and Stress Relief (Get the book.)

"Bigelow for advice; diagnosis difficult. leeches were ordered. Dr. Bigelow left town soon after for Europe, and in a fortnight after, Dr. Gay saw the patient. The parts affecred had now opened, and a probe detected dead bone. The man entered the Massachusetts General Hospital, his health continuing to fail. . . . The patient had been engaged in the fabrication of friction matches, and thus exposed to the fumes of phosphorous, which at last caused the disease.12 Dr." - Paul D. Blanc, M.D., How Everyday Products Make People Sick: Toxins at Home and in the Workplace (Get the book.)

"In fact, the barber's pole originated as a symbol for bloodletting—the brass bowl at the top represented the bowl where leeches were kept; the one at the bottom represented the bowl for collecting blood. And the red and white spirals have their origins in the medieval practice of hanging bandages on a pole to dry them after they were washed. The bandages would twist in the wind and wrap themselves in spirals around the pole. As to why barbers were the surgeons of the day? Well, they were the guys with the razor blades. Bloodletting reached its peak in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries." - Dr. Sharon Moalem, Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease (Get the book.) "There are records of Syrian doctors using leeches for bloodletting more than two thousand years ago and accounts of the great Jewish scholar Maimonides'employing bloodletting as the physician to the royal court of Saladin, sultan of Egypt, in the twelfth century. Doctors and shamans from Asia to Europe to the Americas used instruments as varied as sharpened sticks, shark's teeth, and miniature bows and arrows to bleed their patients." - Dr. Sharon Moalem, Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease (Get the book.)

"It was said that washing your hands before surgery was quackery; it was said that NOT doing bloodletting was quackery Think of all the things we've done over the years that were accepted medical practices—putting leeches on people's bodies, bloodletting, taking mercury (which we now know kills you)—all common and accepted medical practices. Think of all the drugs that were commonly used that are now off the market because they have been proven to be ineffective and dangerous." - Kevin Trudeau, More Natural Cures Revealed: Previously Censored Brand Name Products That Cure Disease (Get the book.)

"Animal protein leeches calcium from the bones by creating an acidic environment in the blood. We now have a deep and broad range of evidence showing that a whole foods, plant-based diet is best for our kidneys, bones, eyes and brains. More research can and should be done, but the idea that whole foods, plant-based diets can protect against and even treat a wide variety of chronic diseases can no longer be denied. No longer are there just a few people making claims about a plant-based diet based on their personal experience, philosophy or the occasional supporting scientific study." - T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. and Thomas M. Campbell II, The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-term Health (Get the book.)

"Ostensibly, this use of genes from, for example, rats, snakes, leeches, or insects is designed to produce more desirable traits in vegetables, fruit, grain, or animals. Genes to modify apples or corn on the cob could theoretically come from any other life form: pigs, rats, bacteria, a beauty queen, or a poisonous weed. Instead of explaining how different the genetic manipulation of unrelated species really was from traditional breeding, the chemical corporations and their advertising agencies created ad campaigns that trumpeted every achievement and denied any failures." - Will Allen, The War on Bugs (Get the book.)

"The patient waited at the hospital while twelve medicinal leeches were express-mailed in a cooler labeled "the biting edge of medicine." They would provide the postoperative help the plastic surgeon needed in order to put the pilot's fingers back in place successfully. More than sixty-five thousand leeches are used each year in hospitals, and more than five thousand Americans owe them their gratitude for successfully replaced body parts.1 Reattaching a finger costs approximately $20,000, but it would be a waste of time and money if not for the leeches, which cost only $7 each." - Peggy Thomas, Medicines From Nature (Get the book.)

"In addition, sugar is worse than nothing because it drains and leeches the body of precious vitamins and minerals through the demand its digestion, detoxification, and elimination make upon one's entire system." - William Duffy, Sugar Blues It seems that sugar and refined carbohydrates tend to actually pull important minerals right out of the body. One result, as explained in The Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine, is osteoporosis: "Another dietary factor that increases the loss of calcium from the body is refined sugar." - Mike Adams, Grocery Warning: How to recognize and avoid the groceries that cause cancer, diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and other common diseases (Get the book.)

"Another way is to bruise leeches with oil, and rub the member with this ointment; or, if it is preferred, the leeches may be put into a bottle, and, thus enclosed, buried in a warm dung-hill until they are dissolved into a coherent mass and form a sort of liniment, which is used for repeatedly anointing the member. The member is certain greatly to benefit by this. For another procedure I will here note the use of an ass's member. Procure one and boil it, together with onions and a large quantity of corn. With this dish feed fowls, which you eat afterward." - Marc Bonnard M.D., The Viagra Alternative: The Complete Guide to Overcoming Erectile Dysfunction Naturally (Get the book.)

"That waste comes from discarded computers, cell-phones, DVD players, toasters, refrigerators, clock radios, medical devices— most everything powered by electricity. Every engineer in the room was now being required to rethink the ingredients that enable their complex networks of circuits and chips to work. The Europeans had banned six of those substances —mercury, cadmium, lead, chromium, and two chemical flame retardants called polybromi-nated biphenyl flame retardants—from all electrically powered devices." - Mark Schapiro, Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power (Get the book.)

"His development of the principles of this controversial approach to treatment should be considered against the background of medical practice at the time; the use of leeches, bloodletting, strong purgatives and emetics, and preparations containing toxic heavy metals, such as arsenic and mercury, was widespread. It is reported that Hahnemann was dissatisfied with these harsh therapeutic strategies and that this led him to withdraw from medicine." - Dr. Michael Heinrich, Joanne Barnes, Simon Gibbons and Elizabeth M. Williamson, Fundamentals of Pharmacognosy and Phytotherapy (Get the book.)

"In the Middle Ages, barbers began carrying out a variety of bloodletting activities (including the application of leeches) in addi- tion to cutting hair and trimming beards. These barber-surgeons (as they came to be called) advertised by wrapping bloody bandages on a post outside their shops. This is the origin of the barbers' pole, which still features the red-and-white spirals. Ironically, the use of leeches for their blood-sucking abilities reached its zenith under Francois-Joseph Broussais, a military sur- geon in Napoleon's army." - Mark J. Plotkin, Medicine Quest: In Search of Nature's Healing Secrets (Get the book.) "Although most are aquatic, several species are terrestrial. leeches feed on everything from fish to pen- guins to earthworms, their closest living relatives. Although most are innocuous to human health, some have proven lethal. Leeches can drink five times their weight in blood and triple their size dur- ing this process. Their appetite had a devastating effect on Napoleon's unsuspecting troops in the Middle East. Though the French conquered much of Europe, they proved no match for the gruesome attack by these invertebrates." - Mark J. Plotkin, Medicine Quest: In Search of Nature's Healing Secrets (Get the book.) "Fully two-thirds of the hospitals in the United Kingdom and western Eu- rope employ leeches for medicinal purposes, and the demand con- tinues to rise. (Biopharm was even contacted during the notorious John Bobbitt incident, although the patient managed to heal with- out the aid of his slimy cousins.) The company sells fifty thousand leeches a year to hospitals and research labs in over twenty coun- tries." - Mark J. Plotkin, Medicine Quest: In Search of Nature's Healing Secrets (Get the book.)

"MORE leeches, BUT . . . We can smile sadly at some of the ineffective therapies of past centuries, like the bloodletting that supposedly let "bad blood" escape but only weakened ailing patients. (Actually, microsurgeons who reattach hands and fingers have found a real use for leeches, in draining off blood from the tiniest blood vessels during an operation — the ones that are too small to stitch up.) But we should not be too complacent." - Ronald L. Hoffman, M.D., Intelligent Medicine: A Guide to Optimizing Health and Preventing Illness for the Baby-Boomer Generation (Get the book.)

"Surgeons now consider leeches indispensable for many microsurgical reattachments. And how long might it be before a scientist can design and build a contraption that can suck out excess blood, inject anticoagulants, attach itself to anywhere on the human body, and carry out all these tasks painlessly and inex- pensively? A sterling example that in many ways parallels the "rediscovery" of leeches is the use of maggots for the treatment of bone infections and other deep wounds." - Mark J. Plotkin, Medicine Quest: In Search of Nature's Healing Secrets (Get the book.)

"Within 1 hour of applying leeches, blood flow through the surgical area increased 142% at surface probes and 491% at implanted probes. The average change for untreated control flaps was 6%.' However, one study found no changes in ipsilateral activated partial thromboplastin or prothrombin times when leeches were applied to an intact hand," suggesting that significant systemic or local anticoagulation is not likely to occur, and the risk of interference with other therapies may be small. Salivary extracts of the giant leech {Haementeria) interfere witii the metastatic growth of lung tumors." - Ara Dermarderosian, Guide to Popular Natural Products (Get the book.)

"So they would apply more leeches. And so that's how the globalization program works. You just keep applying leeches, and if a little deregulation seems to be making the system sick, what you need is more deregulation to try to cure the system." And I said, "You know what? You don't sound like you're wearing your straightjacket." And he replied, "Well, I'm not; not anymore." Despite the fact that there's supposedly no dissent, he was dissenting, and this is the guy who conceived the system. While I was in Cleveland to debate Thomas Friedman, I got a letter from my friendly-faced hotelier." - The Disinformation Company, Everything You Know Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Secrets and Lies (Get the book.)

"Bloodletting by the lancet or leeches was considered to have "vast remedial powers." It was administered as readily to children and infants as to adults. Dr. Rush recommended it for any malady, draining up to four fifths of the blood from the body. "Among American physicians there is no one remedy of greater importance in the Allopathic medicine celebrated leeches and the knife to bleed away disease, and as much as 80 percent of the patient's blood. treatment of diseases than the lancet," the preeminent doctor enthused, despite the fact that it engendered debility, fainting, and convulsions." - Kenny Ausubel, When Healing Becomes A Crime: The Amazing Story of the Hoxsey Cancer Clinics and the Return of Alternative Therapies (Get the book.)

"Some of the aluminum inevitably leeches into the soft drink itself. Although aluminum is not a heavy metal, environmental exposure is frequent, leading to concerns about accumulative effects and a possible connection with Alzheimer's disease. In the home, we are in constant contact with aluminum in foods and in water; from cookware and soft dnnk cans; from consuming items with high levels of aluminum (e.g., antacids, buffered aspirin, or treated drinking water; or even by using nasal sprays, toothpaste, and antiperspirants)." - Mike Adams, Grocery Warning: How to recognize and avoid the groceries that cause cancer, diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and other common diseases (Get the book.)

"Reuse of leeches is discouraged to minimize cross-infection. PHARMACOLOGY: Medicinal leeches have an anterior and posterior sucker; within the anterior sucker is a y-shaped mouth with marginal teeth for biting. Following attachment, the leech secretes himdin, a selective thrombin inhibitor, which enhances bleeding and prevents coagulation. Recombinant himdin has been used successfully in the treatment of Kasa-bach-Merritt syndrome, which leads to loss of circulating platelets and fibrinogen. Paradoxically, low-dose subcutaneous himdin normalized fibrinogen and platelet activity.'" - Ara Dermarderosian, Guide to Popular Natural Products (Get the book.) "Studies have confirmed that medicinal leeches improve venous drainage of wound sites in patients who have undergone reattachment surgery after amputation."'" The ability of leeches to improve blood flow across congested surgical flaps has been documented us- ' Hayden RE, et al. Arch Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg 1988:114:1395. "Unt C. Nature 1986:323:494. ^ Abrutyn E. Ann Intern Med 1988:109:356. " Kourt B, et al. Am 7 Hosp Pharm 1994:51:2113. ' Bickel KD. et al. J Reconstr Microsurg 1994:10:83. 'Nehili M, et al. Parasitol Res 1994;80:277. ' Abi-utyn. Am J Hosp Pharm 1988:109:356." - Ara Dermarderosian, Guide to Popular Natural Products (Get the book.)

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