Leech

or Bloodsucker, an animal of the earthworm type flattened on the lower surface and furnished with a sucker-like foot or disk on the under side of each extremity. Leeches have a singular power of lengthening and contracting their bodies. Their natural home is in swamps and sluggish water. Some are brown, others black. They are good swimmers but travel readily on shore. They have from one to five pairs of eyes. Leeches are of many kinds. Some live on the slime that covers a fish; others have jaws that enable them to penetrate the skin of animals and gorge themselves with blood. A full meal will last a year. In the days when blood letting was considered a skillful way of curing many ills, live leeches were an important part of an apothecary's stock in trade. At one time London imported, it is said, 7,000,000 a year, chiefly from the marshes of Sweden and Poland, and Paris imported as many more. Over $40,000 worth of leeches were imported into the United States during the decade ending January 1, 1910. They are used less often for medical purposes now, but few boys accustomed to wade in fresh water are unfamiliar with bloodsuckers. So far as the name was applied to persons, the leech was formerly a physician whose practice lay chiefly in letting or staunching blood. Medieval writers held the skillful leech in high esteem, but, in the modern use of the term, a "leech" is one who hangs on like a parasite devouring the substance of another. See Earthworm