Leech
Leech names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Leech or Bloodsucker
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
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
Leech any individual of the sucational F torial order Hirudinea
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
any individual of the sucational F torial order Hirudinea, of which the best known examples are the horseleech and of the the medicinal lech, under which name two which th species are commonly employed: H. mediorseleec cinalis, chiefly imported from Germany, ich ná Bohemia, and Russia; and the Hungarian leech (H. officinalis). Greenish-olive to dark green. The body is composed of G from 90 to 100 rings, and furnished with the a discal and caudal sucker. The anterior sucker is small, the mouth furnished with three semicircular toothed jaws meeting in a point. They are not fit for medical purposes before the age of 12 or 18 months. They inhabit pools and marshy places; and in the S. of France they are bred in large marshes chiefly for the continental market. Leeches are employed for the local extraction of
Leech JOHN, an English artist and humorist
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
JOHN, an English artist and humorist; born in London, England, Aug. 29, 1817. He was educated at the Charterhouse School. He studied at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, but forsook medicine to draw on wood. His first important work was illustrations to the "Ingoldsby Legends." In 1841 he joined the staff of "Punch." For that periodical he worked with pre-eminent success, supplying weekly political satires and pictures of all phases of English life. His designs for "Punch" have nearly all been republished as "Pictures of Life and Character," and as "Pencillings from Punch." He also executed the illustrations for "Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour," "The Comic History of England," and other books. He died suddenly in London, Oct. 29, 1864. LEE-CHEE. See LITCHI.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's said in 1910 that leeches "are used less often for medical purposes now," and that looked like the end of the story. In fact they came back: the anticoagulant in leech saliva, hirudin, was isolated and eventually made by genetic engineering into drugs such as lepirudin and desirudin in the 1990s, while live leeches found new work draining congested blood from skin flaps and reattached fingers and ears, and in 2004 the US Food and Drug Administration cleared Hirudo medicinalis for sale as a medical device. The trade Aiton's described in the millions also had a cost: the European medicinal leech is now scarce enough to be listed under CITES and treated as a conservation concern, and DNA work in the 2000s showed that many leeches sold commercially as H. medicinalis are actually a related species, Hirudo verbana. The zoology holds up well — leeches are still classed as Hirudinea and still grouped with the earthworms among the annelids.
Written for this edition, 2026.