Why Did the Victorians

Harbor Warm Feelings for

Leeches?
Medical authorities wrote about leeches as if they sucked blood out of the
goodness of their hearts.

Colour reproduction of a lithograph by F-S. Delpech after L. Boilly, 1827

via Wikimedia Commons
(https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_physician_administers_leeches_to_a_patient._Colour_reprodu_Wellcome_V0011719.jpg)

By: Amelia Soth (https://daily.jstor.org/daily-author/amelia-soth/) | April 18, 2019

3 minutes

The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR.

“There is no doubt that the medicinal leech is one of the most beautiful of
animals,” wrote British zoologist Arthur Everett Shipley in 1914. Yes, the
leech: blood-sucking, marsh-dwelling, annullated worm, faceless except for its
rings of teeth. Yet in Shipley’s eyes, leeches were magnificent. Their bodies
were works of art, marked with “a delicious harmony of browns and greens
and blacks and yellows, a beautiful soft symphony of velvety browns and
greens and blacks.” Their movements were graceful, even “seductive” (his
words).

(https://bit.ly/30jM88p)

Shipley was not the only Brit to harbor warm, fuzzy feelings for this decidedly
unwarm, unfuzzy creature. After undergoing a bloodletting to treat a
dangerous illness, the eminent lawyer Lord Thomas Erskine struck up a
friendship with the two leeches that had been used in his treatment. He
brought them home, named them Home and Cline, and housed them
permanently in a glass of water in his library. According to his friend Sir Sam
Romilly, he was sure the two leeches “knew him and were grateful to him.” He
even consulted the pair occasionally on tricky legal cases, divining their
answers based on their movements in the glass.
The French physician François-Joseph-Victor
Broussais was known as “le vampire de la
médecine” for his habit of bleeding patients
with fifty leeches at a time.

Shipley and Erskine, eccentric though they may sound, were simply
participating in a bizarre cultural phenomenon that swept through Europe in
the nineteenth century: leech mania. Bloodletting was a common medical
treatment for millennia, but it wasn’t until the nineteenth century that
doctors began to abandon the lancet for the leech.

This was probably for the best, as leeching was safer, gentler, and less painful
than slicing open a vein. Yet at times the enthusiasm for leeches reached truly
terrifying heights. The French physician François-Joseph-Victor Broussais was
known as “le vampire de la médecine” for his habit of bleeding patients with
fifty leeches at a time, draining up to eighty percent of their blood. During his
tenure at Val-de-Grâce military hospital, every new patient admitted was given
a treatment of thirty leeches, regardless of their symptoms. Sometimes
soldiers were bled with so many leeches at a time that they appeared to be
covered in glittering chainmail.

At the height of Broussais’ influence, France imported more than thirty-three

million leeches a year . For a time, it was the height of fashion for
women to bedeck themselves in leech-themed embroidery. It seems Shipley
was not alone in appreciating the “soft symphony” of the leech’s coloring. The
fashion was called, appropriately, dressing “à la Broussais.”
Sympathy for leeches was at an all-time high. You can detect it in the way that
people spoke about the creatures: During a leech shortage in London, a
shipment of leeches from India were described as “willing and even anxious
to do their duty. ” Not hungry, but willing; not feeding, but doing their duty,
as if leeches sucked blood out of the goodness of their hearts. By contrast, the
horse leech, a species not used in medicine, was said to be
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3143864/) “barbarous” and
“incapable of civility.” A stark contrast, presumably, to the gracious and
civilized medical leech, the doctor’s worthy collaborator.
 A leech jar via Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalmuseumofamericanhistory/8745551234 )

The demand for leeches quickly made the creatures a valuable commodity.
Apothecaries displayed their precious merchandise in gorgeous, ornate
leech-jars (https://wellcomecollection.org/works/wkq53r94). Outside, the
jars were ornamented with gilt swirls and scrolls. Inside, they were filled with
rainwater, pebbles, and moss , to make the leeches feel more at home.
Meanwhile, poor leech-gatherers earned their living by wading into muddy
pools, skirts or pants hiked up, and waiting for bites. A thankless job, but one
they pursued with enough dedication to drive the medical leech to the brink
of extinction. Prized and pampered as a commodity, the leech became a victim
of its own popularity.

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Resources
JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. JSTOR Daily
readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on
JSTOR.

Leeches (https://www.jstor.org/stable/25311879?mag=why-did-the-
victorians-harbor-warm-feelings-for-leeches)
By: A. E. Shipley
The British Medical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2813 (Nov. 28, 1914), pp. 916-919
BMJ

Interpreting the History of Bloodletting

(https://www.jstor.org/stable/24623553?mag=why-did-the-victorians-
harbor-warm-feelings-for-leeches)
By: SHIGEHISA KURIYAMA
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Vol. 50, No. 1, Body and
Culture: Early Anatomy in Comparative Perspective (JANUARY 1995), pp. 11-46
Oxford University Press

From Lamarck to Aberration: Nature, Hierarchies, and Gender

(https://www.jstor.org/stable/20542715?mag=why-did-the-victorians-
harbor-warm-feelings-for-leeches)
By: Caroline Warman
Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 18, No. 1, Feminine Sexual Pathologies
in Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Europe (Jan., 2009), pp. 8-25
University of Texas Press

The Strange Lore of Leeches (https://www.jstor.org/stable/41109732?

mag=why-did-the-victorians-harbor-warm-feelings-for-leeches)
By: Margareta Modig
Pharmacy in History, Vol. 28, No. 2 (1986), pp. 99-102
American Institute of the History of Pharmacy

Leeches (https://www.jstor.org/stable/25312601?mag=why-did-the-
victorians-harbor-warm-feelings-for-leeches)
The British Medical Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2823 (Feb. 6, 1915), p. 260
BMJ

The Care and Use of Medicinal Leeches: In 19th Century Pharmacy and
Therapeutics (https://www.jstor.org/stable/41112790?mag=why-did-the-
victorians-harbor-warm-feelings-for-leeches)
By: John C. Hartnett
Pharmacy in History, Vol. 14, No. 4 (1972), pp. 127-138
American Institute of the History of Pharmacy

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