The leech is one of nature's most tenacious yet
mysterious animals. Possessing a hold on the human body
and culture, few creatures feature so unexpectedly yet
consistently in human history. Popularly thought to be a
formidable bloodsucking parasite, armed with razor-sharp
teeth and capable of drinking many times its volume of
blood, the leech is a most unlikely candidate to turn to
as a cure for ill-health. Yet, this is precisely the
role leeches have occupied in human medicine, Western
and Eastern, from earliest recorded history to the
present. Yet for every leech that served as a symbol of
hope and progress, there is a pessimistic twin. In
fiction, film and popular culture, from Bram Stoker's
Dracula and twentieth-century B-movies to a video
game-player's nemesis, the leech is shown to have
embodied what is darkest in human nature, representing
fears of science and nature run amok. In Leech, Robert
G. W. Kirk and Neil Pemberton explore how this creature
repeatedly surfaces throughout human history, featuring
in radically different practices; from the humoral
medicine of the ancients to twenty-first-century
cosmetic surgery, from nineteenth-century meteorological
barometer to twentieth-century biomedical tool that
helped to win a Nobel Prize, the leech has been often
present and always surprising. A horror and a healer,
the leech has reared its head in many unexpected places
and practices, revealing this creature to be among
humanity's most enduring and peculiar companions.
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