Hirudotherapy

Abstract

Hirudotherapy – the use of medicinal leeches for curative purposes – is one of the oldest practices in medicine, dating back to the Stone Age. Over the years, the use of leeches has evolved from a simple blood-letting procedure into a scientifically-based physiologic process with rational defined clinical applications. The Greek physician Nicander of Colophon is considered to have been the pioneer of hirudotherapy. While the Romans were the first to use the name Hirudo for leeches in the first century A.D., it was the Swedish physician and zoologist Linnaeus who used the term Hirudo medicinalis in 1754 to describe the application of leeches in medical treatment. During the Middle Ages, the golden era for blood-letting, leeches were used by almost all physicians to cure anything from headaches to hemorrhoids. In Russia, hirudotherapy reached its zenith in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century when leech harvesting and leech therapy netted the country an annual six million silver rubles. By the end of the nineteenth century, with the advent of antibacterial therapy, leeches fell out of favor, and became associated with medicinal quackery in the majority of countries.