Kamenev will help you read the leech. A. Yu. Baranovsky, Oleg Kamenev Treatment with leeches. Theory and practice of hirudotherapy. About the book “A Leech Will Help You” Oleg Kamenev, Yuri Kamenev

Date of writing: 25.04.2024

Reading time: 47 minutes

Current page: 1 (book has 11 pages total) [available reading passage: 8 pages]

Yuri Kamenev, Oleg Kamenev
A leech will help you

The book has been published since 2004 without changes or additions.

This publication is not a textbook on medicine. All recommendations must be agreed with your doctor.

* * *

It is curious that negative reviews regarding blood extraction with leeches come from people who have not used them, and therefore do not have personal experience in this method of treatment.

G. Zakharyin. About hemorrhage. 1889

Preface

Any new knowledge without awareness and identification of the former is not thorough, especially in medical science. Truths once acquired regarding their content can never grow old. And therefore we turn to antiquity - the history of hemorrhage with leeches, as ancient as the history of medicine, from the time of their use in Rome (Galen), in oriental medicine (Ibn Sina - Avicenna) and in Russia.

At its dawn, medicine saw leeches as a panacea, a remedy for almost all diseases. They were especially popular at the end of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century in Western European countries, as widely as in Russia. Ardent adherents of this method of treatment in our country were such famous doctors as M. Mudrov, I. Dyadkovsky, N. Pirogov, G. Zakharyin. In the 30s of the 18th century, about 30 million leeches were used annually in Russia. Their breeding was practiced even in the Urals, in conditions of a sharply continental climate. But such a large scale of use of leeches is regarded in our time more likely as a consequence of the then “very limited arsenal of medicines”, and not as one of the ways to restore human health.

Attitudes towards treatment with leeches (bdellotherapy - from Greek and hirudotherapy - from Latin) became negative in the second half of the 19th century, when the opinion arose that these worms could cause infection. Thus, S. Botkin believed that the method of local bloodletting with leeches should be treated with great caution. It was easier to use bloodletting from the veins, especially since blood extraction by leeches was considered only a local effect. In the first decades of the 20th century, leeches almost disappeared from the arsenal of medicines. The achievements of traditional medicine and the experience of zemstvo doctors were completely ignored, who, despite the misinterpretation of the meaning of using leeches and the unrestrained use of bloodletting, nevertheless noticed that for some diseases they undoubtedly have a healing effect on the entire human body. Leeches were more often the property not of official, but of folk medicine (it still does not change them), or even just of monks, shepherds or barbers. And this depended on the lack of precise knowledge and art of using hirudotherapy. The most monumental manual - “Monograph of Medical Leeches” - was written in St. Petersburg in 1859 by A. Voskresensky on behalf of the Russian Military Medical Department. It contained the history of leech farming and its management in Russia and abroad, practical recommendations for the medical use of leeches. In Russia, leeches were once revered: as A. Voskresensky noted then, the leech trade, both economically and medically, was such that no European state had ever achieved it. 70 million leeches a year were exported from Russia to Western Europe, especially to France, which annually consumed from 80 to 100 million leeches (and then 1 piece cost 10 kopecks).

For many years, hirudotherapy was either considered a panacea for all diseases, or it was ridiculed, reviled and consigned to oblivion, some recommended it, others, having no experience, warned against it. A protest against oblivion and such an incorrect, amateurish attitude towards hemorrhage in general was stated by the famous clinician, Professor G. A. Zakharyin at the annual meeting of the Moscow Physico-Medical Society in 1889, where in the report “On hemorrhage” he defined it as “a therapeutic agent, the benefits and importance of which many years of experience have taught me.” “The curious fact,” Zakharyin pointed out, “is that negative reviews regarding blood extraction with leeches come from people who have not used them, and therefore do not have personal experience in this method of treatment.” Not limiting himself to just protests, as is usually the case now, he substantiated a new approach to both general and local hemorrhage with leeches, precise and detailed indications and contraindications. But this method has not yet become the common property of doctors who accept only pharmacological treatment, although hirudotherapy has clear advantages over it, providing a complex natural effect on the patient’s body, with virtually no negative side effects.

What is happening with hirudotherapy in our time? The return of modern, often practical, rather than official medicine to many new (well-forgotten old) methods of treatment, in particular to treatment with leeches, became possible thanks to the development of new theoretical knowledge, which makes it possible to substantiate the mechanisms of action of leeches, clarify the indications and contraindications for their practical use (a great contribution to hirudology was made by the famous Russian hirudologist G. Shchegolev). An important reason, or rather a motivating motive for the restoration of ancient methods of traditional medicine, is the low effectiveness of modern generally accepted orthodox methods. This is confirmed by the growing ill health of adults and, what is especially sad, of the child population. And therefore, life calls for a search for ways out of the vicious pathological circle for those suffering. And isn’t it easier to restore and use what has already been proven by practice than to look for new, ephemeral ones?

Unfortunately, it should be noted that the experience of hirudotherapy accumulated in Russia has been so forgotten, and modern information is so fragmentary and sporadic, that in fact today it is in its infancy: even the important things that were done by Russian doctors of the 19th century have been lost. Therefore, much remains to be restored in order to resurrect this type of healing and disease prevention as one of the components of naturotherapeutic techniques, a natural, drug-free method of treatment.

In this book, we sought to combine everything hitherto introduced into hirudology - the most positive and interesting things about these animals and into hirudotherapy - an essentially old subject, but one that has proven itself to be effective not only as a blood extractor, but also as a pharmacological remedy for many ailments. We sought to highlight the methods and results of using leeches in medicine, known since ancient times, and to talk about the most valuable, and sometimes unusual, things in this area of medicine. We have used all our efforts to ensure that there are fewer opponents and indifferent people to hirudotherapy, and there are more true and knowledgeable fighters against illnesses for human health. We express our hope that hirudotherapy will find universal recognition and wide application, because, as Hippocrates pointed out, “the doctor heals - Nature heals.”

We also rely on the understanding that the laws of health and disease are the same laws of organic life; Only their conditions are different, which should be created not only by pharmacology, but also by those natural methods that will preserve a person’s health and relieve him of illnesses. We hope that hirudotherapy will be introduced into life and practical medicine.

In 1990, the World Society of Hirudologists was created. The first World Congress on the use of leeches in medicine was held in 1991. In our country, in Donetsk in 1991, the All-Union meeting was held for the first time on the problem of using medicinal leech in healthcare, and in 1992, by decision of the Moscow conference of hirudologists, the Russian Association of Hirudologists was created, the purpose of which is to promote the development of hirudology and the widespread introduction of hirudotherapy methods into medical practice .

We also strive to contribute not only to the development of the science of the leech and its use in treatment practice, but also to its conservation and protection. Currently, the range of leeches in our country is steadily and sharply declining. And it’s no wonder given such a predatory attitude towards the environment in general and towards the leech in particular. It is listed in the Red Book, and this is the only way it is “protected” from destruction, but not by the corresponding strict and effective laws and rules, as it once was in Russia in the 19th century. Unfortunately, we, doctors, also contribute to its destruction, because this is a requirement of existing instructions for the use of medicinal leech.

We will be truly happy if our feasible work serves as the beginning of a more effective use of hirudotherapy for the common good and brings at least a small benefit. “Bloodletting - alternately glorified to the extreme and panacea or rejected as unjustly as without measure, sometimes performed with extravagance or banished, ridiculed as completely useless, even dangerous - bloodletting has undergone more than anything in the world, various and the most opposite changes. This - an immeasurable good or a terrible scourge - must finally receive an impartial judge and retain its advantage among the most effective benefits of art, healing of course, when it is used with prudence and knowledge of the matter? Answering the question posed at the beginning of the 19th century by the French physician I. Polinier, “Leeches are an immeasurable benefit or a terrible scourge?”, We agree with him: “An immeasurable benefit, healing, when it is used wisely and competently.”

Chapter 1. General information about leeches

From time immemorial, leeches have attracted the attention of naturalists, naturalists, doctors and pharmacists, who knew about their important role in medicine, both in Russia and in other enlightened countries: England, Germany, France. The natural conditions of their life, history, customs, care for them in artificial reserves, and methods of their use in medicine have been repeatedly studied.

There are about four hundred species of leeches on the globe. In Russia and the CIS countries, two types of blood-sucking jaw leeches are widespread: medicinal leech ( Hirudo medicinalis) and Nile leech ( Limnatis nilotica, Limnatis turkestanica), commonly called horse. The predatory jawed leech, the so-called false horse leech, is sometimes confused with the medicinal leech ( Haemopis sanguisuga), which does not suck blood, but swallows whole different invertebrates or parts of their bodies.

Only medicinal leech is suitable for use in medicine. It comes in dark brown, brown, dark green, green, red-brown, and other colors; has six stripes on the back: red, light brown, yellow or black; in many, however, these stripes are invisible, and instead of them there are only rows of red or yellow dots, often barely noticeable; the edges are green with a yellow or olive tint; the abdomen is motley, yellow, dark green, mottled with spots of black, gray and brown. Of the medicinal leeches in Russia, three subspecies are best known.

Medical (medical) leech ( Hirudo medicinalis) - brown-olive in color with six merging red-yellow stripes on the back, mottled with black spots along the length of the body, with a mottled belly and rough rings. It has ten small eyes (5 pairs) in the area of the five anterior segments of the anterior sucker. Both ends of the body are equipped with fleshy suckers; there is a mouth at their front end, and a powder at the rear end. The leech can freely stick to foreign bodies with both ends. This species is found in large quantities in Ukraine.

Pharmacy I'm a leech ( Hirudo officinalis) - unlike the medicinal color, dark green, with the same six dorsal stripes, but without dots; the abdomen is yellowish without spots, the rings are smooth. It is also called Hungarian (where it comes from). For the most part, it lives in Moldova, the Krasnodar Territory, and Armenia; its variety is found in Transcaucasia.

Eastern I'm a leech ( Hirudo orientalis) – brighter than the previous ones. Along its back there are narrow orange stripes covered with black rectangular spots at regular intervals. The leech's abdomen is black, with green spots located in pairs at regular intervals.

Leeches that are single-colored, without stripes on the back, hairy, cylindrical and with blunt heads are considered unsuitable for medical use. Such leeches are popularly known under the general name horse leeches, although they often belong to completely different species.

Konski That is, leeches are the same size and shape as medical ones, but differ from them in their insufficiently developed jaws and blunt teeth on them. Therefore, they cannot bite through the skin, but only stick to it. There are two known subspecies of the horse leech, which are easily mixed with the medical one, and therefore they should be briefly mentioned here: the greedy bloodsucker ( Hoemopis vorax, Sawigni) differs from the medical one in that its back is smooth, dull green in color, its abdomen is dark, with lateral yellow or red-brown stripes; she produces a lot of mucus. The second is a blackish streamer ( Aulocostomani grescens), – greenish-black, with a yellowish belly. These leeches live in reservoirs of Armenia, Georgia, and southeast Russia. When bathing a person or watering livestock, they can stick to the body, get deep into the nasal and oral cavities and cause severe bleeding and suffocation with fatal outcomes. You should beware of these leeches.

The leech's body is quite complex, with nervous, circulatory and excretory systems. The most important of the internal organs are the digestive and highly developed muscular system, accounting for up to 65.5% of the volume of the entire body; it is not smooth, it is divided by transverse, equally spaced grooves and rings (102 in total). Their surface is covered with small, inconspicuous, sometimes protruding papillae. The head end of the leech is narrower and sharper than the tail end. The eye spots are almost invisible on the upper lip. The anterior sucker surrounding the mouth opening is a sucking circle (plunger), triangular in shape, represented by several oblong, not too obvious folds, equipped with three sharp and strong jaws, having up to sixty lenticular teeth arranged in the form of a semicircular saw; The leech uses them to bite through the skin. The esophagus begins from the jaws, passing into the stomach (2/3 of the entire length of the leech) in the form of tightly closed bags to the short intestine and rectum. The tail end of the leech is incomparably thicker than the head, ending in a circle (posterior plunger) located on the ventral side of the rear end of the body. To determine the tail part (it is difficult for the ignorant to determine), one should focus on the rear sucker: it is larger and is always visible.

The length of adult leeches is not particularly large - from 5 to 10 centimeters, and cannot serve as a criterion for determining the age of the animal. The average weight is 2.5 grams. G. Shchegolev talks about the record-breaking leech he raised, which reached a weight of 38.8 grams at the age of one and a half years, a length of 44 centimeters, and the diameter of its rear sucker was 13 millimeters.

Various cases of growing leeches in artificial conditions have clearly shown (and this is important to consider when breeding them):

The ability of leeches to go without food for many months, but at the same time, their “long fast” after eating is not at all a necessity for them;

Even with frequent feedings, they greedily absorb large quantities of blood at one time;

It is with frequent feedings of blood without restriction that leeches quickly reach a large mass;

With this feeding regime, medicinal leeches not only do not die, but also show all the signs of completely healthy animals.

The sexual characteristics of leeches are very remarkable: they are bisexual, bisexual (hermaphrodites), and have organs of both sexes - male and female. The genital organs are significantly developed, very complex, located on the abdominal surface of the animal, along the midline of the body, closer to its anterior end. They are closely spaced from each other: the male (seminal vesicles, prostate and copulatory organ) are located in front of the female (egg sacs, uterus and vagina). A leech does not fertilize itself, but copulates with another leech, sometimes with two, thus fertilizing its partner and at the same time being fertilized by it. Copulation can last from 15 to 18 minutes. The period of sexual arousal (in the third year of life, and under artificial conditions leeches are capable of childbearing at about 22 months of age) is spring, summer, but it can be the end of autumn and even much later. The mating period lasts from 30 to 40 days, after which the leech lays cocoons containing a protein mass with fertilized eggs. The cocoon is similar to that of a silkworm and contains 15 to 30 embryos. Leeches bury cocoons in the ground, in the banks of their habitat, in conical depressions or between stones.

After 40 days, under favorable circumstances, especially in sunny weather, leech cubs hatch from the eggs; they crawl out of the cocoon through a small hole on its cone. The cub is so small that it is noticeable only when it moves, but it immediately reveals a greed for food. Although the filament (as the baby leeches are called) is very small, it resembles its parents in everything: it feeds on blood and often attacks frogs and tadpoles. The cubs grow slowly (especially the first two years), from five to eight years, and can live for twenty years. Under natural conditions, a leech reaches the size necessary for treatment no earlier than five years and is suitable for medical use from the age of three to four.

Under artificial conditions, a leech can be grown to a mass suitable for medical use (1.5–2 grams) within 12–15 months to 3 years. They live on average 3–4 years, rarely up to eight years or more.

Medical leeches live in fresh water bodies (swamps, lakes, small rivers). Leeches breathe through their skin, absorbing oxygen dissolved in water. They like clean, running water, not well water. But water is not the only possible habitat for leeches. They can also live in damp soil, clay, damp moss, burrowing quite deep. There they can remain motionless for several months. The existence of leeches without water is impossible. If they do not have time to burrow into moist soil during drought, they will inevitably die.

To preserve leeches at home as best and as long as possible, they must be kept in water. The longer they remain out of water, the more mucus they separate from themselves, they become depleted and become less suitable for consumption.

At night or during the day in the dark, for rest or sleep, leeches look for a place above the water (and in a jar too), where they can breathe more freely and longer, and therefore live longer, without being forced to constantly move and balance. Containing them in a jar, we can observe how they are attached to the smooth glass wall of the jar with a rear suction cup so that one half of the body is in the air and the other is under water (sometimes they bend, forming an incomplete ring), and freeze at rest. By the way, this arrangement of leeches predicts good, warm and clear weather.

In natural conditions, they rarely swim; more often, attached to the stems or leaves of aquatic plants, they wait for their prey. At night they always lie quietly, curled up into a ball and clinging to plants and stones with their ends. In cold, windy, rainy weather, they sink to the bottom and gather in a heap. Before a thunderstorm, they become restless and float to the surface of the water. A strong thunderstorm affects them badly and can even sometimes lead to death.

Daylight or artificial light suddenly falling on the jar wakes them up: they begin to move slowly, as if awakening, separate from the wall of the vessel, completely sink into the water and float. Hungry leeches in nature move towards a lighted place, but well-fed leeches avoid light.

Leeches have a sense of smell, taste and touch, and numerous sensitive points, especially developed at the anterior end of the body. They also have a sense of heat. All behavioral reactions of leeches are aimed at finding prey, which they feel by movement and warmth. Various, even minor movements of water quickly attract hungry leeches to the places where these movements occurred, which allows them to quickly find people or animals moving in the water in order to immediately attach to them to suck blood. They almost do not react to blood, which may appear in the water when an animal is injured, but quickly stick to wounds on the body. Any noise causes the leeches to revive and slow down, and if they are repeated frequently, they have a very adverse effect on hungry animals and contribute to their exhaustion. In the middle of the 19th century, when artificially breeding and keeping leeches, this was taken into account so much that watchmen were forbidden to use beaters while making rounds of leech farms to scare away thieves, so as not to disturb the leeches.

With the onset of winter, leeches gather in groups, the cold causes them to shrink, curl up, huddle together, and they become less vigorous. The cold is tolerated harmlessly, but if it is not strong; adult leeches are better than young ones. In winter, they freeze together with the water, and when they thaw in the spring, they become vigorous again, as if they had never frozen. This is due to the accumulation in tissues of substances that prevent water crystallization. But most often, with the onset of cold weather, leeches go into the ground, burrowing as deep as possible, where the frost does not penetrate. There they spend the winter, curled up into a ball, so that the head fits into the dimple of the tail, in complete stupor, until the onset of warmth.

Leeches feed on liquid food, and there is no doubt that more than just the blood of animals should serve as food for them. Embryos in cocoons feed on the mucous organic substances contained in them; cubs and young leeches feed on the mucus of aquatic plants, ciliates, larvae of aquatic insects, small mollusks, and worms. Adult leeches are a completely different matter. They feed on blood, being gifted with the ability to bite through human skin with their teeth in all places of the body, and even more so the mucous membrane, as well as the hard integument of all kinds of animals. Leeches are so voracious that they can suck blood even when their stomach still contains a lot of undigested blood. Hungry leeches lose a lot of weight and become skinny.

As numerous observations have proven, adult leeches mostly reject other types of food. However, nature has adapted them to the possibility of waiting a long time for suitable food. Being in clean water, they lose more than a quarter of their mass in a year of life. But they can’t go their whole lives without food! And therefore, leeches are content with at least a little: nutrients, more or less contained in fresh water. Hungry, they pounce with incredible greed on the first object they come across in the water, hoping to profit from at least something, even rotten carrion (they also attach themselves to corpses, but soon fall away from them) or cling to well-fed leeches with full stomach pouches ( especially if the well-fed and hungry are in the same vessel). And this is despite the fact that the blood sucked by the leech in its body changes and takes on a special nasty smell that repels even hungry leeches. The blood squeezed out of the sucked leeches immediately can be absorbed again and harmlessly by others. Moreover, completely hungry leeches are forced to attack their own kind, and the weak become victims of the strong, and the saturated ones become victims of the hungry. Cannibalism, however, is a rare phenomenon among leeches. This is how very exhausted or stressed animals behave. When attacking, they injure or even lead to the death of their relatives.

The medicinal leech can suck the blood of representatives of all classes of vertebrates; it attacks cattle, horses coming to water, and people. By sucking a significant portion of the blood of their victims, in many cases they can cause their death. Therefore, leeches are predators. At the beginning of the century, there were reports that nine hungry bloodsuckers were enough to bite a horse to death (certainly an exaggeration). Fish and frogs for them are a secondary or, perhaps, forced source of nutrition, and reptiles play a very insignificant role.

Wise nature, compensating for the rare type of nutrition, gave the leech wide stomach sacs like reservoirs, which, when filled under favorable circumstances, it lives quietly for a long time. A well-fed leech with unsqueezed blood requires at least six months to digest it. Of all leeches, the duration of the fasting period without causing death is the longest for the medicinal leech. It attracts the attention of researchers with a number of interesting features in metabolism, namely, the ability to withstand long periods of hunger (from 1 to 3 years) and digest food very slowly. The amount of blood taken at one time can exceed its body weight by 5–7 times also because the leech is able to suck blood even when its stomach still contains a lot of undigested blood. Blood is digested relatively slowly, which is associated with the presence of enzymes themselves that break down native protein in the stomach, partially in the intestines, as well as with a substance that has an inhibitory effect on them. But when the blood reserves in the intestines are already exhausted, the ability to continue to live for a long time without food is explained by the strong development of the connective tissues of the leech’s body, rich in reserve substances synthesized from the substances of the blood they suck. In general, this depends on the age and health of the leech, the degree of blood saturation, time of year, etc. In addition, starving leeches grow slowly, and therefore they need to be fed in artificial reserves.

The body of leeches, as we see, is quite complex. And the more complex an animal’s organism is, the more conditions are required for its existence, the survival of its young, and the fight against numerous enemies, because there are a lot of animals that eat leeches. The bodies of leeches contain nutrients, they are not protected by hard coverings, and do not emit toxic or repellent substances. This attracts many animals and allows them to feed, and leeches are eaten not only by aquatic animals (muskrat, water rat, otter, etc.), but also by land animals that hunt in the coastal zone (hedgehog, ferret, mink), birds (aquatic and semi-aquatic ), turtles, newts and other amphibians, fish, predatory worms, crustaceans, water spiders, insects. One of the worst enemies of medicinal leeches is the horse leech.

Artificially grown leeches also have their own problems, which are exposed to numerous external influences, climatic and various local factors that negatively affect their health. They are susceptible, like natural ones, to very many, and, moreover, various internal and external diseases, most often they die from them. Knowing the conditions that contribute to their development, we can control them: eliminate, correct, or at least reduce their detrimental effect on leeches. The unnatural state in which bred leeches are found when kept artificially: the temperature is too high or low for life; excessive brightness of light or lack of it; satiety of leeches with blood in the hot summer; excessive hand handling of leeches; insufficient care for them. As in humans, it is easier to prevent a hundred diseases in leeches than to cure one to which it is already susceptible.

The current method of obtaining leeches is to catch them, mainly from the reservoirs of Ukraine and the Caucasus, and subsequent artificial cultivation. Due to the sharp deterioration of environmental conditions, these animals are facing complete extinction. The danger is aggravated by the widespread drainage of swamps, chemical pollution of fresh water bodies, and predatory fishing by hunters for their own profit (and this despite the fact that leeches are listed in the Red Book). Those doctors who buy and use wild leeches for treatment also contribute to the depletion of natural resources. With increasing interest in hirudotherapy, only the development of artificial breeding of these worms can save the situation. Otherwise, leeches may almost completely disappear, as was the case in the middle of the last century in the reservoirs of Western Europe and most of the reservoirs of Russia, and this despite the fact that they were protected and not simply listed in the Red Book.

Leeches that are small or too thick must be thrown back into the water when caught. To supervise the observance of these rules, provincial medical departments are entrusted with the responsibility of verifying the stocks of leeches of barbers and other traders who trade in them.” The basis for conducting a proper trade in leeches was the “Highly approved position of the Committee of Mr.. on November 17, 1848. Ministers who established the rules for catching and selling leeches... those guilty of violating these rules will be subject to penalties, applying to the Penal Code of Art. 1133, 1145 and 1589." And further: “The Ministry of State Property, intending to create a permanent source of income for the treasury and secular societies from leech catches, issued rules in 1850 that define the procedure for giving catches for maintenance, the rules and relations of tenants to the treasury and societies, and indicate measures saving and breeding leeches."

Yuri Kamenev, Oleg Kamenev

A leech will help you

The book has been published since 2004 without changes or additions.

This publication is not a textbook on medicine. All recommendations must be agreed with your doctor.

* * *

It is curious that negative reviews regarding blood extraction with leeches come from people who have not used them, and therefore do not have personal experience in this method of treatment.

G. Zakharyin. About hemorrhage. 1889

Preface

The book has been published since 2004 without changes or additions.

This publication is not a textbook on medicine. All recommendations must be agreed with your doctor.

* * *

It is curious that negative reviews regarding blood extraction with leeches come from people who have not used them, and therefore do not have personal experience in this method of treatment.

G. Zakharyin. About hemorrhage. 1889

Preface

The most monumental manual - “Monograph of Medical Leeches” - was written in St. Petersburg in 1859 by A. Voskresensky on behalf of the Russian Military Medical Department. It contained the history of leech farming and its management in Russia and abroad, practical recommendations for the medical use of leeches. In Russia, leeches were once revered: as A. Voskresensky noted then, the leech trade, both economically and medically, was such that no European state had ever achieved it. 70 million leeches a year were exported from Russia to Western Europe, especially to France, which annually consumed from 80 to 100 million leeches (and then 1 piece cost 10 kopecks).

Chapter 1. General information about leeches

Various cases of growing leeches in artificial conditions have clearly shown (and this is important to consider when breeding them):

The ability of leeches to go without food for many months, but at the same time, their “long fast” after eating is not at all a necessity for them;

Even with frequent feedings, they greedily absorb large quantities of blood at one time;

It is with frequent feedings of blood without restriction that leeches quickly reach a large mass;

With this feeding regime, medicinal leeches not only do not die, but also show all the signs of completely healthy animals.

A leech will help you Oleg Kamenev, Yuri Kamenev

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Title: A leech will help you

About the book “A Leech Will Help You” Oleg Kamenev, Yuri Kamenev

This book is designed to help return to people the miraculous remedy given by nature - the medicinal leech. If you have reduced body resistance, if you suffer from chronic, indolent diseases, if you suffer from high blood pressure and pain in the heart - this book is for you. It provides recommendations on the use of medicinal leeches and their maintenance, including at home.

For the first time, a medical book is presented indicating the points and diagrams of the leech attachment for more than forty diseases.

For doctors, medical students, and a wide range of readers who care about their own health.

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The book has been published since 2004 without changes or additions.

This publication is not a textbook on medicine. All recommendations must be agreed with your doctor.

* * *

It is curious that negative reviews regarding blood extraction with leeches come from people who have not used them, and therefore do not have personal experience in this method of treatment.

G. Zakharyin. About hemorrhage. 1889

Preface

Chapter 1. General information about leeches

Various cases of growing leeches in artificial conditions have clearly shown (and this is important to consider when breeding them):

The ability of leeches to go without food for many months, but at the same time, their “long fast” after eating is not at all a necessity for them;

Even with frequent feedings, they greedily absorb large quantities of blood at one time;

It is with frequent feedings of blood without restriction that leeches quickly reach a large mass;

With this feeding regime, medicinal leeches not only do not die, but also show all the signs of completely healthy animals.

Once upon a time in pre-revolutionary Russia, as well as in Western European countries, there were laws protecting the medicinal leech from extermination, for example: “Based on the current laws, catching leeches during their location - in May, June and July - is prohibited; When catching leeches, only those suitable for medical use should be selected, i.e., at least 1.5 vershok. Leeches that are small or too thick must be thrown back into the water when caught. To supervise the observance of these rules, provincial medical departments are entrusted with the responsibility of verifying the stocks of leeches of barbers and other traders who trade in them.” The basis for conducting a proper trade in leeches was the “Highly approved position of the Committee of Mr.. on November 17, 1848. Ministers who established the rules for catching and selling leeches... those guilty of violating these rules will be subject to penalties, applying to the Penal Code of Art. 1133, 1145 and 1589." And further: “The Ministry of State Property, intending to create a permanent source of income for the treasury and secular societies from leech catches, issued rules in 1850 that define the procedure for giving catches for maintenance, the rules and relations of tenants to the treasury and societies, and indicate measures saving and breeding leeches."