Leeches to the rescue? Early Bucks County medical community was stuck on their benefits

I love Tinicum Creek in the wilds of Upper Bucks County. The stream’s rural beauty, hilly terrain and ancient Frankenfield Covered Bridge are intoxicating. My family and I loved splashing around in the rocky streambed with family dog Marcel.

All that time we were unaware of the creek’s popularity in Colonial times for an entirely different reason. It was home – and maybe still is – to a unique invertebrate. Leeches. Ewwww! I’d have freaked out to see one, let alone emerge from the creek with one latched to me. After all, they’re vampires of the aquatic world. Bloodsuckers. Luckily, we had no encounters.

It was earlier this month I discovered the leech connection while surfing through George MacReynolds’ book on Bucks County place names. His section on the 6-mile-long tributary to the Delaware River drew my interest. The author notes the creek in the northeast corner of Upper Bucks was a fertile hunting ground for turtles in the 1700s. “Fish of various kinds were also abundant in the stream, as well as leeches which were caught and sold in Philadelphia to physicians and surgeons.”

For me, that was the tip off to a whole new world of research about leeches shaped a bit like the Titan submersible. They hang out in the rock crevices of streambeds, and are able to detect your presence from 10 feet away. As far back as 1500 BC in ancient Egypt, leeches were coveted and idealized in hieroglyphics found in pyramids. Apparently, pharaohs suffering from administrative headaches or hemorrhoids turned to leeches to draw blood to make the royals feel better. Whereas the practice spread to Europe, Mayans and Aztecs in the Americas discovered leech therapy on their own.

In Europe, physicians believed human illness came from an imbalance in four bodily “humours” ― blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. The dominant humour was blood. So, doctors prescribed a little bloodletting to regain balance between the four fluids. Enter the leech. Doctors viewed the black flatworms as a painless way to tap the human bloodstream. A few years ago, plastic surgeon Dr. Stephen Kovach at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania described the leech “as the perfect blood-sucking animal. It’s got a mouth with three jaws and little teeth. It pierces the skin, it secretes an anticoagulant as well as an anesthetic from its mouth.” (The latter is why people emerge from a creek, river or lake not knowing they have a leech hanging off their backs or legs.)

By the 18^th century, leech therapy was widely practiced as a cure-all in the American colonies. The worms were applied to the wounds of Revolutionary War soldiers and anyone seeking relief for a variety of conditions including acne, severe pain and improving circulation. Most pharmacies carried leech jars to house worms-on-the-go. In Philadelphia, leech therapy was considered standard medical practice. The worms were much sought after by city physicians and surgeons throughout the 1700s and 1800s. Demand led to leech harvests on Tinicum Creek and elsewhere, providing steady income to entrepreneurs willing to gather them up and horseback the catch to the city.

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The market proved to be international. By the mid-1800s, France imported 40 million leeches every year for medical purposes while England imported 6 million. Leech medicine exploded in Asia and the Middle East. That is, until the 1930s. The advent of antibiotics sent the leech market nosediving. Lately, however, they’re making a comeback thanks to reconstructive microsurgery. As Dr. Kovack explained, “Those leeches are buying time for the other veins to open up. . . Most folks, if they’re faced with losing a finger or ear or their reconstruction, are pretty amenable to having a leech put on them.”

The good news is the FDA in 2004 cleared the way to market medicinal leeches by redefining them as “medical devices.” If I ever see one such device in Tinicum Creek, I’ll think of the possibilities. On second thought, I hope not to see one!

Sources include “Place Names in Bucks County” by George MacReynolds published in 1942, and “Blood brothers: Philly docs, researchers suck up to leeches” by Elana Gordon posted on the web at https://whyy.org/articles/ode-to-the-leech-and-its-role-in-medical-history/

Carl LaVO can be reached at carllavo0@gmail.com

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Bucks County doctors once sang praises of leeches' medicinal benefits