Biotherapy

Medicinal Leeches

This generally involved the European medicinal leech (Hirudo medicinalis). The leech has three jaws and 100 sharp teeth, and uses the anticoagulant hirudin, first identified in 1884, and isolated in its purified form for the first time in the 1950s. The use of leeches used to be known as leeching, but is now known as hirudotherapy.

The main use of leeches by modern surgeons is after reattaching severed body parts such as fingers or after a tissue graft procedure. Leeches can be applied to areas where an anticoagulant is needed and can be used to help circulation throughout the attached body part. There have been a number of other animals [Page 241]used for biotherapy, including maggots (maggot debridement therapy and larva therapy), honey bees (apitherapy), fish (ichthiotherapy), and worms (helmitherapy). Maggots, leeches, and fish have been used in the saving of limbs, dogs may be used to detect cancers, and bee venom can be helpful in neurological and musculoskeletal diseases.

Biotherapy has always been a controversial area of medicine; it was popular in medieval and early modern Europe, and is still used in some instances. Technically, the use of guide dogs to assist blind people may also be regarded as an extension of biotherapy.