The announcement came during a late-night comedy show, but the actress Demi Moore apparently was not joking recently when she told host David Letterman that part of her health and healing regimen involves attaching leeches to her belly button. Moore, 45, who has starred in such films as "Ghost" and "A Few Good Men," said that during a recent trip to a spa in Austria, she used the blood-sucking worms to detoxify. She called it "leech therapy."
It was just another bizarre turn in the undulating, up-and-down history of the leech. From medieval medical marvel to sheer quackery and back again over the course of a few centuries, the slimy aquatic creature has once more returned to the medical mainstream -- though not in the way Moore described.
Over the past 30 years, leeches have slithered back into operating rooms across the country, where their expertise in stopping blood from clotting helps with skin grafts and during surgery to reattach severed body parts. In fact, in 2004 the federal Food and Drug Administration officially approved the leech as a bona fide medical device. Since then, its presence in hospitals has increased, prompting researchers and doctors to explore new uses.
"It's not uncommon at all to use leeches in surgeries," said Dr. Renata Webber, assistant professor of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center in New York. "I use them a few times a year."
Microsurgeons and surgeons who specialize in reattachment have found that leeches are particularly effective in draining excess blood around reattached or transplanted appendages, where the blood flows in well, but not out. The leech has also proven indispensable in maintaining blood flow during hours-long surgeries in which doctors reattach everything from ears to scalps and fingers.
Common or not, the use of leeches in hospitals still comes as a shock to most patients. "People freak out when I tell them I need to use leeches," Webber added. "But then I tell them, 'Either I put this on you, or you lose your thumb or finger,' and they come around pretty quickly."
But it was not always difficult to convince patients of the leech's virtue. From ancient Egypt through medieval Europe and into the late 19th century, leeches were used under the mistaken belief that they could help balance the body's fluids or "evil humors."
For many years, one of the regular services offered at barbershops was bloodletting -- a practice whose bloody bandages are said to have inspired today's red-and-white swirled barber poles. Countless people sat for the procedure, including George Washington; he died soon thereafter.
