They were once used to treat everything from headaches to strangulation, and leeches are still a vital part of surgery. But how are they farmed?
Six seconds. Perhaps 10. Twelve, if it is cautious or dopey. After that, the jaws will activate, the hundreds of teeth will engage, the leech will begin to eat, and its meal is your blood. Are you wading through a tropical pond in fierce humidity? Have you returned to your guesthouse to find with horror a passenger on your leg? Possibly. But you are equally likely to be in a sterile room of a modern hospital, tended by nurses who attach these bloodsucking animals to you without a shiver. You accept them equally calmly because it has been explained to you that these leeches may save your breast, or your finger, or your ear, or your life.
Less than half a mile from the M4 motorway, in the south-west of Wales, there is a walled entrance off a road whose name I can’t pronounce, and a small sign saying Biopharm. A long and winding drive passes sheds of unclear purpose and ends in a small yard beyond an imposing cream-coloured manor house. The UK’s only leech production business looks like a health farm. Which I suppose it is. Thousands of years since leeches were first employed for medicinal purposes, and a century since “leech mania” saw blood-letting used to tackle everything from headaches to strangulation, these creatures are still used to clean wounds and improve circulation, especially after surgery.
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