Yelena Titova shakes a jar holding a few dozen leeches writhing in slightly murky water. When one of them sinks to the bottom, motionless, she plunges her hand in and retrieves the late bloodsucker.

Leeches are particularly useful in two kinds of surgery -- reattaching fingers, and attaching flaps of skin in reconstructive surgery -- as the leeches help re-establish blood flow. Maggots can be ...

Udelnaya, Russia – Of roughly 300 species of leeches that live on sea mammals and cave bats, in the nostrils of Saharan camels and the rectums of African hippos, only one can be administered to humans ...

A medical procedure that goes back thousands of years is enjoying a resurgence: leeching. The segmented worms are used primarily in microsurgeries like limb reattachments and plastic surgery. At the ...

MOSCOW — They are small as physician assistants go, about 2 inches long, and slithery. They wiggle about for a bit on Elena A. Kalinicheva’s back before getting down to what they do best: sucking ...

TORONTO, ON- OCTOBER 29 - A European medicinal leech, Hirudo verbana, is bigger after feeding on a blood sausage. The rear of the leech is the bigger part with a smaller head that has multiple ...

Leech therapy has a long history from medieval medicine and ancient Geek. The resurgence of this therapy, however, happened during the 1980s. It was a period when science was progressing and ...