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leech

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leech

Any of a group of annelid worms. Leeches live in fresh water, and in tropical countries infest damp forests. As bloodsucking animals they are injurious to people and animals, to whom they attach themselves by means of a strong mouth adapted to sucking. (Class Hirudinea.)

Formerly, the medicinal leech (Hirudo medicinalis) was used extensively for ‘bleeding’ for a variety of ills. It is still cultivated as the source of the anticoagulant hirudin.
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For the sake of the leech did I lie here by this swamp, like a fisher, and already had mine outstretched arm been bitten ten times, when there biteth a still finer leech at my blood, Zarathustra himself!
Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book For All And None by Nietzsche, Friedrich View in context
Thus it came that, on the morning of the fourth day, he called Little John to him, and told him that he could not shake the fever from him, and that he would go to his cousin, the prioress of the nunnery near Kirklees, in Yorkshire, who was a skillful leech, and he would have her open a vein in his arm and take a little blood from him, for the bettering of his health.
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Pyle, Howard View in context
Right so the king and Merlin departed, and went until an hermit that was a good man and a great leech.
A Connecticut Yankee by Twain, Mark View in context
 
 
 
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