by Rose George
23. Thomas Dudley Fosbroke, British Monachism; or, Manners and Customs of the Monks and Nuns of England (London: M. A. Nattali, 1843), 234.
24. Worshipful Company of Barbers, “History of the Company,” http://barberscompany.org/history-of-the-company/ (accessed October 4, 2017).
25. City of London, Liber Albus: The White Book of the City of London, comp. John Carpenter, clerk Richard Whitington, trans. Henry Thomas Riley (London: Richard Griffin, 1861), 236.
26. Public Act, 32 Henry VIII, c. 40, “An Act Concerning the Privileges of Physicians”; Sidney Young, The Annals of the Barber-Surgeons of London (London: Blades, East and Blades, 1890).
27. Roy T. Sawyer, “History of the Leech Trade in Ireland, 1750–1915: Microcosm of a Global Commodity,” Medical History 57, no. 3 (2013): 420–41.
28. James Webster, Travels Through the Crimea, Turkey and Egypt: Performed During the Years 1825–1828 (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830), 336–37.
29. I. S. Whitaker, J. Rao, D. Izadi, and P. E. Butler, “Hirudo medicinalis: Ancient Origins of, and Trends in the Use of Medicinal Leeches Throughout History,” British Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery 42, no. 2 (2004): 133–37.
30. Kirk and Pemberton, Leech, 57.
31. “Ces sangsues ne doivent pas être épargnées, surtout lorsque le cas est traumatique, lorsque, par exemple, une roue à passé sur le corps.” François-Joseph-Victor Broussais, Cours de pathologie et de thérapeutique générales, vol. 2 (Paris: J. B. Baillière, 1834), 226, accessed at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k77300x?rk=64378;0.
32. “Vous enlevez en un instant une phlegmasie de six pouces à un pied d’étendue.” Ibid., 156.
33. Kirk and Pemberton, Leech, 59.
34. He told me that to these waters he had come
To gather Leeches, being old and poor:
Employment hazardous and wearisome!
And he had many hardships to endure:
From Pond to Pond he roamed, from moor to moor,
Housing, with God’s good help, by choice or chance:
And in this way he gain’d an honest maintenance.
William Wordsworth, Poems, in Two Volumes (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807), 89–97.
35. Martine Hubert-Pellier, “La pêche à la sangsue,” Amis du Vieux Chinon 11, no.1 (2007): 41.
Original text (my translation):
C’était ce qu’on nommait, au pays, “la pêche au sang”. […] On voyait soudain une fille s’amollir, vaciller, comme prise d’ivresse ou de vertige, quelquefois même s’avachir dans la barbotière, les fesses dans le bourbier mais l’esprit dans les nuages. Ses compagnes savaient ce qu’une telle défaillance signifiait: un affaiblissement de la volonté causé par le vampirisme insatiable des sangsues. Alors elles s’empressaient de hisser l’étourdie hors de la gadouille pour la libérer de ses parasites visqueux. Une franche rasade de pinard achevait de la requinquer.
36. “History,” Ricarimpex, http://leeches-medicinalis.com/the-company/history/ (accessed October 6, 2017).
37. Hubert-Pellier, “La pêche à la sangsue,” 42.
38. Ibid., 44–45.
39. Roy T. Sawyer, “The Portuguese Leech Trade in the 19th Century: The First Trans-Atlantic Commerce in Medicinal Leeches,” Anuário do Centro de Estudos de História do Atlântico 7 (2015): 283–322.
40. Francis Bruno, Letter to the Editor, Times, January 28, 1825.
41. “Extract of A Narrative of Lord Byron’s Last Journey to Greece,” London Literary Gazette, no. 418, January 22, 1825.
42. A. R. Mills, “The Last Illness of Lord Byron,” Proceedings of the Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh 28, no. 4 (1998): 76.
43. Joseph-Marie Audin-Rouvière, Plus de sangsues! (Paris: Le Normant Fils, 1827).
44.J. D. Rolleston, “F.J.V. Broussais (1772–1838): His Life and Doctrines,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 32, (January 11, 1939), 408.
45. Times, November 21, 1838.
46. The Centro Medico François Broussais is on Rome’s Largo Antonio Sarti while the Hôpital Broussais is in the 14th arrondissement of Paris.
47. The common Italian and French names for leeches are pleasingly straightforward: both sanguisuga and sangsue translate as “bloodsucker.”
48. Department of Health and Human Services, Food and Drug Administration, Letter to Brigitte Latrille, Ricarimpex SAS, June 21, 2004, www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/pdf4/k040187.pdf (accessed October 10, 2017).
49. Biopharm also sells HirudoSalt, to make up a saline solution to keep leeches in; HirudoMix, a moist matrix that dispenses with the need for frequent water changes; and HirudoGel, “a revolutionary material for keeping leeches healthy in hospital pharmacies”; www.biopharm-leeches.com/maintenance-products1.html (accessed October 10, 2017).
50. Keith L. Mutimer, Joseph C. Banis, and Joseph Upton, “Microsurgical Reattachment of Totally Amputated Ears,” Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery 79, no. 4 (1987): 535–41.
51. Daniel Q. Haney, “Doctors Combine Modern Microsurgery and Ancient Leeching to Save Ear,” Associated Press, September 24, 1985, www.apnewsarchive.com/1985/Doctors-Combine-Modern-Microsurgery-and-Ancient-Leeching-To-Save-Ear/id-f271f9b1c1cbd5dba4bbb17eeca88e83 (accessed October 10, 2017).
52. Ibid.
53. In fact, under the direction of a Professor Lavric, leeches had been in “constant use” at the Surgical Clinic in Ljubljana, used mainly to treat thrombosis and phlebitis. “This fact,” wrote the two surgeons, “is of such importance that the chemist of the 2,000-bedded hospital in Ljubljana is never without a sufficient quantity of leeches to meet the demand.” M. Derganc and F. Zdravic, “Venous Congestion of Flaps Treated by Application of Leeches,” British Journal of Plastic Surgery 13 (1960): 187–92.
54. James Hamblin, “Please, Michael Phelps, Stop Cupping,” Atlantic, August 9, 2016.
55. “According to Brynjolfsson and McAfee, such talk misses the point: trying to save jobs by tearing up trade deals is like applying leeches to a head wound.” Elizabeth Kolbert, “Our Automated Future,” New Yorker, December 19 and 26, 2016.
56. “15 Most Bizarre Medical Treatments Ever,” CBS News, www.cbsnews.com/pictures/15-most-bizarre-medical-treatments-ever/2/ (accessed May 3, 2018).
57. I. S. Whitaker, D. Izadi, D. W. Oliver, et al., “Hirudo medicinalis and the Plastic Surgeon,” British Journal of Plastic Surgery 57, no. 4 (2004): 351.
58. Roy T. Sawyer, “A Sanguine Attachment: 2,000 Years of Leeches in Medicine,” in Medical and Health Annual (London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1998), 97.
59. https://cites.org/eng/app/appendices.php (accessed January 10, 2018).
60. Whitaker et al., “Hirudo medicinalis and the Plastic Surgeon,” 351.
61. Douglas B. Chepeha, Brian Nussenbaum, Carol R. Bradford, and Theodoros N. Teknos, “Leech Therapy for Patients with Surgically Unsalvageable Venous Obstruction After Revascularized Free Tissue Transfer,” Archives of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery 128, no. 8 (2002): 961.
62. “Leech Therapy,” Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, patient information leaflet, www.guysandstthomas.nhs.uk/resources/patient-information/surgery/Plastic-surgery/leech-therapy.pdf (accessed August 25, 2017).
63. Valerie Curtis, Nicole Voncken, and Shyamoli Singh, “Dirt and Disgust: A Darwinian Perspective on Hygiene,” Medische Antropologie 11, no. 1 (1999): 148.
64. William Miller, quoted in ibid., 149.
65. Kirk and Pemberton, Leech, 137.
66. Mukund Jagannathan, Vipin Barthwal, and Maksud Devale, “Aesthetic and Effective Leech Application,” Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery 124, no. 1 (2009): 338.
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� 67. Anonymous, “Leeches Drunk Will Bite till Sober,” letter, Lancet 2 (1849): 683.
68. James Rawlins Johnson, A Treatise on the Medicinal Leech: Including Its Medical and Natural History, with a Description of Its Anatomical Structure: Also, Remarks upon the Diseases, Preservation and Management of Leeches (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1816).
69. Alison Reynolds and Colm OBoyle, “Nurses’ Experiences of Leech Therapy in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery,” British Journal of Nursing 25, no. 13 (2016): 729–33.
70. Claire Lomax, “How Leeches Could Save My Life,” Telegraph and Argus, October 7, 2007.
71. “Blood-Sucking Leeches Save a Woman from Cancer,” Daily Mail (London), October 9, 2007.
72. Mel Fairhurst, “Battling Michelle Beaten by Cancer,” Telegraph and Argus, May 7, 2008.
73. Glynn Maples, “A Sucker’s Born Every Minute on This Farm in Swansea, Wales,” Wall Street Journal, September 21, 1989.
74. Derganc and Zdravic, “Venous Congestion of Flaps Treated by Application of Leeches,” 189.
75. Thomas Moore, The Journal of Thomas Moore, ed. Wilfred S. Dowden (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1983), 1450.
76. George Merryweather, “An Essay Explanatory of the Tempest Prognosticator in the Building of the Great Exhibition for the Works for the Industry of All Nations: Read Before the Whitby Philosophical Society, February 27, 1851,” https://archive.org/stream/b2804163x/b2804163x_djvu.txt (accessed October 10, 2017).
77. Merryweather, in his published essay, expresses his obligations to “the Gentlemen of the Committee of Management of ‘Lloyd’s,’ for the handsome manner in which I have been treated by them, and for giving publicity to a number of my experiments.” For Lloyd’s doing its own testing, see Kirk and Pemberton, Leech, 108.
78. Sawyer, “A Sanguine Attachment,” 96.
79. “National Export Quotas,” Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITIES), n.d., www.cites.org/eng/resources/quotas/export_quotas (accessed February 10, 2018).
80. Richard G. Fiddian-Green, “Treating Heart Failure and Sepsis with Bloodletting and Leeches,” responding to British Medical Journal 320, no. 7226 (2000): 39.
81. Jack McClintock and Elinor Carucci, “Bloodsuckers,” Discover, December 1, 2001.
THREE: JANET AND PERCY
1. Dame Janet Vaughan, University of Oxford Medical Sciences Division, www.medsci.ox.ac.uk/about/history/women-in-oxford-medical-sciences/dame-janet-vaughan-1899-1993 (accessed October 11, 2017).
2. In 2015, 12,591,000 units of red blood cells were collected, and 11,349,000 were transfused. Add that to 1,983,000 transfusions of platelets, plus 2,727,000 of plasma, and divide by 31,536,000 seconds in a year and the figure comes to 1.018455099. Calculations done by American Association of Blood Banks (personal communication), using figures available in Katherine D. Ellingson, Matthew R. P. Sapiano, Kathryn A. Haass, et al., “Continued Decline in Blood Collection and Transfusion in the United States—2015,” Transfusion 57, no. S2 (2017): S1588–98. Also, “Significant Shortages Impact U.S. Blood Supply,” American Association of Blood Banks, press release, July 11, 2016.
3. “70 Years of Life Saving Blood Donations,” NHSBT, September 26, 2016, www.blood.co.uk/news-and-campaigns/news-and-statements/70-years-of-life-saving-blood-donations/ (accessed May 2018).
4. NHSBT, “What We Do,” www.nhsbt.nhs.uk/what-we-do/blood-services/blood-donation/ (accessed February 2018); American Red Cross, “Blood Facts and Statistics,” n.d., www.redcrossblood.org/learn-about-blood/blood-facts-and-statistics (accessed February 2018).
5. “Blood Safety and Availability Fact Sheet,” World Health Organization, reviewed June 2017, www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs279/en/ (accessed October 12, 2017).
6. Janet Vaughan, “Jogging Along, or, A Doctor Writes,” unpublished manuscript, collection of Somerville College, University of Oxford.
7. Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (Adelaide, South Australia: eBooks@Adelaide, 2015), e-book, https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91md/ (accessed May 2018).
8. E. Cobham Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (Philadelphia: H. Altemus, 1898).
9. Vaughan, “Jogging Along.”
10. Ibid.
11. In 1920, the university decided to admit women as full members and allowed them to graduate (before that, plenty had studied at Oxford and got the ferry to Dublin to graduate, earning them the name “Steamboat Ladies”). “Women at Oxford,” University of Oxford, www.ox.ac.uk/about/oxford-people/women-at-oxford (accessed February 2018); “Only in Britain,” Telegraph (London), October 7, 2016.
12. Women of Our Century, BBC, first broadcast on BBC Two, August 3, 1984.
13. Ibid.
14. Vaughan, “Jogging Along.”
15. Minot won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1934, along with George H. Whipple and William P. Murphy, for “their discoveries concerning liver therapy in cases of anaemia,” www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1934/minot-facts.html (accessed October 12, 2017).
16. Vaughan, “Jogging Along.” The Edinburgh Book of Plain Cookery Recipes, published in 1932, includes raw liver recipes “for the use of patients suffering with pernicious anaemia,” prepared by Miss Pybus, Sister Dietitian to the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh. Miss Pybus recommends ox or calf liver, chicken or pig liver at a push, and kidney if no liver is available. First, create raw liver pulp by mincing liver, weighing out five ounces, then adding water and beating until it is the consistency of thick cream. For raw liver sandwiches, cut very thin brown bread and butter, spread thinly with Marmite or Bovril. Add some of the liver pulp flavored with a little lemon juice, pepper, and salt. Whenever serving liver, “do not remove the lid of the dish in front of the patient, as the smell is sometimes nauseating.” The Edinburgh Book of Plain Cookery Recipes, rev. enl. ed. (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1932), 308.
17. Janet Vaughan interviewed by Dr. Max Blythe, Royal College of Physicians/Oxford Brookes University Medical Sciences Interview Archive, 1987.
18. This mincing apparently transformed Janet into a much more interesting character in the eyes of her cousin Virginia, who wrote in her diary, when Janet was twenty-six, that “Good dull Janet Vaughan […] joined us.” Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2001), 98. Also, Virginia Woolf, Diary of Virginia Woolf, entry for May 13, 1926, http://www.woolfonline.com/?node=content/contextual/transcriptions&project=1&parent=41&taxa=42&content=6317&pos=21 (accessed May 2018).
19. Janet Vaughan interviewed by Dr. Max Blythe.
20. “There was a problem because Harvard didn’t have any women. I was, you see, a Rockefeller fellow, they couldn’t say no to me but I was a woman so I couldn’t work with patients. I decided I should work with mice. I ordered some mice from these stewards, the mice didn’t come. I went to the stewards, why haven’t my mice come? Well, there aren’t many Boston mice available. I said, well there are some excellent mice in Philadelphia; there was a very famous strain of mouse in Philadelphia. They were well known these Philadelphian mice. So there I was, no mice. So I had to work with pigeons.” Janet Vaughan interviewed by Dr. Max Blythe.
21. Vaughan, “Jogging Along.”
22. Ibid.
23. Janet Vaughan interviewed by Dr. Max Blythe.
24. Vaughan, “Jogging Along.”
25. “I was never a good party member however. I did not care for being instructed in the Communist Manifesto, it seemed like a waste of time, and I was far too concerned with my Blood Transfusion Service, my air raid casualties and my medicine to carry on beyond a few months as a party member.” Vaugh
an, “Jogging Along.”
26. The exact predictions were six hundred thousand killed and 1.2 million casualties. Richard M. Titmuss, Problems of Social Policy (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1950), 13, www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/UK-Civil-Social/UK-Civil-Social-2.html#fn2 (accessed May 2018).
27. Vaughan says they were told to expect thirty-seven thousand in her interview with Polly Toynbee and fifty-seven thousand in Vaughan, “Jogging Along.”
28. Janet Vaughan interviewed by Dr. Max Blythe.
29. Ovid, Metamorphoses, Bk. VII:234–93, http://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/trans/Metamorph7.htm (accessed November 7, 2017).
30. Harvey probably reached his theory of circulation in 1616 when he was a Lumleian lecturer at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. Geoffrey Keynes, Blood Transfusion (London: Henry Frowde and Holder & Stoughton, 1922; republished by Leopold Classics Library, 2015).
