Plastic surgery registrar at Canberra Health Services Dr Kathleen Lim holding a container of leeches. Photo: James Coleman.
Leeches have been used in medicine for thousands of years, back to when disease was thought to be caused by ‘bad blood’ and the best cure was to get out as much as possible, to the point that many patients fainted.
But it turns out the equally fascinating and disgusting worm things can’t hang up the stethoscope yet. They still have a role to play today in the Canberra Hospital, for people who may have accidentally removed a finger or two with a circular saw, for example.
Leeches at the Canberra Hospital. Photo: James Coleman.
Dr Kathleen Lim, a plastic surgery registrar, talks us through it (and gives us the record for the number of leeches on a patient at one time).
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