Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey Brainstuff, Lauren Vogelbaum.
Speaker 1: Here just a heads up, this episode gets a little gross.
Speaker 1: In case you didn't see the title or description before
Speaker 1: it started, It's about leeches and what would happen if
Speaker 1: you swallowed one. If that's not what you're into hearing
Speaker 1: about today, go on and skip it. Okay, okay. So.
Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety five, one surgeon, Lieutenant Ta Granger of
Speaker 1: the British Indian Army wrote a letter to the British
Speaker 1: Medical Journal to report a stomach turning case of parasitic
Speaker 1: infestation that he encountered at his colonial outpost. While working
Speaker 1: at a fort in the Northwest Provinces of India, Granger
Speaker 1: received a letter from an officer asking for his help
Speaker 1: with an unusual medical complaint. According to the note, a
Speaker 1: local man had a leech attached to the inside of
Speaker 1: his throat. At first, Granger assumed it couldn't be true,
Speaker 1: but he agreed to see the patient. By Granger's account,
Speaker 1: the patient was an elderly man with a gray beard, who,
Speaker 1: when Granger came within sight, immediately spat out a heavy
Speaker 1: mouthful of thick, blackened blood. As though to demonstrate that
Speaker 1: his complaint was real. With the help of interpreters, Granger
Speaker 1: asked the man about his condition. He revealed that eleven
Speaker 1: days previous, he had been drinking out of a rainwater
Speaker 1: tank when he suddenly felt something catch in his throat.
Speaker 1: When he tried to cough it up, he couldn't. Then
Speaker 1: the thing caught in his throat began to move. He
Speaker 1: had difficulties swallowing and felt like he was going to
Speaker 1: choke on the writhing obstruction, and it caused him to
Speaker 1: vomit and spit up blood repeatedly. When Granger first looked
Speaker 1: inside the old man's throat, he was able to remove
Speaker 1: a clot of blood, but couldn't see any parasites. If
Speaker 1: it was there, it had to be deeper, so the
Speaker 1: surgeon lieutenant produced a pair of polypus forceps, essentially very
Speaker 1: long tweezers with scissor handles, and reached into the hidden
Speaker 1: depths of the man's lower pharynx near the esophagus. There,
Speaker 1: through the instrument, Grainger detected the presence of an object
Speaker 1: and could feel it moving. With the tips of the forceps,
Speaker 1: he grasped the squirming obstruction and with considerable force pulled
Speaker 1: it out. Indeed, it was a leech some two and
Speaker 1: a half inches long that's around six and a half centimeters,
Speaker 1: with a body shaped like the bullets of the British
Speaker 1: infantry used in their lee Metford rifles. This slimy, writhing
Speaker 1: rifle cartridge, engorged with human blood, had been living in
Speaker 1: the man's pharynx for eleven days. Granger's letter to the
Speaker 1: British Medical Journal does not go on to report what
Speaker 1: happened to the old man, but after an experience like this,
Speaker 1: one would hope that the worst was already behind him.
Speaker 1: When it comes to leeches in the throat, Grainger's report
Speaker 1: is not an isolated incident. Granger himself reported hearing stories
Speaker 1: of other cases like this in neighboring towns, and the
Speaker 1: phenomenon is by no means limited to nineteenth century India.
Speaker 1: Getting a leech attached to the inside of a body
Speaker 1: cavity is common enough that there are special medicalized terminologies
Speaker 1: for it, such as leech and no parasitism or internal
Speaker 1: here udoniasis. These are phrases that most of us would
Speaker 1: probably rather not have in our vocabulary, but even today,
Speaker 1: in the twenty first century, people still show up at
Speaker 1: hospitals around the world with leeches stuck inside their throats.
Speaker 1: Strictly speaking, the leech is a type of worm phylum
Speaker 1: Anellida subclass here Udinia, from which we get the aforementioned
Speaker 1: word here youdeniasis, which is the condition of being parasitized
Speaker 1: by a leech. The leeches have squishy, segmented bodies imagine
Speaker 1: rings like on an earthworm, and they have suckers at
Speaker 1: both ends, one large sucker at the rear of the
Speaker 1: body used for crawling and leverage, and a smaller sucker
Speaker 1: at the front containing the jaws and mouth. Not all
Speaker 1: leeches drink blood, Some scavenge for detritis, and some are
Speaker 1: predatory hunters. But the leech we know best is the
Speaker 1: type of parasite that clamps onto a larger host and
Speaker 1: steadily drains all the blood it can, often until the
Speaker 1: leech's body has swollen to around ten times its original size.
Speaker 1: In the wild, leeches drink from all manner of hosts,
Speaker 1: such as mammals, fish, and amphibians. When the leech bites,
Speaker 1: it makes a wide shaped incision in the skin with
Speaker 1: three curved jaws covered in serrated teeth like tiny circular
Speaker 1: saws and then extracts blood with a muscular sucking action.
Speaker 1: The saliva of the leech is known to contain a
Speaker 1: cocktail of drugs to ease the process, including her youdin,
Speaker 1: a polypeptide that prevents blood from clotting. It was first
Speaker 1: isolated in and thus named after leeches. Leeches are classically
Speaker 1: known as external parasites, drawing their liquid diet through the
Speaker 1: outer skin of the host, but given the opportunity, they'll
Speaker 1: feed from internal surfaces too, basically any that they can reach.
Speaker 1: Humans have an unusual relationship with leeches that's perhaps unique
Speaker 1: among all the world's parasites. The use of leeches is
Speaker 1: pervasive throughout the history of medicine. In some historical periods
Speaker 1: they were so commonly used as instruments of bloodletting. The
Speaker 1: collecting wild leeches was a solid money making operation, and
Speaker 1: although it might eke us out today, the human taste
Speaker 1: for therapeutic parasitism did not stop at the outer skin.
Speaker 1: During the leech craze, leeching enthusiasts opened many of their
Speaker 1: bodily orifices and internal cavities to these prized worms, and
Speaker 1: with the help of varying medical technology. In an article
Speaker 1: on the technological history of leeching published in twenty eleven
Speaker 1: in the journal Medical History, the authors wrote the opening
Speaker 1: of the interior of the body often required the physical
Speaker 1: alteration of the leech, for example, the attachment of thread
Speaker 1: to prevent the loss of the leech within, or the
Speaker 1: supplementation of the leech with mechanical tools to enable the
Speaker 1: passage of the creature into locations such as the anus,
Speaker 1: where it was recommended as a means to treat problematic prostates.
Speaker 1: There are even a few limited ways in which leeches
Speaker 1: have proven useful, though perhaps still controversial, in the science
Speaker 1: based medicine of recent decades, such as to ensure that
Speaker 1: veins are working properly and aren't overfilling or distending after microsurgery.
Speaker 1: Leech infestations of the throat are rare these days, especially
Speaker 1: in developed countries with easy access to clean water, but
Speaker 1: it can still happen. Possible symptoms of a leech in
Speaker 1: the throat are difficulty swallowing, sore throat, coughing up or
Speaker 1: vomiting blood, a sense of having a foreign body in
Speaker 1: the throat, molina, which is the term for dark, sticky
Speaker 1: feces indicating the swallowing of blood, a feeling of suffocation
Speaker 1: or shortness of breath, and or harsh or raspy breathing.
Speaker 1: If you think that you've got a leech in your
Speaker 1: throat right now, don't panic. Just see a doctor as
Speaker 1: soon as you can. With modern imaging and local anesthesia,
Speaker 1: the ordeal will likely be more awkward and sort of
Speaker 1: gnarally than anything else, though it can be dangerous if
Speaker 1: the parasite obstructs any part of the airway. If the
Speaker 1: doctor knows what to look for and has a pair
Speaker 1: of blunt forceps on hand, chances are good that you'll
Speaker 1: be just fine. But of course the best case scenario
Speaker 1: is to avoid the problem entirely, which these cases seem
Speaker 1: to indicate. You can do by drinking only from clean
Speaker 1: water sources or filtering and purifying all the water you use,
Speaker 1: and also by avoiding swimming in any water that might
Speaker 1: be infested with leeches. Today's episode is based on the
Speaker 1: article Here's what Happens when you swallow a leech on
Speaker 1: HowStuffWorks dot com, written by Joe McCormick. If after that
Speaker 1: you want to hear more from Joe, you can find
Speaker 1: him on the podcast Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Brain
Speaker 1: Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot com, and it is produced by Tyler klang A.
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