Leeches

Leeches

Even while leeches are still used to this day, it’s not often you go to the doctor complaining of a sore throat and he pulls out a juicy leech as a remedy. Barber-surgeons relied on this natural blood-letter to fix virtually every medieval ailment, thinking it could drain all impurities in a really good suck session. While it sounds barbaric, leeches do have true medical merit; they are used in some kinds of reconstructive surgery to prevent clotting, as the leeches produce a special anti-coagulant enzyme (called hirudin) in their saliva for that very purpose