REPORTER-AT-LARGE: My bloodsucking visit to a leech clinic

At first, the Centre Hydrothérapie Colonique clinic staff were under the impression that your reporter wanted a colon-cleansing treatment, owing to the fact none of us was speaking in their first language. But a few minutes later, after some explaining and after establishing that sangsues and leeches were indeed one and the same, everything was cleared up.

The clinic, located near McGill University on the third floor of a grimy office building in Montreal, Quebec, is owned and operated by Dr Victor Protsenko, a Russian physician who now works as a naturopath in Montreal. Services on offer include leech therapy, colonics, acupuncture and massage.

The office manager/self-styled spokesperson insisted hirudotherapy "has a use for every malady." Asked how physicians tend to feel about the idea of using leeches for all sorts of different conditions (three leeches for hemorrhoids: "It's magic!") she gave an emphatic double thumbs-down gesture. "Doctors don't like it."

The leeches go for $20 apiece. They come from London, England -- or maybe North Carolina. (There was some confusion about their provenance.)

A patient entered the room with her husband. She disrobed and lay down on an examination table beneath crudely hand-drawn posters depicting where leeches should be placed for different conditions.

Vadim Buzduja, a naturopath from Moscow who works at the clinic, took out a jar of leeches from a shelf beneath the window. The patient, he explained, was trying to get pregnant.

Leech therapy helps fertility? "It aids circulation -- the cleaning of the blood," he replied. And how does that help fertility? "It stimulates the immune system." Huh? More questions yielded only, "More energy."

As new age muzak wafted through the clinic, Mr Buzduja removed a few leeches from his jar and plopped them down unceremoniously on the patient's lower back, buttocks and thighs. A few leech bites from previous sessions were visible on her calves. She settled in calmly for up to an hour of bloodsucking.

And when the leeches are satiated, then what? Simple, explained the office manager. They fall off and the staff just flushes them down the toilet.


This article originally appeared in the National Review of Medicine, May 2008, alongside an article titled "Gross-out folk remedies make a comeback: Leeches, maggots and other icky therapies are gaining mainstream acceptance."

Photo: Graham Lanktree

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