Basque ethnography at a glance

Hirūdinēs. Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica. Salamanca, 1563. Eukal Biblioteka. Labayru Fundazioa.

Bloodletting is claimed to have been a most common and ancient medical practice, its use being gradually relegated to the margins of conventional medicine over the years.

Two main methods were employed: one or more superficial veins were opened with a lancet to let the blood flow out in a controlled manner; alternatively, living leeches —widely known, in Basque, as uzanak or izainak— were applied to safely remove impure or congested blood.

The bleeding of a patient to health was normally available on medical prescription and practised by either physicians, practitioners or barber surgeons, whereas leeching might as well be performed by healers or even oneself.

Wild leeches were collected in watercourses, whether marshes, ponds, springs… Walking along in the water, thus allowing the leeches to attach themselves to one’s bare legs, was the easiest and most efficient way to gather them. Immediately after leaving the water, they would be carefully loosened and collected. Domestic leeches would be stored in a wooden box or a ceramic jar, rightly arranged in superimposed layers of soft clay, one by one, to fill the container.

Freshwater leech. Sergio García Ahedo.

Leeches were once quite valuable commercial items: indeed, back in the 1840s, leech gatherers and merchants, who guaranteed their supply to hospitals and pharmacies, might have been paid as much as nine reals for a dozen specimens with fine bloodsucking capabilities.

To apply it, the leech was introduced inside an inverted glass cup placed against the skin, and as soon as it burrowed in, the cup would be removed. As it sucked the blood, it increased its size and usually fell off on its own when satiated. Thrust among ashes, it would regurgitate its stomach contents, and after being washed it could be reused. Leeches were applied to every imaginable part of the body, mostly on arms and legs, typically on forearms and wrists, also on the neck, behind the ears or on the temples.

Withdrawal of some of a patient’s blood was indicated for the treatment of a broad spectrum of conditions and pathologies: pneumonia, pleurisy, cerebral congestion, high blood pressure, headaches, inflammations of diverse type, haematomas, various infections, poisoning… And in prevention of potential disorders, spring was said to be a very advantageous time of the year to purify the blood and restore balance.

Jaione Bilbao – Ethnography Department – Labayru Fundazioa

(Adapted from Popular Medicine, part of the Ethnographic Atlas of the Basque Country collection)

A previous post dedicated to springtime and the humoral alterations which it brings about might likewise be of interest.