Why were leeches such a popular treatment for so long? Were they at all effective?

by idoze
DanKensington

More can always be said on the matter, especially since Medieval medicine has a much-undeserved reputation in Common Knowledge. For the meantime, we have a fair bit of previous posts on the matter of leeching.

Our first stop is of course u/BedsideRounds:

To further riff on the uses of leeches today, a search on PubMed for 'leech' reveals quite a lot of results from a lot of quarters. Enough that I am reasonably confident in saying that it appears a number of doctors do find hirudotherapy (the fancy name for medicinal leeching) to be useful.