Talk:Hirudo medicinalis

Merge?
There is a question about hirudotherapy's talk page about a possible merger.

cat: plastic surgery
This article was removed from the plastic surgery category. I think the category is appropriate because of the leeches use in microsurgery as explained in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Taylornate (talk • contribs) 05:44, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Split proposal
I'd like to split the portions of this article relating to medical use of leaches into an article titled "Hirudotherapy". It seems fairly uncontroversial, but I figured I'd post here first in case someone disagrees.

The reason for the split is that "Hirudo medicinalis" is very specifically the latin binomial name of a species of leach. While it was at least historically used in hirudotherapy, as its name implies, it seems appropriate that an article titled with a species name should be a biology article about that species.

The new article name could be called "Leach therapy" rather than Hirudotherapy, but Hirudotherapy is the established modern term for the practice, and a quick check on google shows some 70,000 matches for a search on "hirudotherapy," and some 3,000 matches for a search on "leach therapy" (with quotation marks). It could also be named "Medicinal leaches" or "Medical leaches" but those don't seem sufficiently general. These alternative terms can be redirected to Hirudotherapy.

Agyle (talk) 07:53, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Just a note, kind of embarassing, I misspelled leech as leach in my aforementioned googling. "Leech therapy" (with quotes) returns 579,000 results, hirudotherapy returns 64,100 results. Hirudotherapy sounds more formal & scientific, as befits an encyclopedia, but the popularity of the term "leech therapy" seems to make it a worthy rival for the article's title. Either way, I'd think both terms would be mentioned in the opening sentence. Agyle (talk) 09:57, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Most common is "Hirudo verbana" - not "H. medicinalis"
The article starts with the following sentence:

"Medicinal leeches are any of several species of leeches, but most commonly Hirudo medicinalis, the European medicinal leech."

In fact Hirudo verbana is the most commonly commercially available "medicinal leech" used all over Europe, the US and Canada.

Diverse molecular data demonstrate that commercially available medicinal leeches are not Hirudo medicinalis

(Siddall ME et al) Proc Biol Sci. 2007 Jun 22; 274(1617): 1481–1487. Published online 2007 Apr 10. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2007.0248

Hirudo medicinalis, the European medicinal leech is a near threatened species in many parts of its population area.

Utevsky, S., Zagmajster, M. & Trontelj, P. 2014. Hirudo medicinalis. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2014.3. . Downloaded on 14 April 2015.

in addition:

Phylogeny and phylogeography of medicinal leeches (genus Hirudo): fast dispersal and shallow genetic structure.

(Trontelj P, Utevsky SY) Mol Phylogenet Evol. 2012 May;63(2):475-85. doi: 10.1016/j.ympev.2012.01.022. Epub 2012 Feb 8.

Leech Saliva Anesthetic?
== Leech Saliva Anesthetic? ==

It's mentioned that it's thought the leech has an anesthetic in it's saliva. I can find no credible source or scientific article to back this being more than speculation. It appears to be a popularized myth since there's no information on the anesthetic itself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.173.59.135 (talk) 02:59, 11 August 2017 (UTC)