Leech

n. [A-S. læce, lēce, physician, leech; Fries. lēka, lētza, Goth. leikeis, lēkeis, O. H. Ger. lāhhi, Icel. lāknari, Sw. läkare, Dan. läge, Russ. lekari, Lith. lēkoras, physician; Sw. läka, Dan. läge, Icel. läkna, A-S. lǣcnian, lǣcnian, Goth. leikinon, lēkinon, O. H. Ger. lāhhinōn, to heal.]

1Sense 1. A physician; a professor of the art of healing. [Nearly obs.] [Written also leach.]

2Sense 2. [Zoöl.] A cotyled worm (Hirudo [or Sanguisuga] medicinalis), largely used for the local abstraction of blood.

Leech (Sanguisuga medicinalis).

It is of a flattened form when elongated, thickest at the posterior end, has two suckers, and ten eyes arranged in a horse shoe form above the anterior sucker, and is of an olive-green color variously marked. It is found throughout Europe and Northern Africa. It has a triangular mouth in the anterior sucker, in each angle of which is placed a half-moon plate, set about the free rim with transverse teeth. By the retraction of these jaws a stellate incision is made, through which the leech sucks blood till it is gorged, and then drops off;—called also blood-sucker.

Horse-leech, a less powerful leech (Haemopis [or Sanguisuga] vorax), commonly attacking the membrane that lines the inside of the mouth and nostrils of animals that drink at pools where it is found.—Land-leech, a very small leech (Hirudo Zeylanica), of a blackish color, found among leaves of forests in Ceylon; also, a similar species in South America.

n. [L. Ger. leik, allied to Lat. licium, a thread of the web, leach.] (Naut.) The border or edge of a sail at the sides. [Written also leach.]

Leech-line, a line attached to the leech-ropes of sails, passing up through blocks on the yards, to haul the leeches by. Totten. — Leech-rope, that part of the bolt-rope to which the skirt or border of a sail is sewed.

See LEACH.

1Sense 1. To treat with medicine; to heal.

Let those leech his wounds for whose sake he encountered them. W. Scott.

2Sense 2. To bleed by the use of leeches.