182 
HIRUDINEA AS HUMAN PARASITES 
IN PALESTINE. 
By E. W. G. MASTERMAN, F.R.C.S., D.P.H. Camb. 
Leeches are common in the fountains and pools of Palestine, 
particularly in the northern parts, known to us familiarly as ‘ Galilee,’ 
and further north in the district of the Lebanon. In the later summer 
and autumn months they are so plentiful in places that almost every 
horse and mule passing through these parts has a bleeding mouth. 
Under such conditions it is not wonderful that human beings from time 
to time are attacked. The domestic supplies of water are usually pro¬ 
tected by the water-carrier’s custom of straining it through a piece of 
fine muslin as he or she fills the pitcher. In some parts of the land the 
water at the source is kept free from leeches by means of fish ; at 
Deishun, for example, a village in ‘Upper Galilee’ inhabited by 
Algerian settlers, the large stone tank into which the spring runs is full 
of a special fish —Capoetci fratercula, a kind of carp—which is there bred 
for the purpose and which is treasured by the inhabitants with super¬ 
stitious reverence. Many of the springs in the mountains of Galilee 
and in the Lebanon are widely known for the multitude of leeches 
which lurk in their waters, but a thirsty traveller seldom has self-control 
enough to restrain himself from drinking, and when lie does so, par¬ 
ticularly at dusk or in the night, he is very likely to suck one in. It 
is stated in Allbutt and Rolleston’s System of Medicine (2nd ed. Vol. II. 
Part II. p. 959) that the leech “ remains in the stomach for a time and 
then begins to wander.” I have had a long experience of leeches as 
human parasites but have never seen nor heard of a case like this. 
The leech in every case I have met has attached itself to the mouth, 
throat, etc. in the process of swallowing, and I am convinced that once 
the leech reaches the stomach it is killed. I have never heard of any 
after symptoms from cases where to my knowledge a leech has been 
completely swallowed. Many patients can describe the actual moment 
