A CHANCE FOR INVENTORS.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2035, 1 September 1880, Page 3

A CHANCE FOR INVENTORS.

Why (asks a recent English paper) has nobody invented such an apparently simple thing as an automaton leech, as well as euch elaborate machines ae the automaton duct, the speaking machine, and a hundred others ? It really seems more child’s play to construct a little instrument which should accomplish the work of those disagreeable creatures, “things of obscene and unlovely forme,” as Shelly would describe them, and so save sick people from much annoyance and disgust, and poor worn-out horses from the awful fate of being used to feed these blood-suckers. A letter just received from Bordeaux gives a frightful account of the leech ponde ten miles from that city. The leeches are regularly fed from the blood of old horses, which are driven into the ponds, where the leeches suck them till they grow faint. Then they are taken out, and allowed to graze in the fields till they regain a little strength, when they are again driven into the pond, and the process is repeated till at last they are dragged out, bloodless and dead. We rejoice to hear that a well-known English veterinary surgeon, who has done so much to mitigate the horrors of some of the Continental veterinary schools, has taken this matter of the Bordeaux leech ponds in hand. The French authorities, for the credit of their country, if for no other reason, are likely to aid him to stop such barbarism. The completest remedy, however, as we said before, will be the invention of a patent automaton leech, Who will make a fortune as well as achieve a work of humanity by constructing such a thing.