Geekdrah, Volume 1

Two ancient methods of treating certain wounds and conditions have gained the approval of the US Food and Drug Administration as "medical devices."

Leeches and maggots.

Leeches were used for many years for bloodletting, based on the idea that diseases were caused by an "imbalance" in the four body humors. In some cases, that is, the patient had too much blood, so a cure could be effected by drawing some of it off. The problem was that if the patient didn't get better, their doctors might think that not enough blood had been removed, so - well, you can see where this could wind up. Finally, doctors had to admit that patients treated this way did no better and often worse than those who hadn't and in the 19th century the practice died out.

But used properly and for the right reasons, leeches can be very helpful.

Medicinal leeches are bloodsucking, aquatic cousins of the earthworm that hail from Europe. ...

It's often trickier to connect veins, which carry blood back to the heart, than arteries, which carry blood from the heart. So before grafted tissue gets new vein growth, it can become congested with blood. Sometimes surgery can fix the problem, but if it can't, the graft might fail.

Enter the leech. Not only does it suck out excess blood, but its saliva contains a powerful blood thinner. So even after it fills up and drops off, bleeding continues.

The humble maggot, in this case the blow fly larva, meanwhile, has seen a surge in popularity over the last several years for a simple reason: Maggots only eat dead flesh. Or, to make the point clearer, they only eat dead flesh and will ignore living flesh - which makes them ideal for debreeding wounds, especially deep or large ones that would be difficult to treat surgically. The resulting cleaned wound is not only less prone to infection, it tends to heal better and faster than otherwise.

Moral: Icky can be good.