us from the body. A curved
cannula could be attached to the bdellometer for bleeding in the nasal
passages, the mouth, the vagina, and the rectum. For internal
bloodletting, the disk, with lancets, normally used for scarification, was
replaced by a small brush of hog bristles.[187] Sarlandiere's bdellometer
attracted sufficient attention in America to be included in the numerous
editions of Robley Dunglison's medical dictionary,[188] but it was
ultimately no more successful than the complicated cupping devices
discussed in the previous chapter.

A second French invention, also given a pretentious name, was Damoiseau's
"terabdella" (meaning "large leech"), or pneumatic leech. This invention,
introduced some time before 1862, met with skepticism at the outset on the
part of the reviewers at the French Academy of Medicine. It consisted of
two pistons attached to a plate to be placed on the floor and held down by
the feet of the operator. Each piston was connected by a tube to a cup,
and the whole apparatus was operated by means of a hand lever connected
with both pistons. More a cupping device than an artificial leech, the
terabdella met with little success beyond the French province where
Damoiseau practiced.[189] (Figure 21.)

Perhaps the most successful of the mechanical leeches was known as
Heurteloup's leech, after its inventor, the Frenchman, Charles Louis
Heurteloup (1793-1864). Sold in most late nineteenth-century surgical
catalogs for as much as $15.00, the device consisted of two parts, one a
spring scarificator that made a small circular incision (about 5 mm in
diameter) and the other, a suction pump, holding an ounce of blood, whose
piston was raised by means of a screw. For the treatment of eye ailments,
one of the major purposes for which the device was invented, it was
applied to the temples.[190] A similar two-part mechanical leech was sold
under the name "Luer's Leech."

One of the most interesting leech substitutes, sold by George Teimann &
Co. as its "Patent Artificial Leech," employed ether in exhausting the
glass "leeches." Patented by F. A. Stohlmann and A. H. Smith of New York
in 1870, the "leech" consisted of a glass tube, either straight or with a
mouth on the side so that the tube would hang somewhat like a living
leech. To expel air from the tube, a few drops of ether were placed in it,
after which it was immersed to its mouth in hot water until the ether
vaporized. The tube was then applied to