What is the medicinal value of leeches?

Leeches, also known as "leeches". In our country's ancient book "Shennong Ben Cao Jing" has been recorded, has a high medicinal value, by drying all the medicine, containing hirudin and protein, has the effect of activating the blood, dissipate blood stasis, menstruation. It is clinically used for amenorrhea, blood stasis and abdominal pain, bruises and injuries, and pain caused by blood stasis. In recent years, live leeches have been used to absorb postoperative blood stasis and make blood vessels unobstructed; leeches have been used with other blood-activating and detoxifying medicines for the treatment of tumors; live leeches and pure honey are used to make a kind of injections, which can be injected into the conjunctiva to treat swelling cataracts in the incipient stage of corneal opacities. Now more than 20 kinds of drugs have been developed, is one of the most sought-after Chinese medicinal materials.

The Chinese herbal medicine leech, commonly known as locust, for the leech family animals locust, willow leaf locust and leech dry body. In taxonomy, leeches belong to the annelid phylum Hirudinea, with medical value for the jaw tooth order, under the division of medical leech and hirudinidae a number of species. Leeches have a long history of use in medicine, as early as in the "Shennong Ben Cao Jing" that is, there are records of the pharmacological properties of the locust. Traditional Chinese medicine is mainly to leech body drying and concocted into medicine, its nature is flat, taste salty and bitter, there is a small poison. Its function is to break the stasis and pass the menstruation, treating blood stasis and menstrual closure, obstruction in the abdomen and accumulation of obstruction.