Will They Bite? Leeches and Sociotechnical Agencies in Ayurvedic Medicine

• In Event: Animals and Technology Around the World, Past and Present 2

Abstract

In classical Ayurvedic medicine leech therapy is the mildest of three gentle methods of bloodletting. This paper examines the ways that leeches challenge and exceed conventional categories both in terms of Ayurvedic classificatory schemes for technologies of healing—including medicines, medical actors, and surgical instruments—and also in terms of STS theorizations of non-human agencies, particularly the category of “actant.” During an Ayurvedic leech therapy session, a leech may or may not be enticed to engage in the treatment process, biting and sucking, simultaneously ingesting human blood and releasing analgesic and anticoagulant saliva into a particular spot on patient’s body. In the course of leeching, impure blood is sucked from a patient’s vein and then undigested blood is purged from the leeches by an Ayurvedic practitioner. Leeches are then cleaned with herbs, rested, and fed before being engaged in the blood sucking process again. This study is based on ethnographic research in an Ayurvedic clinic in Kerala treating lower leg venous ulcers, and primary text translation of first millennium classical Ayurvedic texts and commentaries in Sanskrit referred to in the course of practice. Both on the page and in the clinic, leeches exert considerable agency in their willingness to comply with the protocol. Their behavior guides the procedure and provides extra-sensory information about the patient’s pathology to the physician. Guided by affective feminist STS methodologies this paper foregrounds affinity and entanglements while thinking with leeches as agents critically shaping this form of Ayurvedic medical practice.

Author

• Lisa Allette Brooks, University of California Berkeley