Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 60, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 March 1914 — MOST VENOMOUS OF LEECHES [ARTICLE]

MOST VENOMOUS OF LEECHES

Scientists of Java Have Experience With the Deadliest Kind of This Particularly Loathsome Creature. Dr. Andries Verhagen of Batavia, Java, was directed by the government of the Netherlands to go to the eastern end of Sumatra to study a terrible'epidemic of beri-beri which had broken out there. The ship in which he sailed was wrecked, and he and a young assistant offered to go into the interior to seek assistance. For about ten minutes they straggled through a dense and swampy jungle. Suddenly the younger man cried out with pain. Going to his aid. Doctor Verhagen noticed three leetches attached to his arm. They were of a venomous variety that cling to the lower branches of the bushes awaiting their prey and, not content with gorging themselvee on blood, inject Into the wound a poison that causes acute pain. While Doctor Verhagen was helping his assistant innumerable leeches attached themselves to his face and neck. To free him from them the young man had to scrape his ekin with a sharp stone. Exhausted by loss of blood, the doctor managed to crawl back to the wreck of the ship, where he fainted. He was taken- to a hospital the following day and it was several weeks before he recovered. One of his eyeballs was totally destroyed by the terrible leeches, its socket being left empty.