Leeches? Not the best choice for a comparison. Leeches are free medicine, as opposed to today's as-closed-as-it-gets med/pharma industry. They are still in use

Leeches? Not the best choice for a comparison. Leeches are free medicine, as opposed to today's as-closed-as-it-gets med/pharma industry. They are still in use in official medicine, not only in the form of synthetic blood anticoagulant hirudin. There's quite little information on hirudotherapy on Wikipedia, no mention of the range of beneficial substances leches' saliva contains (other than hirudin) and no mention of e.g. benefits of iron depletion through bloodletting. This might be considered controversial medicine, but dismissing medicinal use of leeches sounds a bit off to me. But I might be totally wrong, I am part of the Wikipedia generation too after all :)