TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “The Superfund legislation... may prove to be as far-reaching and important as any accomplishment of my administration. The reduction of the threat to America's health and safety from thousands of toxic-waste sites will continue to be an urgent�issue �”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index L > Category: Leech

Leech Quotes (6 quotes)

[Reporting after the now infamous 22 Jun 1969 burning of the Cuyahoga River:] Some River! Chocolate-brown, oily, bubbling with subsurface gases, it oozes rather than flows. “Anyone who falls into the Cuyahoga does not drown,” Cleveland’s citizens joke grimly. “He decays” … The Federal Water Pollution Control Administration dryly notes: “The lower Cuyahoga has no visible signs of life, not even low forms such as leeches and sludge worms that usually thrive on wastes.” It is also—literally—a fire hazard.
As reported in Time magazine (1 Aug 1969).
Science quotes on:  |  Brown (23)  |  Burning (49)  |  Chocolate (5)  |  Citizen (52)  |  Cleveland (3)  |  Control (182)  |  Cuyahoga River (3)  |  Decay (59)  |  Drown (14)  |  Fall (243)  |  Fire (203)  |  Flow (89)  |  Form (976)  |  Grim (6)  |  Hazard (21)  |  Joke (90)  |  Life (1870)  |  Literally (30)  |  Low (86)  |  Oil (67)  |  Ooze (2)  |  Pollution (53)  |  Reporting (9)  |  River (140)  |  Sludge (3)  |  Thrive (22)  |  Usually (176)  |  Visible (87)  |  Waste (109)  |  Water (503)  |  Water Pollution (17)  |  Worm (47)

A skilful leech is better far than half a hundred men of war.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Better (493)  |  Far (158)  |  Half (63)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Skillful (17)  |  War (233)

Leeches should be kept a day before applying them. They should be squeezed to make them eject the contents of their stomachs.
Avicenna
The Canon, Bk IV.
Science quotes on:  |  Stomach (40)

Nurse, it was I who discovered that leeches have red blood.
(1832). Attributed - on his deathbed when the nurse came to apply leeches. In Barnaby Conrad, Famous Last Words (1961), 78.
Science quotes on:  |  Biography (254)  |  Blood (144)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Nurse (33)  |  Red (38)

We woke periodically throughout the night to peel off leeches. In the light of the head torch, the ground was a sea of leeches - black, slithering, standing up on one end to sniff the air and heading inexorably our way to feed. Our exposed faces were the main problem, with leeches feeding off our cheeks and becoming entangled in our hair. I developed a fear of finding one feeding in my ear, and that it would become too large to slither out, causing permanent damage.
Kinabalu Escape: The Soldiers’ Story
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Become (821)  |  Becoming (96)  |  Black (46)  |  Cause (561)  |  Cheek (3)  |  Damage (38)  |  Develop (278)  |  Ear (69)  |  End (603)  |  Expose (28)  |  Exposed (33)  |  Face (214)  |  Fear (212)  |  Feed (31)  |  Find (1014)  |  Ground (222)  |  Hair (25)  |  Head (87)  |  Inexorably (2)  |  Large (398)  |  Light (635)  |  Main (29)  |  Night (133)  |  Peel (6)  |  Permanent (67)  |  Problem (731)  |  Sea (326)  |  Slither (2)  |  Stand (284)  |  Throughout (98)  |  Torch (13)  |  Wake (17)  |  Way (1214)

Wherever possible, scientists experiment. Which experiments suggest themselves often depends on which theories currently prevail. Scientists are intent of testing those theories to the breaking point. They do not trust what is intuitively obvious. That the Earth is flat was once obvious. That heavy bodies fall faster than light ones was once obvious. That bloodsucking leeches cure most diseases was once obvious. That some people are naturally and by divine decree slaves was once obvious. That there is such a place as the center of the Universe, and that the Earth sits in that exalted spot was once obvious. That there is an absolute standard of rest was once obvious. The truth may be puzzling or counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held beliefs. Experiment is how we get a handle on it.
In The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark (1995), 36.
Science quotes on:  |  Absolute (153)  |  Belief (615)  |  Contradict (42)  |  Contradiction (69)  |  Counterintuitive (4)  |  Cure (124)  |  Decree (9)  |  Depend (238)  |  Disease (340)  |  Divine (112)  |  Do (1905)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Exalt (29)  |  Exalted (22)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Fall (243)  |  Faster (50)  |  Flat (34)  |  Handle (29)  |  Light (635)  |  Most (1728)  |  Obvious (128)  |  People (1031)  |  Point (584)  |  Possible (560)  |  Prevail (47)  |  Prevailing (3)  |  Puzzling (8)  |  Rest (287)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Slave (40)  |  Test (221)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Trust (72)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Universe (900)  |  Wherever (51)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.