TIM BELFORD

For your health care - leeches and maggots and hookworms

Being an historian by training has always affected the way I look at much of life.

Take, for instance, going to the doctor.

I've hardly ever made a trip to a hospital or the family physician without silently thanking my lucky stars I was born in the 20th century rather than the 13th.

Let's face it, nowadays your doc is likely to suggest a round of antibiotics for an infection.

Six or seven hundred years ago he would have drained off a couple quarts of blood.

Sort of a medieval version of an oil change.

And despite what our modern naturopaths say, a couple of aspirins or a Tylenol sure beats the old eye of newt and tongue of frog thing you find in Shakespeare.

And then there's the whole leech thing.

Now leeches, in case you haven't come across one, are not pleasant.

They sort of look like snails out of their shells and they have the nasty habit of ensuring their survival by latching onto what is euphemistically called a "host."

Then, like the houseguest from hell, they proceed to siphon off breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Back in the Dark Ages leeches were employed in drawing blood from patients for a number of illnesses.

I guess it was viewed as a kinder, gentler alternative to a quick slice with a sharp knife and a bleeding bowl.

Anyway, I thought we'd done with all that. But a few years back medical science discovered leeches weren't all that bad, after all.

As a matter of fact, they were of tremendous help in preventing blood from clotting.

The next step came with maggots.

British doctors started using these equally unsavory creatures to clear away infected flesh.

They say it's only as a last resort when antibiotics fail.

Given my limited experience with maggots I can only second that motion.

My question now is, where will it all end?

Last week a British immunologist suggested he could help control asthma and several other allergic reactions.

The down side is that he wants to do it using intestinal blood-sucking hookworms.

He's even gone to the trouble of trying them out on himself.

The worms apparently act to 'calm down' over-active white blood cells which shift the immune system out of control in the first place.

All they have to do is burrow through the skin, hit the blood system, work their way into the lungs, crawl up the trachea, get swallowed, go through the stomach and attach themselves to the small intestine where they feed on blood.

Frankly, I'm not too sure I wouldn't rather have asthma.

And by the way, according to the good doctor, a person with ten worms - the recommended dose - '"won't even know they're in there.'"

Except for the itch as they burrow in.