Of course all educated
people know that it was once not unusual to speak of a man of medicine
as a 'leech'; but probably there are many who imagine that this
designation was a disparaging allusion to the man's tool of trade, and
that it could be applied only to inferior members of the profession.
The ancient appellation of the healer is so far obsolete that if I
were to answer a question as to a man's profession with the words 'Oh,
he is a leech', there would be some risk of being misunderstood to
mean that he was a money-lender.
Etymologists generally have regarded the name of the bloodsucking
animal as the same word with _leech_ a physician, the assumption being
that the animal received its name from its use as a remedial agent.
But the early forms, both in English and Low German, show that the
words are originally unconnected. The English for _medicus_ was in the
tenth century _l['[ae]]ce_ or _l['e]ce_, and in the thirteenth century
_leche_; the word for _sanguisuga_ was in the tenth century _lyce_,
and in the thirteenth century _liche_. According to phonetic law the
latter word should have become _litch_ in modern English; but it very
early underwent a punning alteration which made it homophonous with
the ancient word for physician. The unfortunate consequence is that
the English language has hopelessly lost a valuable word, for which it
has never been able to find a satisfactory substitute.
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