{"id":190,"date":"2009-01-04T19:43:35","date_gmt":"2009-01-04T17:43:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/2009\/01\/04\/strange_thought_for_the_day\/"},"modified":"2009-01-04T19:43:35","modified_gmt":"2009-01-04T17:43:35","slug":"strange_thought_for_the_day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/2009\/01\/04\/strange_thought_for_the_day\/","title":{"rendered":"Strange thought for the Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m (finally) reading <em>The Origin of Species<\/em>, and came <a href=\"http:\/\/www.literature.org\/authors\/darwin-charles\/the-origin-of-species\/chapter-03.html\">across this comment<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nSo again with the varieties of sheep: it has been asserted that certain mountain-varieties will starve out other mountain-varieties, so that they cannot be kept together. <strong>The same result has followed from keeping together different varieties of the medicinal leech<\/strong>.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s something I had never thought about before &#8211; how are medicinal leeches kept when they are not used?  Do they each have their own little velvet-lined<sup><a href=\"#fn422331272502413012d8a1\">1<\/a><\/sup> box?  Or are they instead stuffed together in a plastic bag, and when one is needed, the doctor just puts some forceps in and grabs the nearest?<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nGoogle, as always, is our friend.  The book <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.fi\/books?id=BXWqJTsE-GIC&#038;hl=en\"><em>Medicinal Leech Therapy<\/em><\/a> tells us &#8220;that <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.fi\/books?id=BXWqJTsE-GIC&#038;pg=PA51&#038;lpg=PA51&#038;dq=%22medicinal+leech%22+storage&#038;source=web&#038;ots=tZkqTwMmGh&#038;sig=atJJIhmeW3mXFgDLjTZ5JO9CWR0&#038;hl=en&#038;sa=X&#038;oi=book_result&#038;resnum=1&#038;ct=result\">there are special containers for leech storage<\/a>, and even a company in Germany that makes them.  For long-term storage, they need stones with sharp edges to help with moulting.<br \/>\nI feel there is hope for mankind in this &#8211; despite everything that goes on in the world, someone still feels sees the need to provide housing for as surprising a beast as a leech.<\/p>\n<p class=\"footnote\"><sup>1<\/sup> I guess a vervet-lined box might be more to their liking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m (finally) reading The Origin of Species, and came across this comment: So again with the varieties of sheep: it has been asserted that certain mountain-varieties will starve out other mountain-varieties, so that they cannot be kept together. The same &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/2009\/01\/04\/strange_thought_for_the_day\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}