Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach: successful use of leeches in plastic surgery in the 1820s.

Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach (1792-1847) regularly and successfully utilised leeches in sophisticated plastic surgery in Berlin in the 1820s and 1830s, well before anaesthesia, antisepsis and antibiotics. Inexplicably, it took nearly another 150 years before the use of leeches in this context was revived. Copyright 2000 The British Association of Plastic Surgeons.