medieval leeches

Fernao Mendes Pinto 6: Grave Robbery and Leeches

From 14th-Century Traite de Medecine by Aldebrande de Florence - (Biblioteca del Palacio Nacional de Ajuda)

Our Portuguese adventurer resumes his piratical ways and runs into trouble on the coast of China. He and de Faria find silver in abundance, but also shipwreck, poverty, and leeches.

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Sources:

  • The Travels of Mendes Pinto, edited and translated by Rebecca D. Catz. University of Chicago Press, 1989.

  • Hart, Thomas R. “Style and Substance in the Peregrination.” Portuguese Studies 2 (1986): 49–55. 

  • Hart, Thomas R. “True or False: Problems of the ‘Peregrination.’” Portuguese Studies 13 (1997): 35–42.

  • Rubiés, Joan-Pau. "The Oriental Voices of Mendes Pinto, or the Traveller as Ethnologist in Portuguese India." Portuguese Studies 10 (1994): 24–43.