Wading waist-deep into a filthy swamp, waiting for bloodthirsty parasites to latch onto your legs—just another day in the life of a medievalleech collector. In this episode ofHistory’s Worst Paychecks, we’re diving into one of the mostgruesome, thankless, and downright disgusting jobs in history.

Why did medieval doctors believe draining blood could cure everything from fevers to bad moods? How did leech collectors survive dailyblood loss, infections, and swamp-borne diseases for pennies? And what happened when the medical worldfinally realized that maybe—just maybe—removing pints of blood wasn’t the best cure for an illness?

Join us as we trudge through medieval medical disasters, black-market leech scandals, and some of themost horrifying real-life stories from the profession. And stay tuned until the end, because next episode, we’re taking things to new (soot-covered) heights withchild chimney sweeps of the Industrial Revolution—where getting stuck meant never coming back out.

History’s Worst Paychecks uncovers the mostgrueling, underpaid, and downright miserable jobs throughout history—because no matter how bad your job is, someone in the past had it worse.

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