So desperate was Sophia for a cure, and so hopeful in her desperation—for hope is how we only ever survive despair—that she wrote fondly of her leeches as “incomparable, lovely, gentle, delicate, tender, considerate, generous, fine, disinterested, excellent, dear, elegant, knowing, graceful, active, lively, animated, beautiful” creatures, providers of “the very quietest, easiest way of freeing oneself from pain that can be thought of.”
