The first to succeed was a M. Béchade of the Gironde in France, who in 1835 invented a revolting method of sending horses, donkeys, and cows into ponds for leeches to feed on.36 When the animals showed an understandable aversion to being cut open and sent into the ponds, they were strapped into a box, wheeled into the ponds, and bled anyway. Elderly horses were often chosen for this fate. It was, wrote Claude Seignolle, like condemning the old horse – who had given years of loyal service – to ‘two deaths’, and the first was the more horrible of the two.37
