Living situation of Dimmesdale and Cillingworth?

Dimmesdale's poor health and Chillingworth's interest in the young man combine to make many of the church officials try to get them to live together. Dimmesdale declines at first, saying, "I need no medicine." Dimmesdale finally gets into the permanent habit of placing his hand over his heart in pain, and he agrees to meet with Chillingworth. The meeting immediately leads to the two men moving in together. The narrator comments that "A man burdened with a secret should especially avoid the intimacy of his physician."

The use of the term "leech" to describe Chillingworth is at once appropriate and ironic. After all, he is a physician, and leeches at the time were used in order to facilitate bloodletting. At the same time, however, Hawthorne is obviously suggesting the parasitic relationship between Chillingworth and Dimmesdale. We return to our earlier postulation that Chillingworth goes after Dimmesdale not because he is a stock character or out of any sense of moral purpose, but rather in an effort to absorb the reverend's virility, to steal his life force and appropriate it as his own, both in vengeance and for his own sake.