5 scary medical cases from the past

1 - Intestinal parasites

Many people are still infected with parasite larvae to this day, but in the 18th century things were much worse. A medical record from 1782 reported the case of a patient who had a worm 0.5 meters long and 4 centimeters in diameter inside his intestines. In the document was the information that the patient needed to ask the help of a friend to pull the worm from its anal orifice. Yeah.

The "bug" looked scary, had a giant jaw, and as it moved inside the poor guy's gut, it caused really severe pain. It was bigger and uglier than a tapeworm.

2 - Worst urinary tract infection ever

In 1838, you certainly would not want to be in the shoes of an American patient whose case was reported in Medical Sciences. Basically, a 23-year-old man was suffering from what he believed was “just” a urinary tract infection. After a few days peeing with blood and pus, the patient simply could no longer urinate.

The man's agony was such that the doctors decided to pass a catheter through his urethra and, before finishing the procedure, found a small body in the patient's urinary tract - something the size of a pea. As soon as "the thing" was removed, a cocktail of blood, pus and urine began to leak down the man's penis. After the terror, the surprise: the "thing" was nothing less than a living beetle. Most bizarre is that there are more similar case records at the same time.

3 - Spiders in the eyes

In 1840, another bizarre and frightening medical record was recorded. One woman went to the doctor with incredibly puffy eyes, and all she remembered was that the night before, when she was lying down to sleep, she felt that something light, like a mosquito, had fallen on her face.

As soon as the doctor examined his eyes, he discovered a spider living in the eye socket, which in itself is absurdly disturbing. It turns out that a few days after the terrible diagnosis, the woman returned to seek medical help, and more spiders were found alive inside her eye.

For the next few weeks, the doctor visited the patient every day and, in all of them, removed small spiders from her eyes. The case became famous in the city where the woman lived and, after two months of daily visits and constant withdrawal of small spiders, residents believed that the first spider had left some eggs in the patient's eye.

Knowing that this could not happen and that a spider would hardly be born a day for 60 days, the doctor came to the conclusion that the woman suffered from some kind of mental illness, which caused her to put spiders into her eye every day to thus receive attention.

4 - The superbugs of the old days

When we talk about superbugs, we think of modern health conditions, as the topic is usually involved with antibiotic resistance and hospital stays. It turns out that a recent survey revealed that superbugs may not be that modern - and when we talk about 'not so modern', we mean that our Ice Age ancestors, who lived in what is now Canada, died of this kind. of powerful bacteria.

The research also revealed that these bacteria found in Dawson City are at least 30, 000 years old and have not seen sunlight for a few millennia, suggesting that long before humans invented antibiotics, bacteria had their defense mechanisms - quite effective, by the way.

5 - The case of the boy who threw up a fetus

Dr. Ardoin, a French physician living in Greece, reported in 1835 the case of a boy, Demetrius Stamatelli, who vomited a fetus. As if that wasn't bizarre enough, it's quite possible that the fetus that came out of little Demetrius's mouth was his twin brother.

Our embryonic phase is quite complex, and there are numerous case reports of parasitic twins, which is what happens when the development of one of the fetuses is interrupted, and that fetus is born “stuck” or inside the body of the sibling. We have already reported some similar cases here at Mega.

Sometimes you don't even know that you have embryonic traces of a twin on your body. At other times, some type of removal surgery is necessary, and now with Demetrius we know that even those who have vomited the body of the parasitic twin himself have existed. According to Dr. Ardoin, the fetus possibly ended up in the patient's abdomen via the umbilical cord. And you there, thinking you had seen everything in this life ...

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What was the most bizarre medical history you have ever heard in your life? Comment on the Mega Curious Forum