Category:
Medicine
The following passage comes from
"An Unusual Foreign Body in the Rectum — A Baseball: Report of a Case" (
Diseases of the Colon & Rectum, January 1977):
A 49-year-old man complained of his inability to void when he came to the Letterman Army Medical Center Emergency Room. Physical examination revealed that he had a distended bladder and a firm, fixed, round object barely palpable which was lodged high in the rectum.
A Foley catheter was passed into the bladder and 800 ml of urine were removed. The patient then reluctantly described his recent activity. He and his sexual partner had celebrated a World Series victory of the Oakland Athletics by placing a baseball (hardball) in his rectum because, as he put it, "I'm oversexed."
The presence of the baseball was confirmed by radiography and proctologic examination. Under spinal anesthesia, the rectum was dilated and manipulations, including hooking the ball and pulling downward (enough to rip the cover of the ball), injecting air above the ball and giving downward traction, and obstetrical forceps delivery, failed.
Through a midline abdominal incision, a low anterior colotomy was made directly on the baseball. The baseball, increasingly swollen by fluid, had lodged in the hollow of the sacrum above the levator muscles and below the true pelvic inlet. The baseball was skewered with a corkscrew instrument. An assistant exerted digital upward pressure through the rectum and, combined with a force enough to raise the patient off the table, the bali was delivered through the colotomy.
No gross fecal spillage occurred. The eolotomy was closed and the patient had an uneventful postoperative course. Gentamicin and clindamycin were given intravenously interoperatively and for five days postoperatively. Follow-up examination a year later revealed normal bladder and rectal functions.
The same article offers some other interesting bits of info later on:
Various techniques for removing objects from the rectum through the anus and avoiding laparotomy have been described [in the medical literature]... a bottle was removed with a loop from a wire coat hanger; a light bulb was removed by using two spoons as forceps; a turnip was extracted with obstetrical forceps; a drinking glass was grasped with rubber-shod forceps and then withdrawn; another drinking glass was filled with plaster into which a pair of forceps was implanted, and then the forceps were used as a handle to pull the glass out through the anus.
The 1999 film
Ravenous (starring Guy Pearce and Robert Carlyle) is about cannibalism. It's loosely inspired by the stories of the Donner Party and Alferd Packer. But it also includes the idea that eating human flesh can cure any wound or disease.
I was reminded of that film when I came across this real-life case, from 1932, of someone trying the human-flesh cure, apparently successfully. But I wonder why the husband fed his wife only a third of his thigh steak? What did he do with the rest? Does eating too much human flesh turn someone into a vampire?
The Des Moines Register - Dec 25, 1932
In Fukuoka prefecture, Japan, banking on the superstition that to eat of human flesh cures all ills, a Korean whose wife had neuralgia cut a half-pound slice of flesh off his thigh, cut the slice in three parts, cooked one part, fed it to his wife, telling her it was rabbit. His wife improved; he went to the government hospital with an infected thigh.
The idea that we'd all be healthier if we lived and ate like the cave man did has been around a long time. It long predates the current "paleo diet" trend.
For instance, back in 1916, the makers of Nujol wanted everyone to believe that if you pooped a lot, like the cave man did, you'd be a model of health. Nujol was basically raw petroleum, which is why it was sold by the Standard Oil company. It's name meant "New Oil." Read more of
Nujol's history here.
Source: Oregon Daily Journal - Sep 21, 1916
"Groovy people should wear groovy clothes," said San Francisco dentist Rodney Pain in 1971. "That way we turn on the whole world."
Pain embodied this ideal by doing away with the white tunic typically worn by dentists and always wearing groovy clothes instead.
Dr. Pain sounded familiar, and then I realized that
I've posted about him before. He's the same guy who made the news in 1966 because he played bagpipes for his patients while waiting for their fillings to set.
Well, I assume it's the same guy. How many dentists named Rodney Pain could there be in San Francisco?
Note that in the 1966 photo, he isn't yet wearing groovy clothes.
Colorado Springs Gazette - Mar 5, 1971
Dr. Rodney Pain in 1966, playing bagpipes
Do you see an image of a person, place or thing on this
brain scan? If so what do you see? If not tell that too. No cheating, only go to the link after you tell us what you see if you see anything at all.
Zhu Qinghua, a Chinese rice farmer, has invented a "kidney stone-removing bed." A person is strapped into the bed and hung upside down. Then the entire device vibrates intensely thanks to some kind of tractor engine attached to it.
Zhu has been strapping his wife into this thing and claims it's completely cured her kidney stones. [
shanghaiist.com]
A lion getting a
CAT scan!
What were you doing when you were 16? Not much? 16-year-old Mallory Kievman has invented a cure for hiccups (one that apparently actually works) and set up a business to manufacture it. She's also been invited to the White House Science Fair in a few days. From
patch.com:
Kievman invented
"hiccupops" after her own bout with the hiccups around the seventh grade. She researched cures and found three things that helped cure them (and were backed up by some scientific research) — apple cider, sugar and sucking on lollipops. She decided to combine all three into one product... Kievman then started setting up a business to manufacture it. Right now, she’s on the brink of getting it distributed and ready for sale.
Good thing they clarified that this was NOT a vibrator. Otherwise someone might have gotten hurt.
Source:
Illustrated World, March 1920.