Morticom funny and unusual medical stories and trivia

TRUE STORIES

MEDICAL

(143 Entries)

1)
In the USA four out of five Americans suffer from piles.

2)
On average 300 Americans have their buttocks surgically lifted every year.

3)
At a hospital in Tokyo, Japan, 30 percent of the patients suffering from throat polyps gave the cause as singing karaoke.

4)
The country with the most accidents per head is Estonia.

5)
The ancient Persians used to think that human tears could cure a variety of ailments so they used to bottle them for future use.

6)
During the Middle Ages everybody thought that the heart, not the brain, was the seat of intelligence.

7)
Acorns are actually poisonous to humans and can cause kidney damage if they are eaten.

8)
The ancient Egyptians believed that if you mixed half an onion with beer foam it would ward off death.

9)
Blue Cheshire cheese was once used by doctors for treating sores and wounds.

10)
Coca Cola was originally sold as a brain tonic.

11)
More people are allergic to cow's milk than any other food.

12)
The very first anti-biotics were used in ancient Egypt when patients were treated with mouldy bread.

13)
When you sneeze, every one of your bodily functions stop momentarily, even your heart.

14)
There is enough hydrochloric acid in your stomach to dissolve a nail.

15)
If you lock your knees for long enough you will eventually pass out.

16)
Every day the average person releases nearly a pint of intestinal gas by farting.

17)
There is enough fat in the human body to make 7 bars of soap.

18)
We only use 10% of our brains.

19)
There were artificial limbs 1,500 years before Jesus was born.

20)
Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.

21)
When you are born you have 300 bones but when you are an adult you only have 206.

22)
The two lines that connect your top lip to your bottom lip are known as the philtrum.

23)
A quarter of all the bones in your body are in your feet.

24)
It takes 17 facial muscles to smile but 43 to frown.

25)
Our noses and ears never stop growing.

26)
Ingrown toenails are hereditary.

27)
It takes about 7 pounds of pressure to tear off your ear.

28)
The average person falls asleep at night in about seven minutes.

29)
Most people produce enough spit in their lifetime to fill two swimming pools.

30)
The tooth is the only part of the human body which can't repair itself.

31)
By the time you are 70 years old half of your taste buds will have gone.

32)
Over 100 different viruses cause the common cold.

33)
The average person passes about 8,800 gallons of urine during their lifetime. This is equal to 500 full bathtubs.

34)
Mentally ill people rarely yawn.

35)
Your left lung is smaller than your right lung to make room for your heart.

36)
Fingernails grow four times faster than your toenails.

37)
Your brain is more active when you are asleep than when you are awake.

38)
Right handed people live nine years longer, on average, than left handed people.

39)
The human ear can pick out more than 1,500 musical tones.

40)
Blue eyes get paler with age.

41)
For it's size, the tongue is the strongest muscle in your body. Everybody also has a different tongue print.

42)
If you go blind in one eye you will actually lose only about one fifth of your vision.

43)
The sound of a snore can be just as loud as a pneumatic drill.

44)
The pop you hear when you are cracking your knuckles is actually a bubble of gas bursting.

45)
In an average lifetime you will shed about 40 pounds of skin.

46)
On average a pair of feet lose about half a pint of perspiration per day.

47)
The rarest bloodtype in the world is HH. Only three people have ever been found with it.

48)
The sound that you hear when you put a seashell to your ear is your blood pumping.

49)
It only takes one minute for blood to travel all around your body and return your heart again.

50)
Your heart beats about 100,000 times a day.

51)
Blondes have more hair on their heads than people with other coloured hairs.

52)
During the course of a lifetime a person will grow over 6ft of nosehair.

53)
When you are born you do not have kneecaps.

54)
Adult human beings cannot breathe and swallow at the same time. Human babies can though.

55)
Twins are born less frequently in the East than in the West.

56)
In Yorkshire, England, during the 19th century, a popular cure for whooping cough was a soup which contained nine cooked frogs.

57)
Binding the temples of your head with a rope used to hang a man was thought to get rid of headaches.

58)
Wearing an elder twig in your ear all day and all night was thought to cure deafness.

59)
During Medieval times people thought that the cure for meningitis was to split a pigeon in half and lay the two parts, face down, on top of the patient's head.

60)
In Carthage, in ancient times, it was thought that if you rubbed a cow's tail on your stomach it would cure your indegestion.

61)
The Romans used to cure toothache by strapping toads to their jaws.

62)
During th 18th century Prussian doctors used to treat people who stuttered by cutting their tongues off.

63)
Surgeons used to treat epilepsy by shock therapy, using an electric catfish.

62)
Tomato ketchup was originally used to treat diarrhoea.

63)
It was once thought that if you carried a child through a flock of sheep it would cure respiratory problems.

64)
During the 15th century sick people were dressed in red because it was thought this would help them to a speedy recovery.

65)
During the 17th century it was popular to treat toothache with the sweat from the anus of a cat that had been chased through a field.

66)
During Medieval times it was popular to treat rheumatism by carrying a dead shrew in your pocket.

67)
During Tudor times a popular way of treating baldness was to rub horse urine into the scalp.

68)
It was once thought that if you bathed in the wash water of a corpse it would cure epileptic fits.

69)
Throwing a dung beetle over your shoulder used to be a popular cure for stomach ache.

70)
During the 16th century it was thought that if a billy goat breathed on you it would protect you from the plague.

71)
An astronaut's heart gets smaller while in space. They are also unable to cry because tears cannot flow because of the lack of gravity.

72)
A 50 year old woman was brought into a New York emergency room complaining of abdominal pains. During the examination doctors found that the woman's labia had been pinned together with old safety pins. Further inside they found the dismembered body of a chicken. The woman explained that she had inserted the chicken pieces herself, convinced that they would grow into a baby.

73)
A 63 year old widow was admitted to hospital in Recife, Brazil, suffering from abdominal pains. X-rays showed that she was carrying a 20 inch long skeleton of a foetus which she conceived a decade earlier. It had become lodged outside the womb and had never been expelled from her body!

74)
An old woman in a North Carolina ER complained of green vines growing from her vagina. Investigation revealed that a large potato was trapped in her womb.
The woman then suddenly remembered that she had inserted the potato inside her vagina two weeks previously because she thought that her uterus was falling out!

75)
A very unhygienic patient was being treated by two nurses for a burst vein in his stomach. While changing the dressing, one of the nurses screamed.
She had found dozens of maggots crawling down the man's chest. They had been breeding between his teeth, and smelling the open wound on his stomach, decided to feed themselves further down.

76)
A World War Two veteran came into a London clinic with a haemorrhoid problem. One painful pile would often hang down from the man's anus and he was in the habit of pushing it back up again using an artillery shell.
On this occasion, however, the shell got stuck. Doctors were going to remove it, but the man told them that the shell was still live.
The hospital then called in the Army bomb disposal squad, who built a lead box around the man's anus to defuse the shell before it could be removed!

77)
A 20 year old man came into casualty with a stony mass in his rectum. He explained that he and his boyfriend were fooling around with concrete mix when his boyfriend had the idea of pouring the mix into his anus using a funnel.
The concrete rapidly hardened causing constipation and pain. Under general anaesthesia, a perfect concrete cast of the man's rectum was removed, along with a ping pong ball!

78)
In Salzburg, Austria, a lawyer named Udo had been off sick from work for over two years because of his allergy to telephones. He went to his doctor and claimed that the ringing tone was unbearable and had traumatised him. He was given a doctor's note recommending that he take time off from work because the sound of the phone was psychologically disturbing.

79)
French scientists have discovered a possible cause for women affected by headaches. A research team at Montpelier University say that bras could be a major factor in one out of four cases. Apparently tight fitting or badly adjusted bra straps cut off the blood supply to the head and put pressure on nerve endings in the shoulders.

80)
In France, Paul Simone suffered fatal injuries when he had a car accident. After his death he had several organs removed for transplantation, one of which was his 10 inch penis, which he bequeathed to his best friend Henri Cousteau before he died. Cousteau had his own meagre penis removed and his best friend's put on him in it's place.
Cousteau later said, "I have never had real sex, but now I can have the same success!"

81)
In India, a 35 year old man visited hospital complaining about the state of his penis. He explained that he had put a heavy ring around the base of his penis which had been stuck there for over a month. When the doctors examined him they found that his penis was very badly swollen, covered in weeping ulcers and infested with maggots.
Doctors later tried to remove the metal ring by making multiple punctures in the penis but this did not work. They eventually resorted to peeling back the skin.
Later skin grafts were successful and, luckily, the man now has full normal use of his penis.

82)
In Toronto, Canada, The university there pays individuals between $12 and $35 per hour to let medical students examine them. Bob Leroy, aged 45, is commanding the top rate when he rents himself out for anal examinations.

83)
In India, it was reported that a man went to see his doctor complaining of dreadful bad breath and a crawling sensation in his mouth and lower lip. When he was examined it was found that a housefly had laid eggs directly in a cut in his mouth while he was sleeping. The grubs had buried themselves deep into the fleshy parts of his mouth, making tunnels that eventually infected his gums, loosening his teeth. It took doctors seven days to remove all the grubs.

84)
In Dortmund, Germany, a doctor was fined $5,000 for making his patients do Hitler salutes as part of their orthopaedic treatment. Prosecutors were told that patients were made to shout "Sieg Heil" as they did their salutes, and that the doctor would click his heels together in response. In his defence the doctor stated the salutes were designed to get the shoulders and arms working properly.

85)
In Southport, Australia, a 48 year old woman is suing the Gold Coast hospital after surgeons apparently lost part of her brain. She is claiming that while having an operation the surgeons temporarily removed the right frontal lobe of her brain, but when it was to be re-inserted, the organ could not be found.
She is now suffering from various symptoms and wants $500,000.

86)
A woman from Worcestershire, England, sneezed every day for 977 consecutive days.

87)
In South London, England, in 1981, mother to be, Carol Brown, went into labour and was taken straight to hospital. Unfortunately when the midwife topped up Mrs Brown's epidural to ease the pain she mistook a bottle of cleaning fluid for the required solution, and injected the detergent straight into the patient's nervous system.
After the birth, although the baby was not affected, Mrs Brown was paralysed for life.

88)
In Tampa, Florida, USA, in 1995, 77 year old Leo Alfonso was on a ventilator at the University Community Hospital, his life hanging by a thread, when doctors gave instructions that his machine should be turned off because he could now breathe for himself. Unfortunately for Mr Alfonso, he could not breathe for himself. It was actually another patient that needed taking off the respirator and Mr. Alfonso died before the mistake was discovered.

89)
In New York City, USA, at the Westchester Medical Centre, a routine organ transplant went badly wrong when the medical staff lost the kidney they were meaning to transplant. After frantically searching the entire hospital for the organ, it was eventually found and inserted in the 67 year old patient's body.
Unfortunately the kidney developed problems 2 days later and stopped working. A hospital spokeswoman denied that it had anything to do with the fact that the kidney had been left in a rubbish bin for nearly one and a half hours.

90)
In 1992, 26 year old Vicki Hunter was diagnosed as having bone cancer and had to endure a year of chemotherapy and surgery. After having her shin bone and knee joint removed her consultant finally admitted that her condition had been misdiagnosed and all she actually had was a cyst.

91)
In May, 1993, in Huntington Beach, California, USA, 29 year old Jennifer Hamel attended the Out patient Surgery Centre for a check on an unusually heavy period she was having, but while doing exploratory tests, Dr. William Keel found what he thought was a Fibroid Tumour.
Without first getting Jennifer's permission, Dr. Keel began operating on her, firstly using an unauthorised high-pressure pump, using sterile water instead of approved fluid and eventually cutting open the wall of her uterus, pumping water inside, drowning her lungs and eventually stopping her heart.
Although Jennifer lived she was left blind, mute and paralysed and eventually recieved 24 million dollars in damages.

92)
In Welling, Kent, England, in 1995, Mr. Paul Lewis went to hospital suffering from a broken ankle, and after being operated on he returned home. Six months later when the ankle began to get worse he returned to hospital where it was found that a broken tip of a surgical drill had been left in his leg. He eventually had to have his leg amputated.

93)
In Birmingham, England, 32 year old Ms Terry Price attended the Queen Elizabeth Hospital to have one of her breasts reconstructed after a masectomy. The medical procedure called "the TRAM flap" consists of removing muscle and fat from the stomach and using this material to "make" a new breast.
After the operation Terry was just climbing into her post-op bath when her stomach suddenly exploded and to make matters worse after recovering from her ordeal the "new" breast burst while the doctor was removing the stiches.

94)
In 1980, 69 year old Grace Moore decided to attend a chiropodist to have a toenail trim. After sitting down in the chair she was suddenly seized by an agonising pain and when she looked down she could see that the chiropodist had cut right into her flesh. The foot-doc then put some unknown substance on the wound and Mrs. Moore left.
A short while later Mrs. Moore was found to have gangrene on her foot and had to have two toes removed. Eventually she had to have her leg removed and even worse she contracted an infection in her other leg and had to have that one removed as well.

95)
In 1997, 60 year old Mr. Bryan Atkinson was told by doctors that he had a malignant tumour the size of an orange in his bowel. Although undergoing three operations and nine months of radiotherapy, doctors told him that his condition was terminal.
Bryan then accepted the inevitable and arranged his own funeral, to be held in the church where he was married, and the Gracie Fields song "Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye" being played as he was to be buried.
After doing all this Bryan was called into the hospital and doctors informed him that he in fact did not have cancer but was instead simply constipated which had led to the swelling in his bowel.
A doctor later revealed that a biopsy should have been taken but hadn't been because Mr. Atkinson was so fat.

96)
In Durham, UK, 48 year old Mrs. Mary Unwin attended Dryburn Hospital for a routine operation to correct a prolapsed bladder. During the stiching up the surgeon managed to sew his own rubber glove to Mrs. Unwin's innards and had to cut the tip off the glove to escape.
A few days later Mrs. Unwin staggered back into hospital in pain, but doctors insisted that it was just a stray piece of bladder and they put her on a 16 month waiting list.
Mrs. Unwin spent nearly two years with a piece of rubber glove inside her.

97)
In November 1995, 76-year-old Frank Axford woke up from an operation for treatment for cancer of the colon and discovered what looked like burn marks on his behind. Embarrassed medical staff at a hospital in Southern England had to confess that his arse had gone up in flames whilst he was anaesthetised after a 'spirit based fluid' had been ignited by an electric cauterising gun used during his surgery!

98)
City Hospital Birmingham, England, can boast pole position in an 'Emergency Room Longest Waiting Time' survey carried out in 1999. An 84-year-old man suffering from chronic sickness and diorrhoea was left hanging around for 28 hours and 43 minutes before finally being found a place on a side ward. In the same hospital, a 26-year-old patient suffering from Crohn's disease waited 27 hours for a room! Both patients later received an apology.

99)
In 1990 in Mexico, Dr Jorge Borrell lost his licence after spending the best part of 20 years injecting patients with their own urine. The crazy medic, who ran a surgery in Canoga Park, LA, was convinced the waste product stimulated the immune system and injected nearly 6000 people with pee. US authorities admitted they were astounded by his 'shocking and extreme' lack of medical knowledge.

100)
In 1992 in Bradford, England, Muhammed Saeed was jailed for five years after practising for 30 years without a single medical qualification to his name. Saeed, now 71, impersonated a real doctor with the same name. He was finally caught out by pharmacists near his surgery, who were alerted by some of the lethal prescriptions he wrote. These included creosote; shampoo to be taken internally; morphine for a seven-year-old child and cough mixture to be rubbed into the skin!

101)
Dr Cecil Jaconson was sentenced to five years imprisonment in June 1992 on 52 counts of fraud and perjury. 'The Sperminator', as he became known, had spent more than 20 years inseminating childless couples at his Reproductive Genetics Centre in Virginia. He always guaranteed 'perfect sperm donors' - by which he modestly meant himself. Unbeknown to his childless clients, when he went to collect a specimen, sneaky Cecil would nip to the toilet to tease one out then return with his own, still warm, sample. It is believed he fathered some 70 children.

102)
In 1995, Canadian Anaesthetist Channagirie Manjanatha pleaded guilty to criminal negligence. During an operation, he had left the theatre to make a phone call. Manjanatha, from Saskatchewan, left the oxygen machine unmonitored for 15 minutes (the time he took to make his call) resulting in the unfortunate patient suffering brain damage.

103)
In England, a schoolgirl attended hospital to have her ears pinned back and when she was informed that she was to have a general anaesthetic instead of a local one she opted for the local anaesthetic. At the last minute before the operation, the girl then changed her mind again and opted for the general anaesthetic.
Towards the end of the surgery the schoolgirl's breathing stopped and she was given emergency resuscitation but the two anaesthetists did not know how to work the old fashioned emergency equipment so the teenager was given emergency respiration and taken to the intensive care ward of another hospital where she then fell into a coma.
Five days later she died of brain damage after she had been starved of oxygen when her lungs collapsed.

104)
In England, a man enjoyed smoking so much that even though he was in a no smoking ward of a hospital he still needed a ciggy, which nearly cost him his life.
Having been put into the hospital bed with a oxygen mask on, he waited until the nurses had left the ward then removed his oxygen mask under the bed covers and lit a cigarette.
The resulting explosion set the bed clothes on fire and the ward had to be evacuated. On his way to the burns unit the patient raised his hand to his mouth motioning for a cigarette!

105)
In Ulan-Ude, Russia, Mr. Olag Kravitzy is unable to walk the city streets in peace because of horns which are growing from his head.
Olag stated, "People shun me in the street because they think I am Satan!"
He started to grow them about 7 years ago and has had regular operations to trim the 7cm horns.
Doctors believe that they are growing because of a genetic throwback triggered by pollution.

106)
In Illinois, USA, in 2000, Dorothy Toman, a nurse at the Provena St. Joseph Hospital, was caught spraying racist graffiti in five of the hospital's toilets.
She later claimed to police that she only did this as an experiment to see how the hospital authorities would react.
She was later fined $150.

107)
During the early 20th century, Dr. Albert Abrams invented a device called the "Dynamizer" which he claimed could tell you exactly what type off illness a person had just by putting a hair, a sample of blood or even a piece of paper with your handwriting into the machine.
When the Dynamizer was switched on a noise would be emitted which would indicate what was causing sickness.
Over 15,000 people paid money to Abrams for this service before he died.

109)
In Harrow, North London, England, in 1999, dentist Gillian Millman arrived at her surgery to find that it had been totally destroyed by an arsonist.
After a few police enquiries it was found that 43 year old Dipak Thakker was the culprit. After questioning him he finally admitted that the reason he had burnt Gillian's surgery to the ground was because she had rejected his advances 20 years before in 1979 when they attended college together.
Thakker was sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

110)
In London, England, Frederick Van-Loo, from Ghana, attempted to smuggle £12,000 of cannabis in his false leg when he walked off the plane at London City Airport.
He planned to sell the drugs and buy a new leg with the profits. Unfortunately for him he was caught, but ironically, while he was on remand, the National Health Service gave him a brand new leg worth £3,000 to replace the one that cops had taken away for evidence!

111)
In San Luis Potosi, Mexico, Maria Senchala, aged 22, had baffled doctors after she sprouted wings "like that of an angel".
The wings which seemed to be composed of real feathers are attached to some unexplained muscle tissue and formed on her spine overnight.
Maria later stated, "They are heavy, but not too uncomfortable."

113)
In Bogota, Colombia, a policewoman who booked herself in for a face-lift at a reputable plastic surgery clinic came out with more than she bargained for - a sex change. Another woman who had gone in for a sex change got the face-lift. The policewo... er, policeman, is apparently suicidal after discovering that she is now a man. The other woman still plans to go ahead with the gender swap - in spite of her new face.

114)
In Cardiff, Wales, UK, in September 1991, a 29 year old man was working in a chicken factory when he scratched his finger on a chicken bone and caught a mysterious infection.
After the scratch healed his finger began to smell and it soon spread up his arm and over his entire body.
Dr. Peter Holt later stated, "It's a smell so putrid that people have to leave the room when he walks in!"
After having a biopsy it was found that the man was perfectly healthy apart from the terrible stench and after being treated with antibiotics, UV light, Chlorophyll, oxygen, a charcoal lined suit and being wrapped in giant odour eaters, nothing would help him.
Eventually, in March 1997, without any warning whatsoever, he woke up cured!

115)
In Peterborough, England, Mr. Alan Cox considered taking legal action against his wife for the return of the breast implants that he paid for when she left him for a younger man.
He also claimed that he was entitled to compensation of £4,000 for "Loss of the use and enjoyment of the breasts!"
Alan later stated, "I spent months designing them in my head and it makes me physically ill thinking about him groping MY breasts!"

116)
In England an unnamed man was so obsessed by the scars on his face that he bought some sandpaper and tried to file the scars off causing severe damage to his face!

117)
The earliest known case of cancer was found in a Java apeman in 1891 and is estimated to be over half a million years old.

118)
Blood is only slightly thicker than water.

119)
The very first experiments in genetics involved using garden peas.

120)
The breakfast cereal 'Shredded Wheat' was first produced strictly for people with stomach disorders.

121)
During the 18th century it was quite common for women to have their gums pierced so that they could secure their false teeth.

122)
A doctor in the USA once claimed that he could enlarge women's breasts purely by the use of hypnosis.

123)
Some of the strange medical conditions now recognised by the medical profession include Aerobic's ankle, Cyclist's genitalia and Jogger's nipple.

124)
On average there are about 500 new human illnesses discovered every year.

125)
Microwaves were first found to be dangerous after scientists began to develop cataracts.

126)
In the USA there are more psychiatrists and analysts than there are postmen.

127)
When human skin is tanned and turned into leather it looks like pigskin.

128)
The muscles in the jaw work longer than any other muscle in the body without tiring.

129)
If you are right handed the nails on your left hand will grow faster and vice versa.

130)
In the USA and Europe 25% of people catch four or more colds every year.

131)
Since the 1940's venereal disease among homosexuals has gone up a whopping 200%!

132)
The most common fear is public speaking.

133)
Over a period of 47 years a man's heart will pump over 300,000 tons of blood.

134)
Men are twice as likely to be left-handed than women are.

135)
75 % of the liver can be removed and the organ will continue to work perfectly normally and will even regenerate itself, returning to it's original size.

136)
In the USA a pair of twins were once born 42 days apart.

137)
In Germany, in 1970, a woman gave birth to twins, one of which was white and the other black.

138)
Heroin addiction causes constipation.

139)
In Brazil, Africa and India, wounds are still closed by letting termites bite through the edges of the open wound.
The powerful jaws act like a modern surgical clip and will stay in place when the insect's bodies are broken off from the head.

140)
In Albania there is no word for 'Headache'.

142)
The funnybone is not a bone, it is actually a nerve.

143)
Only one person in two billion will live to the age of 116 or over.