Man inserted a 20 cm eel into his anus in “folk remedy” to cure his constipation
A man from Xinghua in East China’s Jiangsu Province inserted a 20 cm live eel in his rectum via his anus to relieve constipation. On the downside, he almost died once the fish went up his abdomen. The man had become constipated and was either unaware of or deliberately avoided using the medical ways of relieving constipation. Therefore, instead of relieving his constipation via natural ways, he opted for inserting an eel in his rectum.
However, instead of curing his constipation, the eel travelled up his rectum to the colon, made a hole in the wall of his colon and travelled into the abdomen. Although the man was in excruciating pain, he didn’t see a doctor because of how embarrassed he was.
What motivated him to stick an eel up his anus was a “folk remedy” that eels help in relieving constipation.
Unable to endure the pain, the patient finally visited the doctor a day later.
Doctors operated on the patient to remove the 20 cm (8-inch) eel. Interestingly, the eel was still alive when pulled out from the patient’s abdomen. The patient also had an uneventful recovery and learnt a lesson to never put live eels up his anus.
In a similar case, a man in his fifties also inserted a 40 cm long Asian swamp eel into his anus which perforated his colon, also, and entered his abdominal cavity. The perforation in his colon caused feces and pus to enter the cavity, leading to an infection. The patient presented to the hospital with severe sepsis and went into septic shock. He sought medical attention a week after suffering from abdominal pain.
According to the patient’s doctor: “He came in with septic shock. During a CT scan, we suspected a foreign body in his abdominal cavity, but we couldn’t tell what it was.
“Then while performing a colonoscopy, we discovered it was an Asian swamp eel (Monopterus albus). It had entered his abdominal cavity.”
The patient went under an emergency operation to have the eel removed from his gut. Although, in this case the eel did not survive because of bacterial contamination in the abdomen.
References
Chinese doctors remove live eel from constipated man’s stomach after folk remedy fails him https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2088857/chinese-doctors-remove-live-eel-constipated-mans-stomach-after