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Strange Medical Facts That Will Amaze You

The World Health Organization reports 1,000 to 3,000 cases of bubonic plague world every year. The bubonic plague germ is believed to have killed as much as one third of the people in Europe in the 1340s and 1350s.

The human body has about 100 trillion cells – thats as 20,000 times more than the number of people in the world.

There are about 100 different chemicals used to transmit signals in the brain and along nerves.

On freshly washed (with soap) and rinsed skin, there may be as many as 20 million bacteria on every square inch.

People are more likely to die if they have a heart attack in winter than in summer.

The largest cell in the human body is the female egg.

The smallest cell in the human body is the male sperm.

Deadly carbon monoxide gas can help some patients with chronic lung disease at low doses (don’t try this).

Near-sightedness is associated with being intelligent–the genes involved in myopia survived because they have a role in increasing intelligence , even though poor eyesight is bad for survival in evolution.

Jet lag may be a trigger for mental illness–the hormone melatonin could be the culprit. Sleep deprivation affects melatonin production and may be linked to manic episodes.

Your blood circulates through our body 1,440 times a day
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Weird Disease of the Week:

ALICE IN WONDERLAND SYNDROME
Also known as micropsia. This syndrome causes distorted visual perception so that objects that are close appear disproportionately small, as though they were viewed through the wrong end of a telescope. It is named after Lewis Carroll’s fictional character, Alice, who saw things as too small or too big after taking strange medicines. The problem is temporary in nature and is associated with migraines. Since Lewis Carroll suffered from migraines, it’s possible that he was describing his own experiences.
More Strange Medical Stories

Man With Twin Living Inside Him —A 36 year old farmer from India was emergently taken to the hospital and doctors at the hospital believed he had a giant tumor. When they operated to remove the bulge in his belly it was discovered that he had a partially grown twin inside of his body which had been there since birth.This condition is an extremely rare situation that occurs when a fetus gets trapped inside its twin. The trapped twin may survive as a parasite even past the time of birth by leaching its twin’s blood supply until it becomes quite large and starts to harm the host.

Lose weight or we’ll take all six of your children away—UK Social workers plan to take 6 children away from a 2 parent household because they think that obesity is a personal weakness and not a medical problem. Look for this in the US when the government stars to control all of healthcare spending. A large body of scientific data supports the fact that obesity is controlled by genetics but people with this medical condition are being persecuted by do gooders in England as well as being denied necessary surgery due to the idea that their obesity is entirely a personal failing–like being a criminal.

During the Middle Ages, a part of the therapy for some ailments included prayer to “patron” saints for possible divine intervention. Through various legends surrounding his life, St. Fiacre, a 7th century Irish monk, is now the patron saint for hemorrhoid sufferers. St fiacre also was the patron saint for healing venereal diseases.

Tobacco was commonly used as a medication in the 1500s (and earlier) for a wide variety of ailments. It was given as a suppository, as an injection, and other routes in addition to the more conventional procedure of smoking it.Smoke was injected into the rectum or the leaf rolled into a suppository for a strangulated hernia as well as for constipation.A wet Tobacco leaf was applied to piles(hemorrhoids) for a certain cure. It was also used to treat worm infections of the bowels and urinary bladder spasms.Apparently the nicotine ,which is main drug ingredient, was viewed as a cure all. Modern medicine is now looking at some therapeutic uses of nicotine such as treating sepsis in ICU patients and treating Tourette’s syndrome(uncontrollable verbal outburts).

William Thomas Green Morton-the man credited for making the use of anesthesia in sugery commonplace- was believed to be an unscrupulous man who probably got the idea of using ethyl ether from a chemistry professor (Charles T. Jackson). Morton attempted to patent the medical idea,which was unheard of at the time(October 16, 1846). He was however unable to get anyone to pay him since ether was cheaply available to doctors of the day.He did have a very positive effect on medicine however and was responsible for introducing effective general anesthesia before the US Civil War and thus saved many young soldiers from terrible suffering during battlefield surgeries. He personally delivered anesthesia to many soldiers during the war. Later on Professor Jackson and another physician Dr Crawford Long also laid claim to the discovery of ether anesthesia.

The Blue Fugates of Troublesome Creek were a group of people descended from a man (Martin Fugate) who had a rare enzyme deficiency that allowed a discolored or blue form of hemoglobin(so called methemoglobin) to accumulate in their bloodstream until it could be seen through their skin as a blue or even purple color. Most of these blue colored individuals appeared to be quite healthy and lived to their 80s and 90s without serious illness associated with the skin discoloration. The cure for their odd malady was discovered when a hematologist, Madison Cawein, correctly diagnosed their problem and cured them with tablets of a chemical called methylene blue. In spite of the strange idea that taking a blue colored chemical could turn the blue patients to a normal color, they tried the medication and for the first time in generations the Blue Fugate clan had a cure for their unusual condition. More recently another condition which turns the skin blue has been in the news, that of argyria. This occurs when people consume colloidal silver solutions that are touted as cures for numerous diseases even though there is no good medical data to support this idea. Too much silver can als damage other organs besides the skin such as the kidneys and nervous system. Check out a blue skinned colloidal silver victim HERE.