Over the course of human history, health practitioners have documented a number of bizarre and extremely rare medical maladies. Understandably, doctors face a tremendous amount of stress in their efforts to diagnose seemingly unprecedented medical conditions. The body is a complicated machine that can malfunction in a seemingly infinite number of ways, but sometimes doctors can overlook causes that are right under their noses, or their patient’s noses. In one of the most disturbing medical reports ever published, doctors located a nest of maggots deep within a patient’s nasal cavity.

 

A medical publication from 1783 described a patient who had been suffering from a multitude of painful physical symptoms. Dr. Thomas Kilgour was visited by a patient who had been complaining of intense jaw, eye, sinus and forehead pain. Dr. Kilgour could not immediately pinpoint the cause of the man’s symptoms. After four days of ruminating over his patient’s medical situation, the man’s symptoms became much more serious. He developed painful sensations that radiated from his teeth to the right side of his face. The man’s face began to swell, and his nose discharged bloody fluids. In desperation, Dr. Kilgour removed a tooth that he had considered to be a cause of the pain. However, after removing the tooth, the man’s symptoms continued to worsen. Finally, upon conducting a thorough examination of his inner nose and nasal cavities, Dr. Kilgour found something moving. Using his forceps, the Dr. removed one maggot from his patient’s nose, then two maggots, then twenty. It was determined that a fly had laid eggs within an ulcer located in the man’s nose. This ulcer resulted from gonorrhea, which the patient had.

 

Over the course of several days, the man’s condition worsened while the Dr. pulled more and more maggots from his patient’s nose. Some of the maggots were a full two inches in length, and there seemed to be an endless amount being extracted through his nostril. In an effort to kill the maggots that remained in the man’s nose, the Dr. prepared a solution containing tobacco. This solution was injected into the man’s nose. Luckily, this treatment proved to be a success. In all, 200 maggots had been extracted from the patient’s nose, and this bizarre medical case remains the only one of its kind to be described in medical literature to this day.

 

Have you ever been paranoid over a belief that an insect had entered one of your orifices during sleep?