Speaker 1: Hey, are you welcome to stuff to blow your mind?
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: it's Saturday, time for the Vault, and today we got bugs.
Speaker 1: That's right. April is the cruelest month, and so here
Speaker 1: we are with the first Vault episode of April, dealing
Speaker 1: with imagine bugs under the skin and sometimes actual bugs
Speaker 1: under the skin. That's right. So you know, if if
Speaker 1: that makes you a little squeamish, maybe come back to
Speaker 1: this one later. But if that makes you a little squeamish,
Speaker 1: get over it and listen. Either way, we're gonna keep
Speaker 1: going here. H stick with us if you have the guts.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to blow your mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Robert,
Speaker 1: what's the weirdest thing you ever got stuck up your nose?
Speaker 1: I think I've been very fortunate. I know plenty of
Speaker 1: other people who have tales of siblings getting odd objects
Speaker 1: lodged up their nostrils, being a marble or I think
Speaker 1: my brother in law had a piece of carpet stuck
Speaker 1: up there something. You know, you hear all these stories,
Speaker 1: and luckily, I don't think I've ever had anything, um,
Speaker 1: anything stuck in my nose, So unfortunate in that regard.
Speaker 1: You know, your mention of the marbles makes me think
Speaker 1: about did you ever see that old episode of the
Speaker 1: show Home Movies where they their take on the like
Speaker 1: Judas pre supplemental messages. Thing is there's a rock band
Speaker 1: who I think does a does a public service announcement
Speaker 1: song called don't put Marbles in your nose, but it
Speaker 1: also keeps saying put them in there now. I think
Speaker 1: the worst, especially like childhood experience of anything going into
Speaker 1: an unexpected orifice, would be um, when I had some
Speaker 1: sort of small insect fly into my ear. Oh really, yeah,
Speaker 1: which which the main distressing thing is that a little bug,
Speaker 1: once it gets inside your ear, is extremely loud. So
Speaker 1: I do. I do remember that quite clearly. It's looking
Speaker 1: at the outside from the inside, it's a horrible feeling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I remember like my dad was there and he
Speaker 1: jumped in and I guess it happened at the house
Speaker 1: because they had some like rubbing alcohol and like they
Speaker 1: poured a little bit of that into my ear. And
Speaker 1: that took care of it. Well, that experience is going
Speaker 1: to be a great jumping off point for our discussion today,
Speaker 1: because I think we should start off by playing one
Speaker 1: of my favorite games that we play on this show,
Speaker 1: which is go into old medical journals and read some weirdness.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, So I want to talk about a case
Speaker 1: report that was published in December of eighteen thirty in
Speaker 1: the medical journal The Lancet. This is a truly disturbing report.
Speaker 1: So if you if you get picked out easily, you
Speaker 1: know fair warning. So let us read from the Lancet.
Speaker 1: A farmer's wife, twenty eight years of age, residing in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood of Mets, had for a long time been
Speaker 1: affected with an unpleasant itching sensation in the nose with
Speaker 1: Cora's which means running nose, to which symptoms in the
Speaker 1: year eighteen seven, violent headache exceeded so that she was
Speaker 1: at length obliged to apply for medical aid. The headache
Speaker 1: was irregularly intermittent, and generally began at the root of
Speaker 1: the nose, in the middle of the forehead or at
Speaker 1: the right frontal region, extending thence first to the right
Speaker 1: side and then over the whole head. The attack was
Speaker 1: accompanied by a great discharge of tears, and sometimes even
Speaker 1: nausea and vomiting. The features were forcibly distorted, the jaws
Speaker 1: firmly closed, and the eyes and ears so very sensible
Speaker 1: that she could not bear the least light or any noise.
Speaker 1: At other times she became delirious, pressed the head between
Speaker 1: her hands, and ran about in a state of distraction.
Speaker 1: The pain was, according to her statement, like the strokes
Speaker 1: of a hammer, or as if something was perforating the skull,
Speaker 1: and the fits generally returned about twelve times in twenty
Speaker 1: four hours. Sometimes the headache continued uninterruptedly for several days.
Speaker 1: The corsa or running nose again existed during the whole period,
Speaker 1: and the discharge was occasionally very feted and mixed with blood. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we're starting off pretty gross already. This poor woman
Speaker 1: is suffering these terrible chronic symptoms. She's got the headache,
Speaker 1: she's got the swelling, she's got the sensitivity and the
Speaker 1: eyes and the nose and all that. Uh, and then
Speaker 1: she's also got this discharge mixed with blood. It's always
Speaker 1: distressing in any case to have fetid discharge. The idea
Speaker 1: that it's fetted is very worrisome, Okay, so continuing, some
Speaker 1: medicines were employed, but no regular plan of treatment was followed,
Speaker 1: and it was not before a twelve month suffering that
Speaker 1: this singular affection terminated after the expulsion of a worm
Speaker 1: from the nose, which moved with rapidity and when placed
Speaker 1: in water, remained alive for several days. It was afterwards
Speaker 1: killed by being put in alcohol and then sent to
Speaker 1: Monsieur Mareschal, who reported the case to the society. He
Speaker 1: found the animal to be more than two inches in
Speaker 1: length and one line in breadth. And I looked that up.
Speaker 1: Apparently a line is a unit of measure that was
Speaker 1: not very well standardized. It probably means like a tenth
Speaker 1: of an inch or twelfth of an inch, so not
Speaker 1: not very wide, um, but two inches in length. It
Speaker 1: had too antenna. Was so not a not a proper worm, right,
Speaker 1: not a proper worm. Was of yellowish color, flat, and
Speaker 1: consisted of sixty four rings on each of which were
Speaker 1: two legs, So definitely not a worm. Uh. Mr Marshall's
Speaker 1: subsequently transmitted the insect to Messrs Holandra and Russel, who
Speaker 1: ascertained that it was a skulla pendra Electrica. Okay, so
Speaker 1: if it had two legs per segment, Yeah, that sounds
Speaker 1: an awful lot like a centipede. Right, you are, Robert,
Speaker 1: this is a centipede. We're talking about. This report alleges
Speaker 1: that this woman had this chronic condition for more than
Speaker 1: a year, which was alleviated when she finally blew a
Speaker 1: centipede out of her nose. Still, that's got to be
Speaker 1: pretty satisfied. Yeah. Yeah, talked about what is the is
Speaker 1: there a word for that? The psychological thing where like
Speaker 1: people are obsessed with like removing objects from their body,
Speaker 1: the satisfaction people get from like picking a huge booker,
Speaker 1: or from from pooping a large poop I don't know,
Speaker 1: but or popping a pimple too. Yes, I thought about
Speaker 1: this on and off for years, and I would love
Speaker 1: to explore it in an episode if there is enough
Speaker 1: material out there about it, because clearly it is an obsession.
Speaker 1: Like their whole video channels on YouTube associated with with
Speaker 1: this sort of thing. And um, yeah, And when I
Speaker 1: hear people talk about, oh, imagine the virtual realms will't
Speaker 1: happen in the future, and I'm thinking, well, yes, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have your obvious sex and violence oriented uh experiences,
Speaker 1: but they're gonna be like whole virtual realms, just just
Speaker 1: devoted to the popping of of surrealistic pimples. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: is the grand theft auto of like visceral body purging experiences? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Before I forget, I do want to give a hat
Speaker 1: tip because I came across this story on the blog
Speaker 1: of a British writer named Thomas Morris, who covers a
Speaker 1: lot of horrifying medical history and is definitely worth following
Speaker 1: if you're interested in this kind of stuff. So shout
Speaker 1: out to Morris who what we will return to again
Speaker 1: in a minute. But anyway, back to the centipede coming
Speaker 1: out of the nose. So there are probably some good
Speaker 1: reasons to question the details of this report. Right just
Speaker 1: because it was published in a medical journal like the Lance,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean it's necessarily true, especially this far back
Speaker 1: in history. But we can we can come back to that.
Speaker 1: So the the insect alleged here, it's not actually an insect.
Speaker 1: It is a centipede. It's the skull of Pendra electrica,
Speaker 1: a reportedly bioluminescence centipede. According to a catalog by Bozard
Speaker 1: in Nature in eight quote a well known luminous insect. Again,
Speaker 1: not an insect, but well known luminous insect whose light
Speaker 1: is but rarely seen owing to the insect living underground
Speaker 1: and in manure heaps. Okay, so that's how it would
Speaker 1: have seen what it was doing up in her sinus maybe,
Speaker 1: or that's maybe that's how it ended up there, like
Speaker 1: she was snorting manure. There you go. But the bottom
Speaker 1: line is this, this report is that a woman had
Speaker 1: a glowing centipede living in her nose for over a year,
Speaker 1: which is a bit far fetched. Yeah, I think so,
Speaker 1: but I mean, it's impossible to know for sure, but
Speaker 1: I'm I have a lot of doubts. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: I wanted to explore more and then later we'll get
Speaker 1: into the more general territory. I think of creepy Crawley's
Speaker 1: getting into body orifices, and I think we're going to
Speaker 1: be focusing primarily not on things that are saying obligate parasites,
Speaker 1: because that's a more trodden ground. Right, you might understand why,
Speaker 1: like say leech could get into the human anus because
Speaker 1: it's seeking that kind of environment, right, or or certainly
Speaker 1: indo parasites that even if they're not certainly there are
Speaker 1: plenty of human indo parasites, but they're also are indo
Speaker 1: parasites of other species that can end up in our bodies.
Speaker 1: And even though they are not at home here, um,
Speaker 1: this home is very much like the home they desire. Right,
Speaker 1: So we're not so much talking about like hookworms, tape worms,
Speaker 1: human bot flies and all that, which we have discussed
Speaker 1: in other episodes, but we're talking more today about creatures
Speaker 1: that don't need to be in the human body and
Speaker 1: wouldn't normally seek it out, but somehow they at least
Speaker 1: reportedly end up there. So, coming back to the skull apendra,
Speaker 1: centipedes of the genus skull Apendra can be truly awesome predators.
Speaker 1: They tend to step over what is for me one
Speaker 1: of the most shocking and unpleasant of lines, which is
Speaker 1: when invertebrates prey on vertebrates, that something something about that
Speaker 1: always feels backwards and scary and not okay, I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean part of it perhaps is that. And I
Speaker 1: feel like this is kind of an undercurrent to to
Speaker 1: this earlier example, is that invertebrates. Invertebrates will undoubtedly feast
Speaker 1: upon vertebrates. You know, they are they are somer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're going to be some of the primary devours of
Speaker 1: our of our deceased form, and and certainly older generations
Speaker 1: that were more associated and more closely aligned with physical death,
Speaker 1: they would have witnessed this more often, both in the
Speaker 1: bodies of animals but also in the in in human
Speaker 1: bodies from time to time. But I'm talking about predation.
Speaker 1: You're talking about you outright killing, which seems like they're
Speaker 1: it's it's like this is they have crossed a line,
Speaker 1: like the line being you shall eat us when we
Speaker 1: are dead, but shall not do the killing right. It's
Speaker 1: supposed to be like humans eating lobster is not lobster
Speaker 1: cousins eating human cousins. I mean, that is clearly verboten.
Speaker 1: But it's just not It's just not verboten. It happens
Speaker 1: in nature and there are examples of skull a pendra
Speaker 1: that do this. So, according to a two thousand five
Speaker 1: article in the Caribbean Journal of Science by Mulinary at
Speaker 1: All quote, skull of pendrid centipedes prey on frogs and
Speaker 1: toads up to nine millimeters long, small lizards, snakes up
Speaker 1: to two dred and forty seven millimeters long, birds up
Speaker 1: to the size of a sparrow, and both field and
Speaker 1: house mice. So you've got some centipedes in this genus
Speaker 1: that are getting down on birds. They're getting down on mice,
Speaker 1: but presumably due to size restrictions. I think if there
Speaker 1: are actually any cases of skollapendreds getting in people's noses,
Speaker 1: it's it's going to be not the ones that twists
Speaker 1: their many legged bodies around mice and sparrows and eat
Speaker 1: their warm blooded mammal flesh. Right that those would have
Speaker 1: probably be too big to end up in the nasal cavity.
Speaker 1: Now back to Thomas Morris, the medical history writer who
Speaker 1: brought this case to my attention on his blog. He
Speaker 1: writes in his blog post that he thinks it's unlikely
Speaker 1: that the centipede would have survived inside the woman's nasal
Speaker 1: sinuses for as long as the report alleges, which is
Speaker 1: more than a year. And I think that's I don't know,
Speaker 1: It's one of those things where it's hard to know
Speaker 1: for sure, but that does seem like a likely objection
Speaker 1: to throw right right, It's like, what would it be
Speaker 1: eating in there? Uh? Could it really like survive in
Speaker 1: there that long without getting blown out or killed in
Speaker 1: some other way. Yeah, it just doesn't seem sustainable. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, the report is detailed, it's published in
Speaker 1: a reasonably reliable source, it does seem to be reported
Speaker 1: by a physician. It just seems sort of inherently unlikely.
Speaker 1: Then again, you know, there are all kinds of things
Speaker 1: we go to. We can talk in a minute about
Speaker 1: the possibility of hoaxes of confusion. I mean, what if
Speaker 1: just like a centipede happened to get up in her
Speaker 1: nose during the last day or so of an otherwise
Speaker 1: bad nose inflammation period. That also seems unlikely. But so um,
Speaker 1: this is not the only reported case of a centipede
Speaker 1: up the nose. In fact, I came across a totally
Speaker 1: separate case from an old medical archive, also dug up
Speaker 1: by Thomas Morris on his blog. This was several years ago. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is from the first volume of Medical Essays and Observations,
Speaker 1: published in seventeen sixty four. So here's this case quote.
Speaker 1: A woman of good heal constitution, meaning she was healthy
Speaker 1: about thirty six years old, began to complain of a
Speaker 1: fixed pain in the lower and right side of her forehead.
Speaker 1: During the last two years, this pain became continual, accompanied
Speaker 1: with convulsions, often depriving her of both her reason and rest.
Speaker 1: She was two or three times brought to death's door
Speaker 1: by it. At the end of four years, after trying
Speaker 1: several medicines to no purpose, and despairing of any relief,
Speaker 1: and yet not knowing what to do, she took to
Speaker 1: taking repeat snuff so it's like tobacco snuff. She had
Speaker 1: not taken the snuff for a month when Behold seized
Speaker 1: one morning with a fit of sneezing and blowing her
Speaker 1: nose after to her great surprise, she found a worm
Speaker 1: rolled up in a little blood. This worm, when stretched
Speaker 1: to its full length, was six inches long and but
Speaker 1: two When it contracted itself, it was two lines broad
Speaker 1: and one and a half thick, of a coffee color,
Speaker 1: convex on one side and flat on the other. It
Speaker 1: was of the centipede kind and had fifty six feet
Speaker 1: on each side. It had two eyes, and both its
Speaker 1: head and ale were armed with two forks. It lived
Speaker 1: eighteen hours in an empty bottle, and three or four
Speaker 1: hours after brandy had been put to it. The egg
Speaker 1: that produced this worm in all probability was sucked in
Speaker 1: along with the air she breathed, and carried after to
Speaker 1: the frontal sinus, where it met with a proper need us,
Speaker 1: meaning nest, to give it both growth and increase. All right, well,
Speaker 1: at least we have a on a hypothesis here of
Speaker 1: how it could have wound up there. Right, Maybe, I
Speaker 1: mean that seems well she sucked in the eggs somehow
Speaker 1: and it hatched in there. That also, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm not a centipede expert. That seems a little bit unlikely,
Speaker 1: but it sounded like the the implication here was it
Speaker 1: might the egg might have been in the snuff. At
Speaker 1: any rate, there's there's at least a there's a there's
Speaker 1: an attempt at explaining how it wound up in there.
Speaker 1: It's not like, oh God has has put a centipede
Speaker 1: in thy head. It is clearly a spontaneous generation of centipedes.
Speaker 1: You clearly we have we have a theory about it.
Speaker 1: We have an hypothesis about how it could have ended
Speaker 1: up in there, and then the story of how it
Speaker 1: ended up coming out. It's about to get weirder. Guess
Speaker 1: what the reporting physician recommends as a treatment for centipede
Speaker 1: sin us blowing blowing one's nose. Nope. Monsieur Letra, who
Speaker 1: related the story, advises in all such stubborn cases as
Speaker 1: will not submit to either external or internal means to
Speaker 1: come to the trapan which may be employed with all safety.
Speaker 1: That's right, trepanning if the insect won't come out. Now,
Speaker 1: we've talked about trepanning on the podcast before. What what's
Speaker 1: going on here? You bring out the drill, that's right,
Speaker 1: we're talking about Usually usually the idea would be we're
Speaker 1: going to drill a hole in the skull to relieve
Speaker 1: pressure uh and to uh and and therefore a relieve
Speaker 1: you of your symptoms. But I guess this is the
Speaker 1: idea of like, okay, it needs that centipede needs out
Speaker 1: of your head. It's not coming out through the naturally
Speaker 1: occurring gateways. We shall make a new gateway in the
Speaker 1: head for the centipede, right, I mean, this is almost
Speaker 1: like the centipede is kind of taking the role of
Speaker 1: the stone of madness in the medieval form here. Uh.
Speaker 1: Though again I want to allow I feel this is unlikely.
Speaker 1: It's not impossible lady had a centipede in her sinus uh.
Speaker 1: He also recommends using oil and acrid plants to force
Speaker 1: it out that maybe seems more reasonable. I would be like,
Speaker 1: let's try that first. Yes, let's let's check those off
Speaker 1: the list first. Okay, that's not all. I feel like,
Speaker 1: who's the Who's the game show host who says that's
Speaker 1: not all? You're gonna get more prizes? I don't know.
Speaker 1: The cat in the hat says that, Okay, I might
Speaker 1: a game show host. The cat in the hat, I'll
Speaker 1: be the cat and hatn't say. That's not the last
Speaker 1: of the centipedes up the noses, But we got more
Speaker 1: for you, including with more tobacco association, so with the snuff.
Speaker 1: Third case documented right alongside the first one in this
Speaker 1: In this source from the eighteenth century, Monsieur Melowe reported
Speaker 1: that one of the king's household troops complained for three
Speaker 1: years of an acute pain in the left frontal sinus,
Speaker 1: which extended to the eye of the same side, so
Speaker 1: as to endange to his losing it. He had also
Speaker 1: a buzzing noise in his ear to relieve which he
Speaker 1: had some oil of sweet almonds put into it, and
Speaker 1: in two days after he perceived in his left nostril,
Speaker 1: and itching and stinging, as if something moved there which
Speaker 1: he could not discharge, but by putting his finger into
Speaker 1: his nose, when behold, he pulled out a worm, which
Speaker 1: ran swiftly on the palm of his hand, though covered
Speaker 1: with a viscous matter and snuff of which this gentleman
Speaker 1: took plenty. This worm was put into a tobacco box
Speaker 1: with snuff in it, where it lived five or six days.
Speaker 1: All the patient's complaints ceased after this worm came away.
Speaker 1: The only difference between this and the former is this
Speaker 1: this worm was six lines only long and had but
Speaker 1: one hundred feet, but there was this singular. In both cases.
Speaker 1: The former was thought to be expelled by the use
Speaker 1: of tobacco snuff, whereas this subsisted three years with a
Speaker 1: plentiful use of the same weed, and after its expulsion,
Speaker 1: lived five or six days on the same same Alright,
Speaker 1: So the idea here is the centipede lived for years
Speaker 1: in this guy's head because he kept putting snuff in there,
Speaker 1: and it was eating the snuff. It seems to be
Speaker 1: at least partially the implication. I don't know about eating
Speaker 1: the snuff. There seemed to be multiple reasons to doubt
Speaker 1: the story, especially if you're taking on that detail about
Speaker 1: the last one, like surviving by eating tobacco. Tobacco, of course,
Speaker 1: contains nicotine, which is a powerful poison. Like so many
Speaker 1: of the drugs that humans consume on purpose recreationally, nicotine
Speaker 1: is supposed to discourage animals from taking the from consuming
Speaker 1: the plan and this is one of the reasons nicotine
Speaker 1: can be used as a natural pesticide. However, I do
Speaker 1: want to take a really brief digression just to point
Speaker 1: out one fascinating creature I came across here that does
Speaker 1: survive on tobacco and nicotine, and that is the men
Speaker 1: Duca sexta. Robert, do you know about this one? I? No,
Speaker 1: I wasn't familiar with the man Duca sexta. Oh, this
Speaker 1: is great. So this is a moth of this finger
Speaker 1: day family and in its larval stage, so meaning as
Speaker 1: a caterpillar. This species is sometimes known as the tobacco hornworm.
Speaker 1: So the tobacco hornworm eats the leaves of the tobacco plant,
Speaker 1: and the horn hornworm has a special gene called c
Speaker 1: yp six B forty six that allows it to metabolize nicotine.
Speaker 1: And now there's a twist. It doesn't just metabolize the nicotine.
Speaker 1: It uses this tobacco in its diet to produce a
Speaker 1: chemical defense sometimes referred to in the literature as toxic halitosis.
Speaker 1: It's killer tobacco breath. So when the hornworm is threatened
Speaker 1: by a predator like a wolf spider, it can defend
Speaker 1: itself by releasing nicotine through pores in its skin, which
Speaker 1: drives away the predator. And this has been confirmed by
Speaker 1: research that found that hornworms fed on low nicotine food
Speaker 1: were more susceptible to being attacked by wolf spiders. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, I do not think that a
Speaker 1: tobacco hornworm was in the guy's sinus, right, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a big difference between the this this larva that
Speaker 1: is you know, clearly it has evolved to feed on
Speaker 1: the leaves of this plant versus the predator that is
Speaker 1: the centipede. Okay, so we got doubts about all these reports,
Speaker 1: but that that's three centipede in the nose reports. Now
Speaker 1: you know what, I found one more old centipede in
Speaker 1: the nose report. This one from the Journal of Laryngology
Speaker 1: and Ontology by W. P. May m e y j
Speaker 1: e s. I don't know how to pronounce that, but
Speaker 1: I think this is a report from Amsterdam, and this
Speaker 1: is from this report goes. A woman farm worker from
Speaker 1: the countryside appeared to the physician with the complaint of
Speaker 1: a headache over the right eye that had persisted for months,
Speaker 1: combined with a chronic running nose. The doctor did not
Speaker 1: immediately detect any major problems except for stuff like swelling
Speaker 1: in the nasal cavity and conjunctivius or you know, inflammation
Speaker 1: of the eyes. So to help less in the swelling
Speaker 1: go down, the doctor ordered menthol with boric acid for
Speaker 1: the woman to snuff up. Uh. Man, every time you
Speaker 1: read these you're just like, wow, these old treatments are
Speaker 1: boric acid. Um it. So she snuffed it up. A
Speaker 1: few days later, the woman returned. Uh. After she has
Speaker 1: snuffed up the menthol and the boric acid, she has
Speaker 1: a fit of sneezing and quote found in her handkerchief
Speaker 1: a small insects still alive. She had put it in
Speaker 1: some brandy and took it to me. The insect, which
Speaker 1: was about seven millimeters long, turned to be a centipede. Uh. Centipede,
Speaker 1: of course, is not an insect. But uh, this report
Speaker 1: says after the centipede was sneezed out, all the woman's
Speaker 1: symptoms went away. So it's difficult to tell how much
Speaker 1: stock we should put into these stories about centipedes and
Speaker 1: the human body. Apparently like reported by physicians to real
Speaker 1: medical journals and publications. Uh. And unfortunately, as we will
Speaker 1: explore in the rest of this episode, it is not
Speaker 1: in principle impossible for insects, centipedes and other small creatures
Speaker 1: to get inside a person's cranial cavities. That does happen,
Speaker 1: and we'll discuss more later. At the same time, these stories,
Speaker 1: at least some of them, seem kind of suspicious for
Speaker 1: the quality of how long the centipede was supposedly alive
Speaker 1: inside the human Maybe not impossible, but it's definitely questionable.
Speaker 1: They also to me, at least, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've got the same feeling, Robert. They called to mind
Speaker 1: the story of Mary Toft, the eighteenth century englishwoman and
Speaker 1: first class hoax artist who had doctors and surgeons convinced
Speaker 1: that she was repeatedly giving birth to rabbits. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: I remember this story, and apparently she really damaged some
Speaker 1: medical reputations because she had some some guys on on
Speaker 1: the line saying like, oh, yeah, I saw it. This
Speaker 1: lady gave birth to like rabbit parts and like part
Speaker 1: of an eel and parts of a cat, which if
Speaker 1: nothing else shows you, like, here's an example, like somebody's
Speaker 1: willing to go through the grossness of of producing um
Speaker 1: to say, part of a rabbit from their body as
Speaker 1: a hoax. So putting a centipede up your nose, really
Speaker 1: it's a lighter sentence or I mean, in some cases,
Speaker 1: all you'd have to do is show up with the
Speaker 1: centipede and a handkerchief and brandy and say this came
Speaker 1: out my nose. Now. Why people would really be compelled
Speaker 1: to do that, I don't know. But then again, people
Speaker 1: have all kinds of crazy reasons for doing stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: people just like to make up weird stories. Sometimes, yeah,
Speaker 1: could just be for for the sheer attention of the thing. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then again, I don't want to totally discount the full
Speaker 1: nature of these stories, because there are also modern reports
Speaker 1: of centipedes and body cavities. Some tend to be reported
Speaker 1: with like an air of sensationalism that kind of prejudices
Speaker 1: me against just accepting them. For example, in k A
Speaker 1: t V, a local news station in Arkansas reported a
Speaker 1: fourteen year old boy and Selene County woke up with
Speaker 1: terrible pain in one of his ears. He reached into
Speaker 1: his ear pulled out a four inch long centipede. Uh.
Speaker 1: The family reportedly put the centipede in a plastic bag
Speaker 1: and took the boy to the emergency room. He was okay.
Speaker 1: Uh in the hospital reported they never encountered a centipede
Speaker 1: in an ear before. I guess nothing about that story
Speaker 1: is really implausible, except that it always gets picked up
Speaker 1: I like the daily mail, and that's how you see
Speaker 1: it um and so that sort of prejudices me against it.
Speaker 1: But for the record, I tried to find recently documented
Speaker 1: cases of centipedes in the nasal cavity and couldn't find anything,
Speaker 1: though I did find reports of centipedes in the human ear.
Speaker 1: So it seems like if centipedes do get up in
Speaker 1: the sinuses, up in the nose, that's it's much more
Speaker 1: rare for that to happen than for other cranial invasions
Speaker 1: such as say, cockroaches in the ear, which we'll get
Speaker 1: too later. All right. On that note, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break, but we'll be right back. Alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: So we've discussed centipedes crawling around in one's head allegedly. Uh,
Speaker 1: where what parts of the human bodies are we going
Speaker 1: to next? Joe? Well, I think we should. We should
Speaker 1: take a foray into the oral cavity. So let's establish
Speaker 1: some basic facts here. Uh. First of all, the question
Speaker 1: can bugs get inside your body cavities? The answer is yes,
Speaker 1: that that can happen. It does sometimes happen, right, and anything,
Speaker 1: we need more ugs in our mouths because we should
Speaker 1: be eating more bugs. Oh that's a totally different question. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we're I think we're on the record being
Speaker 1: pro intomate feji here, but not talking about the mouth
Speaker 1: cavity so much because that's less of a worry, right,
Speaker 1: unless the bug is poisonous, if you swallow it, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just protein. It's yeah, it's gonna be digested. The
Speaker 1: problem would really be if it's in a cavity that
Speaker 1: is not meant to accept incoming solid matter. So this
Speaker 1: is where we're getting into the ear, Yes, exactly. And
Speaker 1: so it's started to talk about cockroaches, because cockroaches are
Speaker 1: apparently one of the most common animals to end up
Speaker 1: in human orifices in real documented cases. I was reading
Speaker 1: a National Geographic article about this by Erica Engel helped
Speaker 1: h and she sites an interview with a North Carolina
Speaker 1: State University entomologists named Kobe Shawl a few of Shaw's
Speaker 1: quotes and insights. Of course, first of all, it's not
Speaker 1: uncommon for a cockroach to show up in the human ear.
Speaker 1: That just does happen. People show up at hospitals all
Speaker 1: the time with a cockroach law judged in their ear.
Speaker 1: Apparently the nose as much more unusual this This is
Speaker 1: like a less common thing to find, but also not
Speaker 1: totally unknown why cockroaches, well Shall says, cockroaches are constantly
Speaker 1: searching for food, and actually ear wax might be an
Speaker 1: attractive source of nutrition to them. Ear wax tends to
Speaker 1: contain microbiota that emit a particular kind of volatile compound,
Speaker 1: volatile fatty acids, and these airborne compounds are similar to
Speaker 1: what might be present in meat, so your ear wax
Speaker 1: might smell like meat to a hungry cockroach crawling into
Speaker 1: those meat caves. It's like that that meat wax straight
Speaker 1: to the butcher's shop gets you some some gabba google
Speaker 1: in the ear. Earagoule anyway, Shall suggests it's possible that
Speaker 1: secretions from the nasal passage might also be appealing as
Speaker 1: a kind of food to cockroaches, and don't know for sure,
Speaker 1: but as possible. But it's also worth emphasizing that cockroaches
Speaker 1: are not parasites. They're not like hookworms, they're not like
Speaker 1: the human bot fly. It is not in their interest
Speaker 1: to get stuck inside a human body cavity, right. That is,
Speaker 1: it's an extreme environment best left to the specialists. Right, So,
Speaker 1: when when a cockroach ends up in a human ear
Speaker 1: or even in the nose, it is generally all just
Speaker 1: a big misunderstanding. They didn't mean they didn't really want
Speaker 1: to get stuck in there. They don't want to be
Speaker 1: inside you, They'd rather be somewhere else. But it just happened.
Speaker 1: They were hungry. Now that that being said, one can
Speaker 1: well imagine that this could be a path, a long
Speaker 1: path to parasitism in an organism um such as says
Speaker 1: say the the theories regarding of the emergence of vampire bats,
Speaker 1: and they have once feasted on um, you know, in
Speaker 1: the larva that might be present at a at a
Speaker 1: wound site on some sort of megafauna, and then over
Speaker 1: time that develops into a more strategic consumption of blood
Speaker 1: directly from the you know, the large herbivore, as opposed
Speaker 1: to drinking the blood eating the body of the parasites
Speaker 1: that prey upon the larger before. So an evolutionary path
Speaker 1: over like millions of years, not over like a night
Speaker 1: or a year. Nowhere we're going to get tomorrow and
Speaker 1: nowhere that we have arrived yet. Oh, that is an
Speaker 1: interesting evolutionary path of the path from say like a
Speaker 1: cleaning mutual is um to parasitism. But it would have
Speaker 1: to be a situation like the thing about it is
Speaker 1: for the cockroach, especially in a human habitat, there's plenty
Speaker 1: to eat. There's plenty of other things to eat, like
Speaker 1: the the ear wax. If it were you know, a
Speaker 1: great source of of a sustenance, it's probably not the
Speaker 1: best source of sustenance for the creature. Well even so,
Speaker 1: it probably might just smell like sustenance. Uh So, almost
Speaker 1: all incursions of roach kind into human orifices happen while
Speaker 1: the human is asleep. That almost never happened while the
Speaker 1: persons awake, and they also almost always feature small specimens
Speaker 1: of the creature involved. You don't to get a giant
Speaker 1: cockroach in your ear. You get a little juvenile cockroach,
Speaker 1: one of those movie or zooch cockroaches. Movie ors, what
Speaker 1: do you what do you mean? Because you're watching a
Speaker 1: movie or you go to the zoo, you're probably gonna
Speaker 1: encounter one of those giant kissing cockroaches. And then likewise,
Speaker 1: if it's a film about cockroaches, sometimes they'll throw one
Speaker 1: of those in just because some people keep them as
Speaker 1: pets in there more they're just grocery looking. There's a
Speaker 1: zero percent chance you'll get a giant hissing cockroach in
Speaker 1: your ear. If you get one, it will be a
Speaker 1: little one, you know, not as big a deal. Um.
Speaker 1: But also, wild bugs can get inside the human body sometimes.
Speaker 1: Most of the reports and images of this you see
Speaker 1: on the internet are fake. We want to emphasize this
Speaker 1: all that. You know, you'll see this on social media.
Speaker 1: You'll see reports in the tabloids, spiders crawling under people's skin,
Speaker 1: burrowing into wounds and all that. It's pretty much all fake.
Speaker 1: In like cockroaches really do get into ears, but almost
Speaker 1: every image you see on the internet is not real. Likewise,
Speaker 1: a lot of the reports you read on the internet,
Speaker 1: especially from kind of viral sources, they're not real either.
Speaker 1: One common example is, and I don't know, Robert, have
Speaker 1: you ever come across the story of like ants getting
Speaker 1: in through the ear and eating the brain. I don't
Speaker 1: think I have, but that does sound like the kind
Speaker 1: of thing you might read and forward from Grandma or something. Exactly,
Speaker 1: they get through the gain in the ear and eat
Speaker 1: the brain if you like, eat sweets before going to bed,
Speaker 1: or they crawl in one ear and crawl out the
Speaker 1: other ear. These things do not happen. There are no
Speaker 1: records in the medical literature of anything like this happening,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't make sense on its face. Insects do
Speaker 1: sometimes go in the ear, but they don't eat the brain.
Speaker 1: They don't infest the deeper cranium. That just doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: But it's easy to see why stories like this, the
Speaker 1: untrue stories, especially about like spiders crawling under the skin,
Speaker 1: or ants getting in through the ear and eating the brain,
Speaker 1: and all that kind of thing, why they are very
Speaker 1: popular and clicky and share able, and why they take
Speaker 1: hold of the public consciousness, why they become entomological folklore,
Speaker 1: because I think they ping a very sensitive spot in
Speaker 1: our in our you know, neurology, that like, there's a
Speaker 1: certain part of human nature that seems very finely tuned
Speaker 1: for recognizing parasitism and creepy crawley's and anything that might
Speaker 1: be getting on you. Because there are real parasites out there.
Speaker 1: Uh So we're sort of hyper primed, I think, to
Speaker 1: make monsters within this category, right, and and and sometimes
Speaker 1: we overtally make monsters of them too. It's not count
Speaker 1: out the role that horror plays in all of this. Like,
Speaker 1: in thinking of this, how many of you thought back
Speaker 1: to Stephen King's Creep Show and the scene where all
Speaker 1: the cockroaches burst out of e. G. Marshall. That's a
Speaker 1: great one, Yeah, and in a whole bit that's about
Speaker 1: like fear of creepy crawleys and cockroaches, you know. And
Speaker 1: we have all these stories too, have like vampires dying
Speaker 1: and bursting into you know, a wave of cinipedes and
Speaker 1: uh bugs. Well, E G. Marshall, I think he plays
Speaker 1: like a Howard Hughes type character. Right, he's got he's
Speaker 1: like a rich guy who keeps himself secluded because he's
Speaker 1: afraid of like bugs and germs and everything. Right. And
Speaker 1: there's also I think with this innate like this innate
Speaker 1: fear of our body being a habitat for something and
Speaker 1: our body, our bodies are habitats. We learn more about
Speaker 1: that essential nature of our being every day. Uh, but
Speaker 1: it's part of the horrors of the grave, and the
Speaker 1: idea that we would they would things would be living
Speaker 1: within us while we were alive is grotesque, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: But I mean, your body needs to be a habitat
Speaker 1: for your microbiome. You don't want it to be a
Speaker 1: habitat for other larger creatures. And so while it is
Speaker 1: not impossible for bugs to get inside human body cavities, like,
Speaker 1: there are cases where it definitely happens. Oh yes, we
Speaker 1: will discuss more before this episode is over. Many, and
Speaker 1: I'd say probably the vast majority of cases in which
Speaker 1: someone is convinced they have bugs inside their body are
Speaker 1: cases of what's known as delusional infestation, also known as
Speaker 1: delusional parasitosis or sometimes as eckbombs syndrome. Yeah, name for
Speaker 1: Swedish neurola just Carl Axel Eckbomb, who published siminar accounts
Speaker 1: of the disease in and basically the idea here is that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, one comes to believe that parasites are infesting
Speaker 1: your home, your surroundings, your clothing, and ultimately your body. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, these reports are not isolated to real actual
Speaker 1: parasites like hookworms and you know that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: It it also includes delusional ideas about insects and other
Speaker 1: creatures that are not actually parasites. Right, and and very
Speaker 1: often the way it ends up going is someone feels
Speaker 1: that they are infested by something, you know, they feel
Speaker 1: that they have uh, parasites inside their body and their
Speaker 1: bows under their skin, there's some sort of an itching sensation, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And then they go to the doctor and the doctor
Speaker 1: looks at them and says, no, there's nothing, there's nothing there.
Speaker 1: But they know they feel that they believe it, and
Speaker 1: they begin going down this road of trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what's wrong. Um. But of worse, ultimately it is
Speaker 1: not a problem. It's not a dermatological problem, it's not
Speaker 1: a it's not a medical biological problem. It is a
Speaker 1: psychological problem. It is an illusion. So you see this
Speaker 1: sometimes in the cases of stimulant abuse, especially methamphatamine abuse
Speaker 1: can result in delusional parasites. Uh. Sometimes you've seen these
Speaker 1: referred to as cocaine bugs, or you know the ideas
Speaker 1: of tweakers who pick up their skin in search of
Speaker 1: the bugs that they feel in their skin. Um. The
Speaker 1: Bohart Museum of Entomology points out that high fevers and
Speaker 1: severe alcohol withdrawal can also produce these symptoms, along with
Speaker 1: visual hallucinations of the bugs in question. UM. I should
Speaker 1: also point out there's a there's a wonderful I don't
Speaker 1: know if wonderful as the word for it. There's a
Speaker 1: very uh. There, there's a there's a there's a play, powerful,
Speaker 1: powerful play by Tracy Letts that I actually got to
Speaker 1: see performed locally here in Atlanta is really really good
Speaker 1: called bug uh. And it was later made into a
Speaker 1: two thousand and six film by William Friedkin, starring Ashley Judd,
Speaker 1: Michael Shannon, and Harry Connick Jr. Harry Connick Jr. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know who he played. I haven't seen the
Speaker 1: film version, um, but I know that the two main
Speaker 1: characters are Judd and Shannon in the film, Um, but
Speaker 1: but it's quite good. There's a lot of skin in it,
Speaker 1: a lot of bug delusions. Uh. And it begins with
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories about the infestation of the room or the
Speaker 1: apartment that they're staying in, and then they end up
Speaker 1: having the shared delusion of their bodies being infested by
Speaker 1: some sort of a parasite. Anyway, that's the that's the fiction.
Speaker 1: But the fiction that the does line up reasonably well
Speaker 1: with some of the realities. The delusion can ultimately result
Speaker 1: in self mutilation is one attempts to remove the bugs,
Speaker 1: or is one it excessively scratches at the skin. There's
Speaker 1: actually a wonderful article that came out about this couple
Speaker 1: of years ago from Eric Boudman, and he actually won
Speaker 1: a two thousand eighteen Science and Society Journalism Award for
Speaker 1: his article Acts Sidental Therapists for insect detectives. The trickiest
Speaker 1: cases involved the bugs that aren't really there, published in
Speaker 1: UH in S T A t UH, he describes an
Speaker 1: individual suffering from this delusion who consulted an exterminator. UH.
Speaker 1: Then they consulted their doctor, and then they went to
Speaker 1: a dermatologist and each time, they weren't getting the answers
Speaker 1: that they wanted and then they needed they were they
Speaker 1: each time they were told, you know, there's no bugs
Speaker 1: in your house, there are no bugs in your skin.
Speaker 1: Uh Like. Ultimately they took to uh filling a bathtub
Speaker 1: up with insecticide and climbing into it. And but even
Speaker 1: that they didn't solve it. They got out and they
Speaker 1: still felt the presence of the bugs. And that's where,
Speaker 1: as A. Boudman explains in his article, that's where Dr
Speaker 1: Gail Ridge entered the scenario. A public entomologists meaning people
Speaker 1: come to her with specimens and questions to the tune
Speaker 1: of like twenty three people a day. She works at
Speaker 1: the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. So this individual came to
Speaker 1: her and she tried to explain to look, this is
Speaker 1: how insects actually interact with your skin. This is how
Speaker 1: you know actual parasites work. Um. And she ended up
Speaker 1: seeing the individual handful of times before she learned that
Speaker 1: they died. UM. So in this case, in others, uh,
Speaker 1: doctor Ridge here often has to weigh in on cases
Speaker 1: that are far more psychological than entomological. That makes sense, now.
Speaker 1: Budman's paper is is a great read. I'll try to
Speaker 1: include a link to it on the landing page for
Speaker 1: this episode at at the website I stuff to bling
Speaker 1: your mind dot com. But it makes a number of
Speaker 1: very interesting points. First of all, these patients are really suffering,
Speaker 1: even though doctors tend tend to in many cases dismissed
Speaker 1: them and send them away. Right, Like if you show
Speaker 1: up at a doctor's office and you say I've got
Speaker 1: bugs inside my body and then the doctor just checks
Speaker 1: and says, no, there are no bugs in there, that
Speaker 1: that shouldn't be case closed, right, That should be like,
Speaker 1: there should be a sign that something is wrong, that
Speaker 1: you do need help in a way, even if there
Speaker 1: aren't physically insects. But it's it's a difficult scenario because
Speaker 1: the best tree for their suffering is usually an antipsychotic.
Speaker 1: But there, there, you there. But generally the problem that
Speaker 1: the struggle is getting them to accept that their problem
Speaker 1: is psychological and that they need to see a mental
Speaker 1: health professional because they're coming in here they believe that
Speaker 1: only a powerful anti parasitic is going to do the trick. Uh,
Speaker 1: and or that an insect specialist is required. Quote Ridge
Speaker 1: sees as many as two hundred of these cases a year.
Speaker 1: She isn't the only one with this unintentional expertise. A
Speaker 1: whole network of entomologists, a universities, research stations and even
Speaker 1: at natural history museums is all too familiar with these requests.
Speaker 1: So they come in, they bring scabs, samples of skin
Speaker 1: is proof. One of the individuals that Budeman talks to
Speaker 1: is Nancy Hinkel from the University of Georgia at Athens.
Speaker 1: So close by here and uh. Hinkel says that inquiries
Speaker 1: like this take up twenty percent of her time and
Speaker 1: that every state has quote somebody like Gael or Meat.
Speaker 1: There's body in there that that this is becoming increasingly
Speaker 1: their work. In other words, cases of delusional parasitosis are
Speaker 1: rare in the medical field, but far more common in
Speaker 1: the intomol entomological world. Extreme cases may end in severe
Speaker 1: alteration of one's life, even suicide or death. Um. Here's
Speaker 1: one more quote from the article. Quote. Even when an
Speaker 1: entomologist notices the tailtell signs of DP, there is little
Speaker 1: that can be done over the phone. Biologists estimate that
Speaker 1: there are some six point eight million anthropod species on Earth.
Speaker 1: Even the most fanciful description could at its root to
Speaker 1: be a real insect. Well, that's sort of like what
Speaker 1: we're running into with, UH, with the cases of the
Speaker 1: centipedes up earlier, Like we didn't we're not there to
Speaker 1: see it, so we don't really know for sure. We're
Speaker 1: just reading these accounts, and so we're stuck with saying like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't think this likely happened, but
Speaker 1: we can't be sure. I mean, you can't roll it outright.
Speaker 1: So part part of the problem identified in this article
Speaker 1: is that what's needed here are psycho dermatology outposts in
Speaker 1: the medical world where where the connection between the science
Speaker 1: of the mind and signs of the skin is more established,
Speaker 1: so there's greater ease and finesse moving patients toward proper
Speaker 1: psychological treatments. And there apparently are a few places in
Speaker 1: the United States and some in the Netherlands that have
Speaker 1: begun to do this. UH. One of the accounts that
Speaker 1: the author includes here mentions a doctor in Amsterdam that
Speaker 1: that deals with patients and they've they sort of figured
Speaker 1: out how to, you know, first form a relationship of
Speaker 1: trust with the patient and then at the appropriate time,
Speaker 1: you know, let them know, like this is something you
Speaker 1: need to see a psychiatrist about, and and sometimes sweetening
Speaker 1: the deal by pointing out, pointing to a two thousand
Speaker 1: fourteen paper about how some drugs that treat delusional disorders
Speaker 1: also happened to kill kill parasites. So I think that's interesting,
Speaker 1: you know, pointing figuring out there, like like, they are
Speaker 1: more of these cases occurring than one might think. And
Speaker 1: if we just if if medical professionals, entomologists, uh, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Are are better positioned to move them towards encourage them
Speaker 1: to go seek appropriate help, uh, everyone's going to be
Speaker 1: better off. Yeah. Absolutely, though, I mean, this is such
Speaker 1: a hard problem, and it's also part of a broader
Speaker 1: problem which is present in the medical and mental health
Speaker 1: communities where it's um it just tends to be a
Speaker 1: fact that people who are experiencing delusions and psychosis another
Speaker 1: you know, most of the conditions that cause them to
Speaker 1: experience delusions and psychosis also tend to entail ideation patterns
Speaker 1: that made people resistant to correct diagnosis. So like if
Speaker 1: you tell a person that, Okay, you know, what you
Speaker 1: think you're experiencing is not physically the case, and you know,
Speaker 1: like antipsychotic medication could help you. Uh, it just tends
Speaker 1: very often to be the case that people don't respond
Speaker 1: well to being told that, and that they say no,
Speaker 1: that's not right. Right, And oftentimes there's just a stigma
Speaker 1: against a seeking professional help for for mental problems or
Speaker 1: having any kind of mental disorder or delusion. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then again back to just the nature of insects and
Speaker 1: infesting our homes, like how hard are are fleas to see?
Speaker 1: How hard are chiggers to see? Um, you know, without
Speaker 1: getting into just the whole list of various parasitic organisms
Speaker 1: that are basically invisible to us. So again, it doesn't
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're one is presented with the option like, well,
Speaker 1: either other people just can't see this creature because it's small,
Speaker 1: or other people can't see this creature because it is
Speaker 1: a delusion of your mind. You can see why people
Speaker 1: are more inclined to believe that it's just something that
Speaker 1: they just haven't found the right entomologists, they haven't found
Speaker 1: the right dermatologists to identify the problem. Yeah. Well, I
Speaker 1: guess we'd certainly hope that by like establishing procedures like
Speaker 1: this where you've got sort of a chain of people
Speaker 1: to talk to where you established trust with the patient
Speaker 1: and by trying to remove stigma from seeking mental health help.
Speaker 1: Uh that maybe maybe this kind of thing could get better.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I would hope, so yeah, yeah, because
Speaker 1: according to what I've read, the anti psychotic medications do
Speaker 1: help the individuals. So like you know, there there, there is,
Speaker 1: there is a treatment. It's not one of these because
Speaker 1: there are certain mental conditions We've discussed, various delusions where
Speaker 1: there is not really an exit, you know, where things
Speaker 1: are are pretty dire. But this seems to be something
Speaker 1: that is in many cases very treatable again if proper
Speaker 1: treatment is found. And again I get the sense, I
Speaker 1: don't know if this lines up with what you you're reading,
Speaker 1: but I get the sense that the vast majority of
Speaker 1: the people who show up and say I've got a
Speaker 1: bug in me do not actually have a bug in them.
Speaker 1: Like the psychological cause of these symptoms. I mean, the
Speaker 1: symptoms are real in both cases, but psychological causes are
Speaker 1: far more prevalent than the entomological causes. Absolutely, all right,
Speaker 1: We're gonna take another break, give you a few minutes
Speaker 1: to listen to an advertisement and maybe feel your skin
Speaker 1: a little bit and see see how you're feeling. But
Speaker 1: we'll be right back with more more tales of of
Speaker 1: of bugs in the skin and bugs of the mind.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. So, as we were just discussing,
Speaker 1: it's clear that the majority of cases where people think
Speaker 1: they've got like a bug inside a body cavity or
Speaker 1: under their skin or something. And if you think you've
Speaker 1: got bugs under your skin, you're pretty much always going
Speaker 1: to be wrong. If you think you have a bug
Speaker 1: in the body cavity, even then you're probably mistaken. There.
Speaker 1: There's probably not a bug in there, but we can't
Speaker 1: say that's the case always because sometimes bugs do get
Speaker 1: in there. So I think it's time to talk about
Speaker 1: that a little more and about UH, and maybe get
Speaker 1: to talking about what to do if there actually is
Speaker 1: a bug in a body cavity. Um so I came
Speaker 1: across the nine article from the Oxford University Press Journal
Speaker 1: of the Entomological Society of America, and the piece is
Speaker 1: by the American biologist and entomologist and National Medal of
Speaker 1: Science Laureate May Baron Baum. Just a few interesting facts
Speaker 1: about baron Baum I found UH in addition to being
Speaker 1: a renowned entomologist, I think she sounds very much like
Speaker 1: our kind of people. She created an event at the
Speaker 1: University of Illinois called the Insect Fear Film Festival, which,
Speaker 1: according to its website, is an opportunity to quote watch
Speaker 1: insect themed horror movies, handle live insects at our petting zoo,
Speaker 1: learn about insects you fear, and then get t shirts, stickers,
Speaker 1: balloon insects, and your face painted. This sounds like my
Speaker 1: kind of event. I would love to go to that.
Speaker 1: This sounds great. Yeah, we'll have to look up creature
Speaker 1: features and then touching real insects. That sounds wonderful. It
Speaker 1: sounds like she's very comfortable, um marrying, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of like the pop culture, the insect myths and all that,
Speaker 1: using that as a window to share real knowledge about
Speaker 1: entomology and the role of insects in our lives with people.
Speaker 1: Let's look at the fear, let's look at the sensationalism,
Speaker 1: and then let's look at the reality. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: she seems very cool. She's also apparently had a character
Speaker 1: named after her in the classic X Files episode War
Speaker 1: of the Copper Phages, which is one of the best
Speaker 1: episodes in the entire series. Quite relevant to Today's Top
Speaker 1: Bake because it discusses cockroaches, ideas about cockroach infestation and
Speaker 1: a delusional infestation or delusional parasitosis, which is a big
Speaker 1: big thing in the episode. The character named after her
Speaker 1: is apparently it's named and I did remember this character
Speaker 1: uh named Bambi. Baronbaum recalls she's sort of like a
Speaker 1: weird entomologist who Molder develops a crush on and Scully
Speaker 1: gets jealous of over the phone, and I recall she
Speaker 1: also has some theory that UFO sightings are actually caused
Speaker 1: by swarms of insects. But that's the X Files character,
Speaker 1: not the real Dr baron Baum. So this article, by
Speaker 1: the way, if you can look it up, it's really
Speaker 1: pretty great, the one from so she collects references from
Speaker 1: the medical literature, including an interesting study from nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: seven by Baker which found a hundred and thirty four
Speaker 1: cases of foreign objects found in children's ears. Of those
Speaker 1: d and thirty four objects, twenty seven were insects, and
Speaker 1: of those twenty one were cock roaches. So that the
Speaker 1: others you ask, well, I actually looked up and study
Speaker 1: to find out what the others were. The other six
Speaker 1: of those twenty seven where one ant, one fly, three spiders,
Speaker 1: and one tick. Only one of those has any business
Speaker 1: being in there. The tick you can only blame so
Speaker 1: much because you know that's it's a tick. It's gross,
Speaker 1: it's it's there to suck skin. The ticks actually the
Speaker 1: worst one. I don't really bear a lot of ill
Speaker 1: will to cockroaches. I don't love having them in my house.
Speaker 1: But you know, ticks, I just you know, just the newcomb. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like we discussed in our our episode on ticks, h
Speaker 1: certainly everyone should go back and listen to if you
Speaker 1: want to feel gross about the woods. Um, you know
Speaker 1: that they are out to get us. They are out
Speaker 1: to get us. Most of the these other cases there
Speaker 1: are just mistakes. But the tick wants you, and it's
Speaker 1: seeking you, and if you venture into its abode, it
Speaker 1: will find you. So. Baron Bomb mentions that a common
Speaker 1: method for removing cockroaches from the ear is to drown
Speaker 1: a cockroach in liquid of some kind before removal. It
Speaker 1: is much like my dad did with the bug that
Speaker 1: flu into my ear. I think that was that was
Speaker 1: a good good thing to do. And now ideally I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna say people should usually try to deal with
Speaker 1: bugs and body cavities on their own, because there are
Speaker 1: cases where having like a medical opinion is important, but
Speaker 1: that does seem to be a pretty pretty reliable way
Speaker 1: to deal with it. Drowning liquids throughout a medical history
Speaker 1: of included benzicne, sucinal coline, isoperoble alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, ether, water,
Speaker 1: vegetable oil, mineral oil. Want to be clear, I'm not
Speaker 1: recommending all of those, especially since things like ether are flammable.
Speaker 1: A more recent technique that's been used in clinics, pioneered
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty is the use of lytocane spray. This is
Speaker 1: usually used as a topical anesthetic, right you know, they
Speaker 1: sprayed on you to to numb the skin, but when
Speaker 1: applied to a quote inter intro, sorry not inter intra
Speaker 1: aural cockroach, uh, it tends to paralyze the insects, so
Speaker 1: the insect can be safely removed or even bet are.
Speaker 1: The initial application of light acaine solution spray sometimes causes
Speaker 1: the problem to resolve itself, as in the case of
Speaker 1: one intervention by O'Toole at All published in nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: in which after the light decayne application quote, the roach
Speaker 1: exited the canal at a convulsive rate of speed and
Speaker 1: attempted to escape across the floor, presumably with a road
Speaker 1: run er asque sound effect me be uh. And then
Speaker 1: Baron Boum notes that quote the simple crush method was
Speaker 1: quote ultimately responsible for the demise of the cock row.
Speaker 1: But now I got a dead cockroach in my ear. No,
Speaker 1: it wasn't in the ear, it was on the floor. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's fine. No, no, no, I want to
Speaker 1: be very clear. Don't try to step on a cockroach
Speaker 1: in somebody's ear. That is not That doesn't work at all.
Speaker 1: That method was then improved upon in nineteen eighty nine
Speaker 1: with the addition of a metal suction tip to vacuum
Speaker 1: the cockroach out. Reportedly, after one case, the lydocaine spray
Speaker 1: was was applied and then the patient suddenly exhorted the
Speaker 1: doctor to quote, get that sucker out of my ears.
Speaker 1: So they used the vacuum to get it out. Um.
Speaker 1: But then also she relays some reports about fly larva
Speaker 1: or maggots colonizing the orifices of humans, such as the
Speaker 1: nose or the euro genital tract. Though she seems a
Speaker 1: little skeptical about the case report that that that was
Speaker 1: about the euro genital tract. One of the medical reports
Speaker 1: she discusses are relayed by Battia and Lund in the
Speaker 1: Journal of Laryngology and Otology in n concerns this thirty
Speaker 1: five year old man in London who had an infestation
Speaker 1: of oestrus ovis a sheep nasal bot fly in his
Speaker 1: nose in the thirty five year old man's nose. Apparently
Speaker 1: this happens more commonly in shepherds and people who deal
Speaker 1: directly with sheep. Makes sense. It's a little perplexing how
Speaker 1: this guy in London got one. Uh he claimed he
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with sheep, but who knows. According
Speaker 1: to the report, he had been quote sneezing out several
Speaker 1: maggots during the preceding six weeks before he called a doctor,
Speaker 1: and Baron Bomb points out that it's kind of odd
Speaker 1: that it took him that long to call a doctor
Speaker 1: after sneezing out maggots. I would also think if you
Speaker 1: if you seem to be consistently sneezing out matt maggots,
Speaker 1: you do have a small window to really succeed on
Speaker 1: the sideshow circuit. You know, like like the second it
Speaker 1: starts happening. Books some appearances and uh and and do
Speaker 1: it as fast as possible while the magic is still there.
Speaker 1: Come see the amazing maggot gig uh And perhaps the
Speaker 1: most troubling recent case and don't worry, it has a
Speaker 1: happy ending. Of a cockroach in a body cavity that
Speaker 1: I came across was this one. So on February one
Speaker 1: seen a doctor m In Shankar of Stanley Medical College
Speaker 1: Hospital in Chennai, India removed a cockroach from a woman's
Speaker 1: skull and this one was in her sinus cavity. So
Speaker 1: here's a definite like this is this is this is
Speaker 1: earlier centipede territory. Right. We don't know if there were
Speaker 1: ever really centipedes in there, but definitely a cockroach can
Speaker 1: get in there. It was inner side, this cavity in
Speaker 1: between her eyes and it had apparently crept up her
Speaker 1: nose while she was asleep. And fortunately Dr Shankar was
Speaker 1: able to remove the insects successfully with an endoscopic procedure
Speaker 1: and the woman was fine. If you've got a strong stomach,
Speaker 1: there's a video of this you can watch on the internet. Uh. Well, no,
Speaker 1: thank you. But but but secondly, it does make me
Speaker 1: think of the little woman who lived in the shoe.
Speaker 1: So if centipedes are not naturally occurring and naturally crawling
Speaker 1: into people's sinus cavities, buddy of occasionally a cockroach may
Speaker 1: then perhaps the centipede is just that that individual's initial
Speaker 1: attempt to deal with the problem. Uh, that doesn't work,
Speaker 1: and then they have to go to the doctor, and
Speaker 1: they don't you know, you know, it's it's like if
Speaker 1: you try and you know, work on your own weight
Speaker 1: toenail or something, or do your own dynastry, and then
Speaker 1: you go finally and seek professional help. You don't want
Speaker 1: to tell them, oh, yeah, I tried to do this
Speaker 1: stupid thing of my own first. Uh. And now I'm
Speaker 1: here with you. No, you just say, I guess there's
Speaker 1: a cockroach up there. Did you say the old lady
Speaker 1: who lived in the shoe? I think you meant the
Speaker 1: old lady who's followed a fly. Yeah, it might be
Speaker 1: the same one. She swallowed a centipede to catch the flush.
Speaker 1: She snorted a centipede to catch the cockroach that wriggled
Speaker 1: and jiggled and wiggled in side. Roach. Perhaps you'll die, yes,
Speaker 1: but she didn't. Well no, wait, I'm not saying this
Speaker 1: woman actually did that. But the woman in the case
Speaker 1: very clear did not die. I don't remember what happened
Speaker 1: to her. I think I don't know. Well, uh so
Speaker 1: I think we should end here with a discussion of
Speaker 1: what to do if you actually think there's a bug
Speaker 1: in one of your body cavities, if you think you've
Speaker 1: got a centipede or a cockroach up your nose or
Speaker 1: in your ear or whatever, what's your plan of action. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, we want to emphasize again even if
Speaker 1: you feel very convinced, there is a very good chance
Speaker 1: you're mistaken, and that should be good news, right like
Speaker 1: people feel creepy Crawley sensations for all kinds of reasons,
Speaker 1: and animals actually getting inside the body cavities. Though there
Speaker 1: are a lot of stories collected of it over the time,
Speaker 1: the chances of it happening to you are pretty rare,
Speaker 1: especially if you don't live in a tropical climate. Right now,
Speaker 1: I do want to stress everything we said earlier about
Speaker 1: delusional parasitosis. If you do, if you do have substance
Speaker 1: abuse issues, that could be part of the problem. But
Speaker 1: but you shouldn't be afraid to see a doctor over
Speaker 1: the symptoms if that's the case. But your symptoms could
Speaker 1: be quite unrelated to any kind of substance abuse issues,
Speaker 1: and in this case, it's it's really important to realize
Speaker 1: that it is treatable with antipsychotic medication, and cases like
Speaker 1: this are not as rare as you might think. Though obviously,
Speaker 1: again I can see where that could be a struggle
Speaker 1: to to realize, you know, okay, it's not a situation
Speaker 1: of of an insect crawling into my skin or into
Speaker 1: my body. It's a it's a more elusive concept. It's
Speaker 1: there's something, there's an illusion in my mind that has
Speaker 1: to be addressed. If the causes are psychological, there is
Speaker 1: not shame in seeking treatment. Seeking treatment will help you, absolutely,
Speaker 1: So that's what you should do, right, What should you
Speaker 1: not do? Oh? Okay, Well, if you even if whatever
Speaker 1: the real cause is, if you think something is in
Speaker 1: your ear, say, or in your nose, first piece of
Speaker 1: advice is do not try to kill or crush it,
Speaker 1: because if there actually is an insect in there, you're
Speaker 1: not seriously in danger of a bug inside your nose
Speaker 1: or your ear eating your brain. That's not gonna happen.
Speaker 1: You should seek medical attention as soon as possible, but
Speaker 1: it's not gonna like, you know, eat the contents of
Speaker 1: your skull. What you're actually in greater danger of is
Speaker 1: bacterial infection in the cavity. Uh. And I mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: that article that interviews the entomologist Kobe shawl Shall points
Speaker 1: out that one of the worst ways you can put
Speaker 1: yourself at risk of infection with a roach in your
Speaker 1: orifice is to crush it, because this could release its
Speaker 1: mighty legions of gut bacteria into your own body, and
Speaker 1: that can lead to an infection. And there's a wonder,
Speaker 1: wonderful historic example of this. Yeah, So I want to
Speaker 1: talk about the English explorer and British Indian Army officer
Speaker 1: John Hanning Speak who was famous for exploring the Nile
Speaker 1: River to mind what was believed to be its source
Speaker 1: in the eighteen fifties. And there's this story I related
Speaker 1: and Speaks diaries that one night he's resting in his
Speaker 1: tent and the tent quote became covered with a host
Speaker 1: of small black beetles, evidently attracted by the glimmer of
Speaker 1: the candle. And then he went to sleep even though
Speaker 1: all these beetles were around, and he later woke up
Speaker 1: with one of the beatles crawling in his ear. Quote.
Speaker 1: He began with exceeding vigor, like a rabbit in a hole,
Speaker 1: to dig violently away at my tympanum. The queer sensation
Speaker 1: this amusing measure excited in me is past description. What
Speaker 1: to do? I knew, not so speak. Tried to get
Speaker 1: it out by washing his ear canal with melted butter.
Speaker 1: This didn't work. Uh. Then he tried to dig it
Speaker 1: out with a knife, and this was a bad move.
Speaker 1: He only killed and presumably crushed or cut up the
Speaker 1: insect and wounded his own ear, And then the ear
Speaker 1: became infected quote for many months. The tumor made me
Speaker 1: almost deaf, and aid a hole between the ear and
Speaker 1: the nose, so that when I blew it, my ear
Speaker 1: whistled so audibly that those who heard it laughed. Six
Speaker 1: or seven months after this accident happened, bits of the beatle,
Speaker 1: a leg, a wing, or parts of the body came
Speaker 1: away in the wax. Uh. And I should just mention
Speaker 1: that I actually found the story related in that classic
Speaker 1: Snopes article about bugs eating through the ear into the brains.
Speaker 1: That's where I got the quotes from. But they're originally
Speaker 1: from uh, I guess speaks diaries, as passed along in
Speaker 1: a book about Sir Sir Richard Francis Burton, right, Uh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is just one of many amazing incidents from the
Speaker 1: travels of John Hanning Speak and Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton,
Speaker 1: with whom he sought the source of the nile and
Speaker 1: the bug incident here is actually depicted in the n
Speaker 1: film The Mountains of the Moon, which starred Patrick Bergen
Speaker 1: as as Richard Francis Burton and Ian Glenn most people
Speaker 1: know as uh Sir Mormont from A Game of Thrones
Speaker 1: or The End All. Yeah, he played John Hanning Speak.
Speaker 1: It's uh, I haven't seen it in forever. I when
Speaker 1: as a kid and and loved it. But it also
Speaker 1: stars Richard E. Grant, Fiona shap Peter Vaughan, Delroy Lindo,
Speaker 1: Bernard Bernard Hill, Omar sha Reef. So it had a
Speaker 1: great cast and I remember being a quite an interesting
Speaker 1: film and a great introduction to two just fascinating characters
Speaker 1: from history. Yeah. Well, I just wanted to mention quickly
Speaker 1: that Uh, it's impossible to be sure, Like we don't
Speaker 1: know what actually caused Speaks infection, but it seems very
Speaker 1: likely that simultaneously crushing the insect and cutting his own
Speaker 1: ear with the knife made the problem much worse than
Speaker 1: it would have been if he just let the beetle
Speaker 1: try to get out, and then that probably may have
Speaker 1: led to an infection. Yeah, after you brought this up,
Speaker 1: I popped out Edward Rice's biography of Burton, and he
Speaker 1: mentions that that Burton sometimes criticized Speak for a bit
Speaker 1: of like reckless ambition, especially in the African wilds. But
Speaker 1: then again the two clashed at times and had like
Speaker 1: a tremendous falling out and somewhat hated each other later
Speaker 1: on in life. But at any rate, one one assumes
Speaker 1: that Burton was not tremendously easy to get along with either. Um.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, if you want to see of
Speaker 1: a cinematic depiction of this this beetle in the ear incident,
Speaker 1: it is it is in that movie The Mountains of
Speaker 1: the Moon, along with one of the other more harrowing
Speaker 1: encounters they had. Also is also depicted in which Somali
Speaker 1: spearmen tie up and stab speak numerous times with their spears,
Speaker 1: and then a throne spear skewers Burton through the cheeks
Speaker 1: through it, so through one cheek and out the other. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you see. And you see all these like later portraits
Speaker 1: of Burton, and you can often see the scar on
Speaker 1: each each side of the face. That's like a gearmu
Speaker 1: Deltro movie injury. It's like what is Oh, it's in
Speaker 1: Pan's Labyrinth where the guy gets cheek trauma. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: well this was This is a classic case of cheek
Speaker 1: trauma and a cheek trauma, but also dental trauma because
Speaker 1: the spear damnit like took out teeth and damaged the jaw,
Speaker 1: but he was able to They both traveled back to
Speaker 1: England after the incident and both had had lots of
Speaker 1: medical care attend to their wounds. Well yeah, so part
Speaker 1: I guess the moral of the story here is don't
Speaker 1: be like speak. If you actually do think you have
Speaker 1: a cockroach or an insect in your ear or whatever,
Speaker 1: don't crush it, don't kill it, do your best to
Speaker 1: stay calm, seek medical attention as soon as possible. A
Speaker 1: doctor can examine you and tell if something is actually
Speaker 1: in there or not, and if there is, they can
Speaker 1: try to remove the animal if it's actually there. If
Speaker 1: there's not something in there, you should seek medical attention
Speaker 1: to They can try to help figure figure out what's
Speaker 1: going on and possibly prescribe medication to alleviate your symptoms.
Speaker 1: All right, So there you have it. Obviously, if you
Speaker 1: have any experience with any of these scenarios yourself, or
Speaker 1: or if you just have heard some folk tales of
Speaker 1: such things, or you have a favorite cinematic u uh
Speaker 1: intrabody bug threat you want to share, let us know.
Speaker 1: You can reach us in the in the normal ways.
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