On July 20, a man in Xinghua, Jiangsu Province, East China, inserted a 20-centimeter-long living eel into his rectum in the hope of relieving constipation, but nearly died when the eel entered his abdomen.
The man was motivated to do so by a “folk remedy” that claims an eel can aid in bowel movement. However, rather than curing constipation, the eel travelled from the man’s rectum to the colon and bit through it, entering the abdomen.
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He eventually went to the hospital after experiencing pain on the first day and being “too embarrassed to see the doctor.”
According to the doctor who performed the operation, he could have died because the bacteria in his large intestine could have caused hemolysis when they reached his abdominal cavity.
By the time the eel was removed during the operation, it was still alive. The man is not the only victim of the “folk remedy” that asserts that inserting eel into the rectum can alleviate constipation.
In June 2020, a 50-year-old man in Guangdong Province, South China, did the same thing with a 40-cm-long eel.
On June 2, 2020, an African carp was discovered in the stomach of a young man in Guangdong, China, who claimed the fish “slid into” his rectum when he sat on it accidentally.