Man Tries 'Foklore Cure' to Constipation Using Live Eel Which Swam From His Rectum to His Colon

In an effort to alleviate constipation, a man in Jiangsu province put a 20-centimeter-long eel into his rectum from the anus.

(Photo : BORIS HORVAT/AFP via Getty Images)
Man inserts eel to his anus to cure constipation.

Man's Idea of Healing Constipation

In a recently published article in IFLScience, a guy from Xinghua in East China's Jiangsu Province tried to treat his constipation by putting a large live eel into his anus. Unfortunately for both eels and anuses, this isn't a one-off occurrence.

The guy had grown constipated and had rejected or been unaware of conventional medical advice on constipation relief, choosing instead for the traditional cure of shoving an eel up there and letting it do its job. Unfortunately, its plan was to move up his rectum and into his colon, where it punctured the colon wall and entered his abdomen.

The guy was in agony, but he was too embarrassed to seek medical help. He eventually gave in after a day and sought medical assistance at a nearby hospital, where doctors informed him he might have died, according to a published article in Global Times.

Doctors Removed 20-centimeter Live Eel

The 20-centimeter (8-inch) eel was removed from the unidentified patient after surgery. Surprisingly, the eel had survived the ordeal and was still alive when doctors extracted it from him. The man learn the hard way about the importance of avoiding placing live eels in your anus.

A "folk cure" that claims an eel may assist with bowel movement prompted the guy to do so. Instead of relieving the man's constipation, the eel swam from his rectum to his colon, biting through it and into his abdomen, according to a published article in Thats Mags.

Other related Incident

Others have recently been affected by this "traditional treatment." Following his own effort to alleviate constipation, a guy had a 50-centimeter (20-inch) eel removed from his stomach in 2017. A guy in his fifties put an Asian swamp eel into his anus in June 2020, which also penetrated his abdominal cavity. Feces and pus entered the cavity after the injury, causing a serious infection.

The guy, who was in his 50s, informed physicians who saved his life that he had put the eel into his body as a "traditional medicine," but that the treatment had not gone as intended. After suffering from stomach discomfort for a week, he sought medical help at Dongguan Huangjiang Hospital in China's southern province of Guangdong.

Doctors had to remove a 15-inch Asian swamp eel alive from a man's intestines before he confessed he had put it through his anus to "treat his constipation." The wiggling monster ripped a hole in the man's intestines, and he ended up in the hospital with severe sepsis and septic shock.

According to Li Jian, the director of general surgery, the man's condition was such that he was unable to speak properly. Doctor Li said that he had a septic shock when he arrived. They suspected a foreign body in his abdominal cavity during a CT scan, but could not determine what it was.

Doctors opened into the patient's belly and discovered it packed with waste stuff, including feces and pus from his serious illness, and performed emergency surgery to remove the eel from his intestines.