Decidedly Grim

Today’s Seething Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Sometime in the mid-1950′s a young and inexperienced Scottish doctor called Murdoch was working as a locum junior surgeon in a hospital on a Shell oil field in Sarawak, Borneo. There were four doctors on the staff of the hospital looking after a workforce of 10,000 people, and they also offered a free service to the local people in the surrounding jungle. One afternoon a young man was brought in looking very sorry for himself. There were runnels of dried blood all over his face and his hand was firmly pressed to the top of his head as if he were holding on a hat. Murdoch sat the injured man down on a chair and asked him to put his hand down. When he complied, about half of his scalp fell forward over his face covering his eyes and nose. The inner surface of the scalp and the exposed part of his cranium were covered with a seething mass of maggots. Murdoch was taken aback, but he got the patient over to a sink, put a length of rubber tubing on the tap, and washed the wrigglers out. He was able to sew up the scalp and within a few days, the patient was discharged from the hospital.

As the man was leaving, a friend explained the cause of the injury. The friend had been giving the injured man a ride on the cross bar of his bicycle along a jungle path when they hit a bump. The patient had fallen off and struck his head on a large stone. The friend, assuming he had been killed, and aware that the fine for riding two to a bicycle was $5, had left him where he lay and said nothing. The large, bleeding scalp wound had, of course, attracted flies and he had lain there, unconscious, for three or four days, during which time the eggs had hatched.

Dr Murdoch later said, “Never before or since have I seen such remarkable wound healing. One thing is sure – I can certainly take no credit for the outcome. That, clearly, must go to the maggots.”

Culled from: Medical Curiosities : A Miscellany of Medical Oddities, Horrors and Humors

Facts