Friday, January 14, 2005

Gross! Gross! Gross!

So this afternoon I saw BoingBoing's article about Larval therapy and just had to blog about my own personal gross-out -- maggots!

Months ago there was a picture of an allegedly maggot infested breast, but that was debunked on Snopes. To exorcise my personal demons, I started hunting for the real thing and found this -- 'Furuncular myiasis of the breast caused by the larvae of the Tumbu fly (Cordylobia anthropophaga)'.

And just what does that mean? Well, here is a better description:


We report a 70 year old woman who presented with a week history of itchy multiple discharging sinuses of the right breast. The sinuses contained wriggling larvae of C. anthropophaga. Fourteen larvae were extracted from the breast and the sinuses healed quite well after the extraction.


Head on over for the photos, but stay for the video.

Man, that is freaking gross! Check out how those suckers wiggle around! Ugh! Unclean! Unclean!