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Home --> Photo Gallery --> Medical --> Maggot Brain

Maggot Brain

Claim:   Photographs show a medical patient whose "brain is infested with maggots."

Status:   Real pictures; inaccurate description.

Examples:   [Collected on the Internet, 2003]

Dude gets an ingrown hair. It gets infected, now he has a boil. Ought to go to the doc and get it lanced, but he doesn't. Weeks pass. The boil grows, eroding downward toward his skull. Ought to go to the hospital in a jiffy, but he doesn't. Weeks pass. The infection reaches his skull. Bone, once infected, presents little barrier to spread of infection to contiguous bone, and so it spreads within his skull. Ought to spend a good long time in the hospital, but he doesn't. The bone dies, and begins to erode. Weeks pass. At some point, the smell attracts flies, which begin to lay eggs in his festering wound, and maggots take hold. Weeks pass. The infection breaches the inner layer of his skull, and reaches the meninges. Weeks pass. Though their tensile strength is impressive, the meninges are quite thin, and the infection breaches them. Now, infection and maggots set to work on his brain. Your brain just isn't supposed to be on your outside, and presents almost no barrier to anything when exposed. Infection and maggots get to work on his brain. This makes him feel a little wobbly on his feet, and so, what do you know, he decides to see the doctor. He walks in to the Stanford ER, where these photos were taken, just as you see him here.



This is a true case of a japanese man from GifuPrefecture who complains incessantly about a persistent headache.

Mr. Shota Fujiwara loves his sashimi and sushi very much to the extent of trying to get them as "alive and fresh" as can be for his insatiable appetite. He developes a severe headache for the past 3 years and has put it off as migraine and stress from work. It was only when he started losing his psycomotor skills that he seeks medical help. A brain scan and x-ray reveals little however. But upon closer inspection by a specialist on his scalp, the doctor noticed small movements beneath his skin. It was then that the doctor did a local anaesthetic to his scalp and discovered the cause when tiny worms crawled out. A major surgery was thus immediately called for and the extent of the infestation was horrific.

See the attached pictures to the scene that one thought only a movie could produced:

Remember, tapeworms and roundworms and their eggs which abounds in all fishes from fresh or saltwater can only be killed by thorough cooking and/or freezing the fish to between 4°C-0°C. The eggs of these parasites can only be killed if it is cooked or frozen to the said temperatures for a week or more. Think twice about that raw dish next time . . . or you might get a headache.

Click to enlarge Click to enlarge

Origins:   The two disparate explanations for these photographs given above are a good indicator of a common Internet phenomenon: Someone makes pictures available on-line, they begin to circulate through e-mail forwards, the original attribution is lost along the way, people begin to make up stories to explain the origins of the now-sourceless photographs, and those fabricated explanations become attached to the pictures as they continue to
circulate.

Asking a dozen different medical experts about the photographs shown above produced a dozen different answers — everything from a skeptical "It's possible" to a flat-out assertion that the pictures had "obviously been faked" (either at the photographic level using a prosthetic device, or at the digital level with image editing software). However, too often people get caught in the trap of assuming that because photographs don't match the explanations accompanying them, the pictures must have been fabricated or manipulated, and one conclusion doesn't necessarily follow from the other.

Although the explanations quoted above are erroneous, these images are in fact real and undoctored, and they are indeed photographs taken of a patient whose brain surface was exposed and crawling with insects. The pictures date from October 2002, and they are photographs of a man in his 70s who was suffering from an unusual form of cancer which had eaten away at the upper portion of his skull and scalp but who had not sought any medical treatment because the condition was not causing him pain. The man was brought to the trauma center at Stanford University Hospital (where the photographs shown here were taken) by San Mateo County paramedics who had been summoned to the scene after the man was involved in a minor automobile accident and who found him in his car in the condition pictured.

Last updated:   6 April 2003

The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/photos/medical/maggots.asp

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