Shaman swallows iron rods and lands in the operating room

Shaman swallows iron rods and lands in the operating room

09/07/2014

Heavy food: Four swallowed iron bars were heavy in the stomach of a shaman. Although the man had tolerated the swallowed foreign body well at first, but then came more and more severe pain.

Four iron bars two months in the body
According to press reports, doctors in Nepal have operated on a shaman "four iron bars from the body, which the self-proclaimed naturopath had swallowed in a trance two months earlier." The 47-year-old man was reportedly brought to the hospital by his family with stomach ache, fever and vomiting, a doctor told the news agency AFP on Saturday. In the clinic then four twelve to 15 centimeters long iron rods were removed. The foreign bodies had injured several organs of the man and caused internal bleeding.

Already 300 such bars swallowed
According to his own account, the shaman has already swallowed more than 300 such metal bars in his life. But two months ago this practice was doomed to him: „Obsessed“ he swallowed the four sticks of an apparition of the Hindu god Shiva. According to his doctors, the patient is now out of danger again. Apparently he had the relatively digestible food initially coped relatively well. However, as his pain became more and more severe, his relatives carried him four hours on foot to the hospital in the mountainous region of Jumla.

Felt pen writes after 25 years in the stomach still
In Nepal, shamanism and esoteric practices are not uncommon. Especially in remote villages of the Himalayan state, the naturopaths are often consulted. But in the West, too, shamanic exercises often appeal. How long such - rather easier - foreign bodies can dwell unnoticed in the human body shows, among other things, a case from Great Britain. There, in 1986, a woman had swallowed a felt-tip pen that was taken out of her body only 25 years later, in 2011, by doctors from the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital Foundation Trust. At that time, the doctors had in the journal „British Medical Journal Case Reports“ surprised to find that the pen was still writing in the stomach after a quarter of a century. (Ad)