brain – Museum of the Weird

Posted on November 13, 2015 by MOTW Admin

Man attacked by brain-eating worm given only 30 minutes to live

Luis Ortiz, a California college student, was suddenly struck by a crippling headache and became very ill. His mother rushed him to the emergency room of a Napa hospital where neurosurgeon Soren Singel ran a brain scan. What he saw was terrifying.

A tapeworm larva was eating into Luis’s brain and unless something was done immediately he had only 30 minutes to live! Ortiz was rushed to emergency surgery where the still-wriggling parasite was extracted. Here is video of an interview that CBS News did with this fortunate survivor.

According to this report by the US centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) these larval cysts in the brain – neurocysticercosis – can develop after a person swallows microscopic eggs passed in the faeces of a person who has an intestinal pork tapeworm. They can also come from swimming in infested water.

The eggs hatch inside the body and the worms sometimes make their way to the brain. According to the CDC approximately 1,000 people end up in the hospital with these larvae. Few are such an extreme case as this Luis.

You can’t go through life worrying all the time about brain-eating worms, but clearly there are a few things we should pay attention to. Cook that pork! Be cautious where you swim. Try not to eat people’s faeces, especially people who eat raw pork!

We are glad that Luis survived this ordeal. What a terrifying experience! If you’ve had an amazing medical encounter, tell us.

Saul Ravencraft's signature

Posted on July 8, 2015 by MOTW Admin

Some parts may not be included

If it’s never happened to you, it’s difficult to understand the tragedy of losing a loved one, especially in a death that requires an autopsy. The tension is terrible as you wait for the body to be returned from the authorities so that you can begin the process of burial or cremation. What if you discovered that parts of your loved one were missing? confiscated by the authorities?

This actually happened to the family of Brian Shipley of Staten Island who died in a 2005 car crash. Years after he was buried, a highschool classmate was doing a tour of the medical examiner’s office and found his friend’s brain preserved and proudly displayed in a jar. The family had no idea about this.

The Shipleys sued, as their beliefs require that the body be buried as a whole. The case has finally made it through the court. According to an article in the New York Daily News, the court decided it is legal for a medical examiner to keep body parts from an autopsy for their own use and that they don’t even have to tell the family.

Is it reasonable for a medical examiner to be able to keep a few souvenirs of their work? What do we say to people whose beliefs require a full accounting of the remains? Should people be compensated in some way when the state keeps a piece or two?

Personally, your author finds this pretty outrageous.

Posted on March 30, 2011 by Steve Busti

SCIENTISTS FIND PERFECTLY PRESERVED 2500 YR OLD BRAIN INSIDE SKULL

2500 year old brain of Iron Age man — Grey matter: The 2,500-year-old preserved brain has baffled scientists after it was found during an excavation at the University of York

Archaeologists believe they have discovered one of the world’s oldest brains that once belonged to a man in Iron Age Britain who was sacrificed in a ritual killing.

Scientists found the cranium in a muddy pit when they were excavating a site before a new campus was to be built at the University of York. When a researcher reached inside the skull, she was stunned to discover the soft tissue of the 2,500-year-old brain still preserved.

Fractures and marks on the bones suggest the man, who was aged between 26 and 45, died most probably from hanging, after which he was carefully decapitated and his head was then buried on its own.

Scientists have been baffled by how the brain tissue – which usually rots after a couple at years – managed to remain intact for so long.

‘The survival of brain remains where no other soft tissues are preserved is extremely rare,’ said Sonia O’Connor, research fellow in archaeological sciences at the University of Bradford.

‘This brain is particularly exciting because it is very well preserved, even though it is the oldest recorded find of this type in the UK, and one of the earliest worldwide.’

Philip Duffey, a neurologist at York Hospital who scanned the skull, said: ‘I’m amazed and excited that scanning has shown structures which appear to be unequivocally of brain origin.’