From the Vault: Bugs Under The Skin

get over it and listen. Either way, we're gonna keep going here. H stick with us if you have the guts. Welcome to Stuff to blow your mind from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Robert, what's the weirdest thing you ever got stuck up your nose?

I think I've been very fortunate. I know plenty of other people who have tales of siblings getting odd objects lodged up their nostrils, being a marble or I think my brother in law had a piece of carpet stuck up there something. You know, you hear all these stories, and luckily, I don't think I've ever had anything, um, anything stuck in my nose, So unfortunate in that regard.

You know, your mention of the marbles makes me think about did you ever see that old episode of the show Home Movies where they their take on the like Judas pre supplemental messages. Thing is there's a rock band who I think does a does a public service announcement song called don't put Marbles in your nose, but it also keeps saying put them in there now. I think the worst, especially like childhood experience of anything going into an unexpected orifice, would be um, when I had some

sort of small insect fly into my ear. Oh really, yeah, which which the main distressing thing is that a little bug, once it gets inside your ear, is extremely loud. So I do. I do remember that quite clearly. It's looking at the outside from the inside, it's a horrible feeling. Yeah, And I remember like my dad was there and he jumped in and I guess it happened at the house because they had some like rubbing alcohol and like they poured a little bit of that into my ear. And

that took care of it. Well, that experience is going to be a great jumping off point for our discussion today, because I think we should start off by playing one of my favorite games that we play on this show, which is go into old medical journals and read some weirdness. Oh yes, So I want to talk about a case report that was published in December of eighteen thirty in the medical journal The Lancet. This is a truly disturbing report. So if you if you get picked out easily, you

know fair warning. So let us read from the Lancet. A farmer's wife, twenty eight years of age, residing in the neighborhood of Mets, had for a long time been affected with an unpleasant itching sensation in the nose with Cora's which means running nose, to which symptoms in the year eighteen seven, violent headache exceeded so that she was

at length obliged to apply for medical aid. The headache was irregularly intermittent, and generally began at the root of the nose, in the middle of the forehead or at the right frontal region, extending thence first to the right side and then over the whole head. The attack was accompanied by a great discharge of tears, and sometimes even

nausea and vomiting. The features were forcibly distorted, the jaws firmly closed, and the eyes and ears so very sensible that she could not bear the least light or any noise. At other times she became delirious, pressed the head between her hands, and ran about in a state of distraction. The pain was, according to her statement, like the strokes of a hammer, or as if something was perforating the skull, and the fits generally returned about twelve times in twenty

four hours. Sometimes the headache continued uninterruptedly for several days. The corsa or running nose again existed during the whole period, and the discharge was occasionally very feted and mixed with blood. Okay, so we're starting off pretty gross already. This poor woman is suffering these terrible chronic symptoms. She's got the headache, she's got the swelling, she's got the sensitivity and the eyes and the nose and all that. Uh, and then

she's also got this discharge mixed with blood. It's always distressing in any case to have fetid discharge. The idea that it's fetted is very worrisome, Okay, so continuing, some medicines were employed, but no regular plan of treatment was followed, and it was not before a twelve month suffering that this singular affection terminated after the expulsion of a worm from the nose, which moved with rapidity and when placed

in water, remained alive for several days. It was afterwards killed by being put in alcohol and then sent to Monsieur Mareschal, who reported the case to the society. He found the animal to be more than two inches in length and one line in breadth. And I looked that up. Apparently a line is a unit of measure that was not very well standardized. It probably means like a tenth of an inch or twelfth of an inch, so not not very wide, um, but two inches in length. It

had too antenna. Was so not a not a proper worm, right, not a proper worm. Was of yellowish color, flat, and consisted of sixty four rings on each of which were two legs, So definitely not a worm. Uh. Mr Marshall's subsequently transmitted the insect to Messrs Holandra and Russel, who ascertained that it was a skulla pendra Electrica. Okay, so if it had two legs per segment, Yeah, that sounds an awful lot like a centipede. Right, you are, Robert,

this is a centipede. We're talking about. This report alleges that this woman had this chronic condition for more than a year, which was alleviated when she finally blew a centipede out of her nose. Still, that's got to be pretty satisfied. Yeah. Yeah, talked about what is the is

there a word for that? The psychological thing where like people are obsessed with like removing objects from their body, the satisfaction people get from like picking a huge booker, or from from pooping a large poop I don't know, but or popping a pimple too. Yes, I thought about this on and off for years, and I would love to explore it in an episode if there is enough material out there about it, because clearly it is an obsession. Like their whole video channels on YouTube associated with with

this sort of thing. And um, yeah, And when I hear people talk about, oh, imagine the virtual realms will't happen in the future, and I'm thinking, well, yes, you're gonna have your obvious sex and violence oriented uh experiences, but they're gonna be like whole virtual realms, just just devoted to the popping of of surrealistic pimples. Yeah, what is the grand theft auto of like visceral body purging experiences? Yeah?

Before I forget, I do want to give a hat tip because I came across this story on the blog of a British writer named Thomas Morris, who covers a lot of horrifying medical history and is definitely worth following if you're interested in this kind of stuff. So shout out to Morris who what we will return to again in a minute. But anyway, back to the centipede coming out of the nose. So there are probably some good

reasons to question the details of this report. Right just because it was published in a medical journal like the Lance, it doesn't mean it's necessarily true, especially this far back in history. But we can we can come back to that. So the the insect alleged here, it's not actually an insect. It is a centipede. It's the skull of Pendra electrica, a reportedly bioluminescence centipede. According to a catalog by Bozard

in Nature in eight quote a well known luminous insect. Again, not an insect, but well known luminous insect whose light is but rarely seen owing to the insect living underground and in manure heaps. Okay, so that's how it would have seen what it was doing up in her sinus maybe, or that's maybe that's how it ended up there, like she was snorting manure. There you go. But the bottom line is this, this report is that a woman had a glowing centipede living in her nose for over a year,

which is a bit far fetched. Yeah, I think so, but I mean, it's impossible to know for sure, but I'm I have a lot of doubts. But yeah, so I wanted to explore more and then later we'll get into the more general territory. I think of creepy Crawley's getting into body orifices, and I think we're going to be focusing primarily not on things that are saying obligate parasites,

because that's a more trodden ground. Right, you might understand why, like say leech could get into the human anus because it's seeking that kind of environment, right, or or certainly indo parasites that even if they're not certainly there are plenty of human indo parasites, but they're also are indo parasites of other species that can end up in our bodies. And even though they are not at home here, um,

this home is very much like the home they desire. Right, So we're not so much talking about like hookworms, tape worms, human bot flies and all that, which we have discussed in other episodes, but we're talking more today about creatures that don't need to be in the human body and wouldn't normally seek it out, but somehow they at least reportedly end up there. So, coming back to the skull apendra, centipedes of the genus skull Apendra can be truly awesome predators.

They tend to step over what is for me one of the most shocking and unpleasant of lines, which is when invertebrates prey on vertebrates, that something something about that always feels backwards and scary and not okay, I mean, I mean part of it perhaps is that. And I feel like this is kind of an undercurrent to to this earlier example, is that invertebrates. Invertebrates will undoubtedly feast

upon vertebrates. You know, they are they are somer. Yeah, they're going to be some of the primary devours of our of our deceased form, and and certainly older generations that were more associated and more closely aligned with physical death, they would have witnessed this more often, both in the bodies of animals but also in the in in human bodies from time to time. But I'm talking about predation.

You're talking about you outright killing, which seems like they're it's it's like this is they have crossed a line, like the line being you shall eat us when we are dead, but shall not do the killing right. It's supposed to be like humans eating lobster is not lobster cousins eating human cousins. I mean, that is clearly verboten. But it's just not It's just not verboten. It happens in nature and there are examples of skull a pendra

that do this. So, according to a two thousand five article in the Caribbean Journal of Science by Mulinary at All quote, skull of pendrid centipedes prey on frogs and toads up to nine millimeters long, small lizards, snakes up to two dred and forty seven millimeters long, birds up to the size of a sparrow, and both field and house mice. So you've got some centipedes in this genus that are getting down on birds. They're getting down on mice,

but presumably due to size restrictions. I think if there are actually any cases of skollapendreds getting in people's noses, it's it's going to be not the ones that twists their many legged bodies around mice and sparrows and eat their warm blooded mammal flesh. Right that those would have probably be too big to end up in the nasal cavity. Now back to Thomas Morris, the medical history writer who

brought this case to my attention on his blog. He writes in his blog post that he thinks it's unlikely that the centipede would have survived inside the woman's nasal sinuses for as long as the report alleges, which is more than a year. And I think that's I don't know, It's one of those things where it's hard to know for sure, but that does seem like a likely objection to throw right right, It's like, what would it be

eating in there? Uh? Could it really like survive in there that long without getting blown out or killed in some other way. Yeah, it just doesn't seem sustainable. On the other hand, the report is detailed, it's published in a reasonably reliable source, it does seem to be reported by a physician. It just seems sort of inherently unlikely. Then again, you know, there are all kinds of things we go to. We can talk in a minute about

the possibility of hoaxes of confusion. I mean, what if just like a centipede happened to get up in her nose during the last day or so of an otherwise bad nose inflammation period. That also seems unlikely. But so um, this is not the only reported case of a centipede up the nose. In fact, I came across a totally separate case from an old medical archive, also dug up by Thomas Morris on his blog. This was several years ago. Uh. This is from the first volume of Medical Essays and Observations,

published in seventeen sixty four. So here's this case quote. A woman of good heal constitution, meaning she was healthy about thirty six years old, began to complain of a fixed pain in the lower and right side of her forehead. During the last two years, this pain became continual, accompanied with convulsions, often depriving her of both her reason and rest. She was two or three times brought to death's door

by it. At the end of four years, after trying several medicines to no purpose, and despairing of any relief, and yet not knowing what to do, she took to taking repeat snuff so it's like tobacco snuff. She had not taken the snuff for a month when Behold seized one morning with a fit of sneezing and blowing her nose after to her great surprise, she found a worm

rolled up in a little blood. This worm, when stretched to its full length, was six inches long and but two When it contracted itself, it was two lines broad and one and a half thick, of a coffee color, convex on one side and flat on the other. It was of the centipede kind and had fifty six feet on each side. It had two eyes, and both its head and ale were armed with two forks. It lived eighteen hours in an empty bottle, and three or four

hours after brandy had been put to it. The egg that produced this worm in all probability was sucked in along with the air she breathed, and carried after to the frontal sinus, where it met with a proper need us, meaning nest, to give it both growth and increase. All right, well, at least we have a on a hypothesis here of how it could have wound up there. Right, Maybe, I mean that seems well she sucked in the eggs somehow and it hatched in there. That also, I don't know,

I'm not a centipede expert. That seems a little bit unlikely, but it sounded like the the implication here was it might the egg might have been in the snuff. At any rate, there's there's at least a there's a there's an attempt at explaining how it wound up in there. It's not like, oh God has has put a centipede in thy head. It is clearly a spontaneous generation of centipedes. You clearly we have we have a theory about it.

We have an hypothesis about how it could have ended up in there, and then the story of how it ended up coming out. It's about to get weirder. Guess what the reporting physician recommends as a treatment for centipede sin us blowing blowing one's nose. Nope. Monsieur Letra, who related the story, advises in all such stubborn cases as will not submit to either external or internal means to come to the trapan which may be employed with all safety.

That's right, trepanning if the insect won't come out. Now, we've talked about trepanning on the podcast before. What what's going on here? You bring out the drill, that's right, we're talking about Usually usually the idea would be we're going to drill a hole in the skull to relieve pressure uh and to uh and and therefore a relieve you of your symptoms. But I guess this is the idea of like, okay, it needs that centipede needs out of your head. It's not coming out through the naturally

occurring gateways. We shall make a new gateway in the head for the centipede, right, I mean, this is almost like the centipede is kind of taking the role of the stone of madness in the medieval form here. Uh. Though again I want to allow I feel this is unlikely. It's not impossible lady had a centipede in her sinus uh. He also recommends using oil and acrid plants to force it out that maybe seems more reasonable. I would be like, let's try that first. Yes, let's let's check those off

the list first. Okay, that's not all. I feel like, who's the Who's the game show host who says that's not all? You're gonna get more prizes? I don't know. The cat in the hat says that, Okay, I might a game show host. The cat in the hat, I'll be the cat and hatn't say. That's not the last of the centipedes up the noses, But we got more for you, including with more tobacco association, so with the snuff.

Third case documented right alongside the first one in this In this source from the eighteenth century, Monsieur Melowe reported that one of the king's household troops complained for three years of an acute pain in the left frontal sinus, which extended to the eye of the same side, so

as to endange to his losing it. He had also a buzzing noise in his ear to relieve which he had some oil of sweet almonds put into it, and in two days after he perceived in his left nostril, and itching and stinging, as if something moved there which he could not discharge, but by putting his finger into his nose, when behold, he pulled out a worm, which ran swiftly on the palm of his hand, though covered with a viscous matter and snuff of which this gentleman

took plenty. This worm was put into a tobacco box with snuff in it, where it lived five or six days. All the patient's complaints ceased after this worm came away. The only difference between this and the former is this this worm was six lines only long and had but one hundred feet, but there was this singular. In both cases.

The former was thought to be expelled by the use of tobacco snuff, whereas this subsisted three years with a plentiful use of the same weed, and after its expulsion, lived five or six days on the same same Alright, So the idea here is the centipede lived for years in this guy's head because he kept putting snuff in there, and it was eating the snuff. It seems to be at least partially the implication. I don't know about eating

the snuff. There seemed to be multiple reasons to doubt the story, especially if you're taking on that detail about the last one, like surviving by eating tobacco. Tobacco, of course, contains nicotine, which is a powerful poison. Like so many of the drugs that humans consume on purpose recreationally, nicotine is supposed to discourage animals from taking the from consuming the plan and this is one of the reasons nicotine

can be used as a natural pesticide. However, I do want to take a really brief digression just to point out one fascinating creature I came across here that does survive on tobacco and nicotine, and that is the men Duca sexta. Robert, do you know about this one? I? No, I wasn't familiar with the man Duca sexta. Oh, this is great. So this is a moth of this finger day family and in its larval stage, so meaning as a caterpillar. This species is sometimes known as the tobacco hornworm.

So the tobacco hornworm eats the leaves of the tobacco plant, and the horn hornworm has a special gene called c yp six B forty six that allows it to metabolize nicotine. And now there's a twist. It doesn't just metabolize the nicotine. It uses this tobacco in its diet to produce a chemical defense sometimes referred to in the literature as toxic halitosis.

It's killer tobacco breath. So when the hornworm is threatened by a predator like a wolf spider, it can defend itself by releasing nicotine through pores in its skin, which drives away the predator. And this has been confirmed by research that found that hornworms fed on low nicotine food

were more susceptible to being attacked by wolf spiders. But at the same time, I do not think that a tobacco hornworm was in the guy's sinus, right, Yeah, Yeah, there's a big difference between the this this larva that is you know, clearly it has evolved to feed on the leaves of this plant versus the predator that is the centipede. Okay, so we got doubts about all these reports, but that that's three centipede in the nose reports. Now you know what, I found one more old centipede in

the nose report. This one from the Journal of Laryngology and Ontology by W. P. May m e y j e s. I don't know how to pronounce that, but I think this is a report from Amsterdam, and this is from this report goes. A woman farm worker from the countryside appeared to the physician with the complaint of a headache over the right eye that had persisted for months,

combined with a chronic running nose. The doctor did not immediately detect any major problems except for stuff like swelling in the nasal cavity and conjunctivius or you know, inflammation of the eyes. So to help less in the swelling go down, the doctor ordered menthol with boric acid for the woman to snuff up. Uh. Man, every time you read these you're just like, wow, these old treatments are boric acid. Um it. So she snuffed it up. A

few days later, the woman returned. Uh. After she has snuffed up the menthol and the boric acid, she has a fit of sneezing and quote found in her handkerchief a small insects still alive. She had put it in some brandy and took it to me. The insect, which was about seven millimeters long, turned to be a centipede. Uh. Centipede, of course, is not an insect. But uh, this report says after the centipede was sneezed out, all the woman's

symptoms went away. So it's difficult to tell how much stock we should put into these stories about centipedes and the human body. Apparently like reported by physicians to real medical journals and publications. Uh. And unfortunately, as we will explore in the rest of this episode, it is not in principle impossible for insects, centipedes and other small creatures to get inside a person's cranial cavities. That does happen,

and we'll discuss more later. At the same time, these stories, at least some of them, seem kind of suspicious for the quality of how long the centipede was supposedly alive inside the human Maybe not impossible, but it's definitely questionable. They also to me, at least, I don't know if you've got the same feeling, Robert. They called to mind the story of Mary Toft, the eighteenth century englishwoman and first class hoax artist who had doctors and surgeons convinced

that she was repeatedly giving birth to rabbits. Oh yes, I remember this story, and apparently she really damaged some medical reputations because she had some some guys on on the line saying like, oh, yeah, I saw it. This lady gave birth to like rabbit parts and like part of an eel and parts of a cat, which if nothing else shows you, like, here's an example, like somebody's willing to go through the grossness of of producing um to say, part of a rabbit from their body as

a hoax. So putting a centipede up your nose, really it's a lighter sentence or I mean, in some cases, all you'd have to do is show up with the centipede and a handkerchief and brandy and say this came out my nose. Now. Why people would really be compelled to do that, I don't know. But then again, people have all kinds of crazy reasons for doing stuff. I mean, people just like to make up weird stories. Sometimes, yeah,

could just be for for the sheer attention of the thing. Yeah. Uh. Then again, I don't want to totally discount the full nature of these stories, because there are also modern reports of centipedes and body cavities. Some tend to be reported with like an air of sensationalism that kind of prejudices me against just accepting them. For example, in k A t V, a local news station in Arkansas reported a fourteen year old boy and Selene County woke up with

terrible pain in one of his ears. He reached into his ear pulled out a four inch long centipede. Uh. The family reportedly put the centipede in a plastic bag and took the boy to the emergency room. He was okay. Uh in the hospital reported they never encountered a centipede in an ear before. I guess nothing about that story is really implausible, except that it always gets picked up I like the daily mail, and that's how you see it um and so that sort of prejudices me against it.

But for the record, I tried to find recently documented cases of centipedes in the nasal cavity and couldn't find anything, though I did find reports of centipedes in the human ear. So it seems like if centipedes do get up in the sinuses, up in the nose, that's it's much more rare for that to happen than for other cranial invasions such as say, cockroaches in the ear, which we'll get too later. All right. On that note, we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back. Alright, we're back.

So we've discussed centipedes crawling around in one's head allegedly. Uh, where what parts of the human bodies are we going to next? Joe? Well, I think we should. We should take a foray into the oral cavity. So let's establish some basic facts here. Uh. First of all, the question can bugs get inside your body cavities? The answer is yes, that that can happen. It does sometimes happen, right, and anything, we need more ugs in our mouths because we should

be eating more bugs. Oh that's a totally different question. Yeah, I mean we're I think we're on the record being pro intomate feji here, but not talking about the mouth cavity so much because that's less of a worry, right, unless the bug is poisonous, if you swallow it, you know, it's just protein. It's yeah, it's gonna be digested. The problem would really be if it's in a cavity that is not meant to accept incoming solid matter. So this

is where we're getting into the ear, Yes, exactly. And so it's started to talk about cockroaches, because cockroaches are apparently one of the most common animals to end up in human orifices in real documented cases. I was reading a National Geographic article about this by Erica Engel helped h and she sites an interview with a North Carolina State University entomologists named Kobe Shawl a few of Shaw's

quotes and insights. Of course, first of all, it's not uncommon for a cockroach to show up in the human ear. That just does happen. People show up at hospitals all the time with a cockroach law judged in their ear. Apparently the nose as much more unusual this This is like a less common thing to find, but also not totally unknown why cockroaches, well Shall says, cockroaches are constantly searching for food, and actually ear wax might be an

attractive source of nutrition to them. Ear wax tends to contain microbiota that emit a particular kind of volatile compound, volatile fatty acids, and these airborne compounds are similar to what might be present in meat, so your ear wax might smell like meat to a hungry cockroach crawling into those meat caves. It's like that that meat wax straight to the butcher's shop gets you some some gabba google

in the ear. Earagoule anyway, Shall suggests it's possible that secretions from the nasal passage might also be appealing as a kind of food to cockroaches, and don't know for sure, but as possible. But it's also worth emphasizing that cockroaches are not parasites. They're not like hookworms, they're not like the human bot fly. It is not in their interest to get stuck inside a human body cavity, right. That is,

it's an extreme environment best left to the specialists. Right, So, when when a cockroach ends up in a human ear or even in the nose, it is generally all just a big misunderstanding. They didn't mean they didn't really want to get stuck in there. They don't want to be inside you, They'd rather be somewhere else. But it just happened.

They were hungry. Now that that being said, one can well imagine that this could be a path, a long path to parasitism in an organism um such as says say the the theories regarding of the emergence of vampire bats, and they have once feasted on um, you know, in the larva that might be present at a at a wound site on some sort of megafauna, and then over time that develops into a more strategic consumption of blood directly from the you know, the large herbivore, as opposed

to drinking the blood eating the body of the parasites that prey upon the larger before. So an evolutionary path over like millions of years, not over like a night or a year. Nowhere we're going to get tomorrow and nowhere that we have arrived yet. Oh, that is an interesting evolutionary path of the path from say like a cleaning mutual is um to parasitism. But it would have to be a situation like the thing about it is for the cockroach, especially in a human habitat, there's plenty

to eat. There's plenty of other things to eat, like the the ear wax. If it were you know, a great source of of a sustenance, it's probably not the best source of sustenance for the creature. Well even so, it probably might just smell like sustenance. Uh So, almost all incursions of roach kind into human orifices happen while the human is asleep. That almost never happened while the persons awake, and they also almost always feature small specimens

of the creature involved. You don't to get a giant cockroach in your ear. You get a little juvenile cockroach, one of those movie or zooch cockroaches. Movie ors, what do you what do you mean? Because you're watching a movie or you go to the zoo, you're probably gonna encounter one of those giant kissing cockroaches. And then likewise, if it's a film about cockroaches, sometimes they'll throw one of those in just because some people keep them as

pets in there more they're just grocery looking. There's a zero percent chance you'll get a giant hissing cockroach in your ear. If you get one, it will be a little one, you know, not as big a deal. Um. But also, wild bugs can get inside the human body sometimes. Most of the reports and images of this you see on the internet are fake. We want to emphasize this all that. You know, you'll see this on social media. You'll see reports in the tabloids, spiders crawling under people's skin,

burrowing into wounds and all that. It's pretty much all fake. In like cockroaches really do get into ears, but almost every image you see on the internet is not real. Likewise, a lot of the reports you read on the internet, especially from kind of viral sources, they're not real either. One common example is, and I don't know, Robert, have you ever come across the story of like ants getting in through the ear and eating the brain. I don't think I have, but that does sound like the kind

of thing you might read and forward from Grandma or something. Exactly, they get through the gain in the ear and eat the brain if you like, eat sweets before going to bed, or they crawl in one ear and crawl out the other ear. These things do not happen. There are no records in the medical literature of anything like this happening, and it doesn't make sense on its face. Insects do sometimes go in the ear, but they don't eat the brain.

They don't infest the deeper cranium. That just doesn't happen.

But it's easy to see why stories like this, the untrue stories, especially about like spiders crawling under the skin, or ants getting in through the ear and eating the brain, and all that kind of thing, why they are very popular and clicky and share able, and why they take hold of the public consciousness, why they become entomological folklore, because I think they ping a very sensitive spot in our in our you know, neurology, that like, there's a

certain part of human nature that seems very finely tuned for recognizing parasitism and creepy crawley's and anything that might be getting on you. Because there are real parasites out there. Uh So we're sort of hyper primed, I think, to make monsters within this category, right, and and and sometimes we overtally make monsters of them too. It's not count

out the role that horror plays in all of this. Like, in thinking of this, how many of you thought back to Stephen King's Creep Show and the scene where all the cockroaches burst out of e. G. Marshall. That's a great one, Yeah, and in a whole bit that's about like fear of creepy crawleys and cockroaches, you know. And we have all these stories too, have like vampires dying and bursting into you know, a wave of cinipedes and uh bugs. Well, E G. Marshall, I think he plays

like a Howard Hughes type character. Right, he's got he's like a rich guy who keeps himself secluded because he's afraid of like bugs and germs and everything. Right. And there's also I think with this innate like this innate fear of our body being a habitat for something and our body, our bodies are habitats. We learn more about

that essential nature of our being every day. Uh, but it's part of the horrors of the grave, and the idea that we would they would things would be living within us while we were alive is grotesque, Yeah, exactly. But I mean, your body needs to be a habitat for your microbiome. You don't want it to be a habitat for other larger creatures. And so while it is not impossible for bugs to get inside human body cavities, like, there are cases where it definitely happens. Oh yes, we

will discuss more before this episode is over. Many, and I'd say probably the vast majority of cases in which someone is convinced they have bugs inside their body are cases of what's known as delusional infestation, also known as delusional parasitosis or sometimes as eckbombs syndrome. Yeah, name for Swedish neurola just Carl Axel Eckbomb, who published siminar accounts of the disease in and basically the idea here is that, um, you know, one comes to believe that parasites are infesting

your home, your surroundings, your clothing, and ultimately your body. Now, of course, these reports are not isolated to real actual parasites like hookworms and you know that kind of thing. It it also includes delusional ideas about insects and other

creatures that are not actually parasites. Right, and and very often the way it ends up going is someone feels that they are infested by something, you know, they feel that they have uh, parasites inside their body and their bows under their skin, there's some sort of an itching sensation, etcetera. And then they go to the doctor and the doctor looks at them and says, no, there's nothing, there's nothing there.

But they know they feel that they believe it, and they begin going down this road of trying to figure out what's wrong. Um. But of worse, ultimately it is not a problem. It's not a dermatological problem, it's not a it's not a medical biological problem. It is a psychological problem. It is an illusion. So you see this sometimes in the cases of stimulant abuse, especially methamphatamine abuse

can result in delusional parasites. Uh. Sometimes you've seen these referred to as cocaine bugs, or you know the ideas of tweakers who pick up their skin in search of the bugs that they feel in their skin. Um. The Bohart Museum of Entomology points out that high fevers and severe alcohol withdrawal can also produce these symptoms, along with visual hallucinations of the bugs in question. UM. I should also point out there's a there's a wonderful I don't

know if wonderful as the word for it. There's a very uh. There, there's a there's a there's a play, powerful, powerful play by Tracy Letts that I actually got to see performed locally here in Atlanta is really really good called bug uh. And it was later made into a two thousand and six film by William Friedkin, starring Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, and Harry Connick Jr. Harry Connick Jr. Yeah,

I don't know who he played. I haven't seen the film version, um, but I know that the two main characters are Judd and Shannon in the film, Um, but but it's quite good. There's a lot of skin in it, a lot of bug delusions. Uh. And it begins with conspiracy theories about the infestation of the room or the apartment that they're staying in, and then they end up having the shared delusion of their bodies being infested by some sort of a parasite. Anyway, that's the that's the fiction.

But the fiction that the does line up reasonably well with some of the realities. The delusion can ultimately result in self mutilation is one attempts to remove the bugs, or is one it excessively scratches at the skin. There's actually a wonderful article that came out about this couple of years ago from Eric Boudman, and he actually won a two thousand eighteen Science and Society Journalism Award for

his article Acts Sidental Therapists for insect detectives. The trickiest cases involved the bugs that aren't really there, published in UH in S T A t UH, he describes an

individual suffering from this delusion who consulted an exterminator. UH. Then they consulted their doctor, and then they went to a dermatologist and each time, they weren't getting the answers that they wanted and then they needed they were they each time they were told, you know, there's no bugs in your house, there are no bugs in your skin. Uh Like. Ultimately they took to uh filling a bathtub up with insecticide and climbing into it. And but even

that they didn't solve it. They got out and they still felt the presence of the bugs. And that's where, as A. Boudman explains in his article, that's where Dr Gail Ridge entered the scenario. A public entomologists meaning people come to her with specimens and questions to the tune of like twenty three people a day. She works at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. So this individual came to her and she tried to explain to look, this is

how insects actually interact with your skin. This is how you know actual parasites work. Um. And she ended up seeing the individual handful of times before she learned that they died. UM. So in this case, in others, uh, doctor Ridge here often has to weigh in on cases that are far more psychological than entomological. That makes sense, now. Budman's paper is is a great read. I'll try to include a link to it on the landing page for this episode at at the website I stuff to bling

your mind dot com. But it makes a number of very interesting points. First of all, these patients are really suffering, even though doctors tend tend to in many cases dismissed

them and send them away. Right, Like if you show up at a doctor's office and you say I've got bugs inside my body and then the doctor just checks and says, no, there are no bugs in there, that that shouldn't be case closed, right, That should be like, there should be a sign that something is wrong, that you do need help in a way, even if there aren't physically insects. But it's it's a difficult scenario because the best tree for their suffering is usually an antipsychotic.

But there, there, you there. But generally the problem that the struggle is getting them to accept that their problem is psychological and that they need to see a mental health professional because they're coming in here they believe that only a powerful anti parasitic is going to do the trick. Uh, and or that an insect specialist is required. Quote Ridge sees as many as two hundred of these cases a year.

She isn't the only one with this unintentional expertise. A whole network of entomologists, a universities, research stations and even at natural history museums is all too familiar with these requests. So they come in, they bring scabs, samples of skin is proof. One of the individuals that Budeman talks to is Nancy Hinkel from the University of Georgia at Athens.

So close by here and uh. Hinkel says that inquiries like this take up twenty percent of her time and that every state has quote somebody like Gael or Meat. There's body in there that that this is becoming increasingly their work. In other words, cases of delusional parasitosis are rare in the medical field, but far more common in the intomol entomological world. Extreme cases may end in severe alteration of one's life, even suicide or death. Um. Here's

one more quote from the article. Quote. Even when an entomologist notices the tailtell signs of DP, there is little that can be done over the phone. Biologists estimate that there are some six point eight million anthropod species on Earth. Even the most fanciful description could at its root to be a real insect. Well, that's sort of like what we're running into with, UH, with the cases of the centipedes up earlier, Like we didn't we're not there to

see it, so we don't really know for sure. We're just reading these accounts, and so we're stuck with saying like, I don't know, I don't think this likely happened, but we can't be sure. I mean, you can't roll it outright.

So part part of the problem identified in this article is that what's needed here are psycho dermatology outposts in the medical world where where the connection between the science of the mind and signs of the skin is more established, so there's greater ease and finesse moving patients toward proper psychological treatments. And there apparently are a few places in the United States and some in the Netherlands that have

begun to do this. UH. One of the accounts that the author includes here mentions a doctor in Amsterdam that that deals with patients and they've they sort of figured out how to, you know, first form a relationship of trust with the patient and then at the appropriate time, you know, let them know, like this is something you need to see a psychiatrist about, and and sometimes sweetening the deal by pointing out, pointing to a two thousand

fourteen paper about how some drugs that treat delusional disorders also happened to kill kill parasites. So I think that's interesting, you know, pointing figuring out there, like like, they are more of these cases occurring than one might think. And if we just if if medical professionals, entomologists, uh, etcetera. Are are better positioned to move them towards encourage them to go seek appropriate help, uh, everyone's going to be

better off. Yeah. Absolutely, though, I mean, this is such a hard problem, and it's also part of a broader problem which is present in the medical and mental health communities where it's um it just tends to be a fact that people who are experiencing delusions and psychosis another you know, most of the conditions that cause them to experience delusions and psychosis also tend to entail ideation patterns

that made people resistant to correct diagnosis. So like if you tell a person that, Okay, you know, what you think you're experiencing is not physically the case, and you know, like antipsychotic medication could help you. Uh, it just tends very often to be the case that people don't respond well to being told that, and that they say no, that's not right. Right, And oftentimes there's just a stigma against a seeking professional help for for mental problems or

having any kind of mental disorder or delusion. Uh. And then again back to just the nature of insects and infesting our homes, like how hard are are fleas to see? How hard are chiggers to see? Um, you know, without getting into just the whole list of various parasitic organisms

that are basically invisible to us. So again, it doesn't I mean, if you're one is presented with the option like, well, either other people just can't see this creature because it's small, or other people can't see this creature because it is a delusion of your mind. You can see why people are more inclined to believe that it's just something that they just haven't found the right entomologists, they haven't found

the right dermatologists to identify the problem. Yeah. Well, I guess we'd certainly hope that by like establishing procedures like this where you've got sort of a chain of people to talk to where you established trust with the patient and by trying to remove stigma from seeking mental health help. Uh that maybe maybe this kind of thing could get better. I don't know, I would hope, so yeah, yeah, because according to what I've read, the anti psychotic medications do

help the individuals. So like you know, there there, there is, there is a treatment. It's not one of these because there are certain mental conditions We've discussed, various delusions where there is not really an exit, you know, where things are are pretty dire. But this seems to be something that is in many cases very treatable again if proper

treatment is found. And again I get the sense, I don't know if this lines up with what you you're reading, but I get the sense that the vast majority of the people who show up and say I've got a bug in me do not actually have a bug in them. Like the psychological cause of these symptoms. I mean, the symptoms are real in both cases, but psychological causes are

far more prevalent than the entomological causes. Absolutely, all right, We're gonna take another break, give you a few minutes to listen to an advertisement and maybe feel your skin a little bit and see see how you're feeling. But we'll be right back with more more tales of of of bugs in the skin and bugs of the mind. All right, we're back. So, as we were just discussing, it's clear that the majority of cases where people think they've got like a bug inside a body cavity or

under their skin or something. And if you think you've got bugs under your skin, you're pretty much always going to be wrong. If you think you have a bug in the body cavity, even then you're probably mistaken. There. There's probably not a bug in there, but we can't say that's the case always because sometimes bugs do get in there. So I think it's time to talk about that a little more and about UH, and maybe get to talking about what to do if there actually is

a bug in a body cavity. Um so I came across the nine article from the Oxford University Press Journal of the Entomological Society of America, and the piece is by the American biologist and entomologist and National Medal of Science Laureate May Baron Baum. Just a few interesting facts about baron Baum I found UH in addition to being a renowned entomologist, I think she sounds very much like

our kind of people. She created an event at the University of Illinois called the Insect Fear Film Festival, which, according to its website, is an opportunity to quote watch insect themed horror movies, handle live insects at our petting zoo, learn about insects you fear, and then get t shirts, stickers, balloon insects, and your face painted. This sounds like my kind of event. I would love to go to that. This sounds great. Yeah, we'll have to look up creature

features and then touching real insects. That sounds wonderful. It sounds like she's very comfortable, um marrying, you know, sort of like the pop culture, the insect myths and all that, using that as a window to share real knowledge about entomology and the role of insects in our lives with people. Let's look at the fear, let's look at the sensationalism, and then let's look at the reality. Yeah, and so

she seems very cool. She's also apparently had a character named after her in the classic X Files episode War of the Copper Phages, which is one of the best episodes in the entire series. Quite relevant to Today's Top Bake because it discusses cockroaches, ideas about cockroach infestation and a delusional infestation or delusional parasitosis, which is a big big thing in the episode. The character named after her is apparently it's named and I did remember this character

uh named Bambi. Baronbaum recalls she's sort of like a weird entomologist who Molder develops a crush on and Scully gets jealous of over the phone, and I recall she also has some theory that UFO sightings are actually caused by swarms of insects. But that's the X Files character,

not the real Dr baron Baum. So this article, by the way, if you can look it up, it's really pretty great, the one from so she collects references from the medical literature, including an interesting study from nineteen eighty seven by Baker which found a hundred and thirty four cases of foreign objects found in children's ears. Of those d and thirty four objects, twenty seven were insects, and

of those twenty one were cock roaches. So that the others you ask, well, I actually looked up and study to find out what the others were. The other six of those twenty seven where one ant, one fly, three spiders, and one tick. Only one of those has any business being in there. The tick you can only blame so much because you know that's it's a tick. It's gross, it's it's there to suck skin. The ticks actually the worst one. I don't really bear a lot of ill

will to cockroaches. I don't love having them in my house. But you know, ticks, I just you know, just the newcomb. Yeah, like we discussed in our our episode on ticks, h certainly everyone should go back and listen to if you want to feel gross about the woods. Um, you know that they are out to get us. They are out to get us. Most of the these other cases there are just mistakes. But the tick wants you, and it's seeking you, and if you venture into its abode, it

will find you. So. Baron Bomb mentions that a common method for removing cockroaches from the ear is to drown a cockroach in liquid of some kind before removal. It is much like my dad did with the bug that flu into my ear. I think that was that was

a good good thing to do. And now ideally I'm not gonna say people should usually try to deal with bugs and body cavities on their own, because there are cases where having like a medical opinion is important, but that does seem to be a pretty pretty reliable way to deal with it. Drowning liquids throughout a medical history of included benzicne, sucinal coline, isoperoble alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, ether, water,

vegetable oil, mineral oil. Want to be clear, I'm not recommending all of those, especially since things like ether are flammable. A more recent technique that's been used in clinics, pioneered

nineteen eighty is the use of lytocane spray. This is usually used as a topical anesthetic, right you know, they sprayed on you to to numb the skin, but when applied to a quote inter intro, sorry not inter intra aural cockroach, uh, it tends to paralyze the insects, so the insect can be safely removed or even bet are.

The initial application of light acaine solution spray sometimes causes the problem to resolve itself, as in the case of one intervention by O'Toole at All published in nineteen eighty five, in which after the light decayne application quote, the roach exited the canal at a convulsive rate of speed and attempted to escape across the floor, presumably with a road

run er asque sound effect me be uh. And then Baron Boum notes that quote the simple crush method was quote ultimately responsible for the demise of the cock row. But now I got a dead cockroach in my ear. No, it wasn't in the ear, it was on the floor. Okay, that's that's that's fine. No, no, no, I want to be very clear. Don't try to step on a cockroach in somebody's ear. That is not That doesn't work at all.

That method was then improved upon in nineteen eighty nine with the addition of a metal suction tip to vacuum the cockroach out. Reportedly, after one case, the lydocaine spray was was applied and then the patient suddenly exhorted the doctor to quote, get that sucker out of my ears. So they used the vacuum to get it out. Um. But then also she relays some reports about fly larva or maggots colonizing the orifices of humans, such as the

nose or the euro genital tract. Though she seems a little skeptical about the case report that that that was about the euro genital tract. One of the medical reports she discusses are relayed by Battia and Lund in the Journal of Laryngology and Otology in n concerns this thirty five year old man in London who had an infestation of oestrus ovis a sheep nasal bot fly in his nose in the thirty five year old man's nose. Apparently this happens more commonly in shepherds and people who deal

directly with sheep. Makes sense. It's a little perplexing how this guy in London got one. Uh he claimed he had nothing to do with sheep, but who knows. According to the report, he had been quote sneezing out several maggots during the preceding six weeks before he called a doctor, and Baron Bomb points out that it's kind of odd that it took him that long to call a doctor

after sneezing out maggots. I would also think if you if you seem to be consistently sneezing out matt maggots, you do have a small window to really succeed on the sideshow circuit. You know, like like the second it starts happening. Books some appearances and uh and and do it as fast as possible while the magic is still there. Come see the amazing maggot gig uh And perhaps the most troubling recent case and don't worry, it has a happy ending. Of a cockroach in a body cavity that

I came across was this one. So on February one seen a doctor m In Shankar of Stanley Medical College Hospital in Chennai, India removed a cockroach from a woman's skull and this one was in her sinus cavity. So here's a definite like this is this is this is earlier centipede territory. Right. We don't know if there were ever really centipedes in there, but definitely a cockroach can get in there. It was inner side, this cavity in between her eyes and it had apparently crept up her

nose while she was asleep. And fortunately Dr Shankar was able to remove the insects successfully with an endoscopic procedure and the woman was fine. If you've got a strong stomach, there's a video of this you can watch on the internet. Uh. Well, no, thank you. But but but secondly, it does make me think of the little woman who lived in the shoe.

So if centipedes are not naturally occurring and naturally crawling into people's sinus cavities, buddy of occasionally a cockroach may then perhaps the centipede is just that that individual's initial attempt to deal with the problem. Uh, that doesn't work, and then they have to go to the doctor, and they don't you know, you know, it's it's like if you try and you know, work on your own weight toenail or something, or do your own dynastry, and then

you go finally and seek professional help. You don't want to tell them, oh, yeah, I tried to do this stupid thing of my own first. Uh. And now I'm here with you. No, you just say, I guess there's a cockroach up there. Did you say the old lady who lived in the shoe? I think you meant the old lady who's followed a fly. Yeah, it might be the same one. She swallowed a centipede to catch the flush. She snorted a centipede to catch the cockroach that wriggled

and jiggled and wiggled in side. Roach. Perhaps you'll die, yes, but she didn't. Well no, wait, I'm not saying this woman actually did that. But the woman in the case very clear did not die. I don't remember what happened to her. I think I don't know. Well, uh so I think we should end here with a discussion of what to do if you actually think there's a bug in one of your body cavities, if you think you've got a centipede or a cockroach up your nose or

in your ear or whatever, what's your plan of action. So, first of all, we want to emphasize again even if you feel very convinced, there is a very good chance you're mistaken, and that should be good news, right like people feel creepy Crawley sensations for all kinds of reasons, and animals actually getting inside the body cavities. Though there are a lot of stories collected of it over the time, the chances of it happening to you are pretty rare,

especially if you don't live in a tropical climate. Right now, I do want to stress everything we said earlier about delusional parasitosis. If you do, if you do have substance abuse issues, that could be part of the problem. But but you shouldn't be afraid to see a doctor over

the symptoms if that's the case. But your symptoms could be quite unrelated to any kind of substance abuse issues, and in this case, it's it's really important to realize that it is treatable with antipsychotic medication, and cases like this are not as rare as you might think. Though obviously, again I can see where that could be a struggle to to realize, you know, okay, it's not a situation of of an insect crawling into my skin or into

my body. It's a it's a more elusive concept. It's there's something, there's an illusion in my mind that has to be addressed. If the causes are psychological, there is not shame in seeking treatment. Seeking treatment will help you, absolutely, So that's what you should do, right, What should you

not do? Oh? Okay, Well, if you even if whatever the real cause is, if you think something is in your ear, say, or in your nose, first piece of advice is do not try to kill or crush it, because if there actually is an insect in there, you're not seriously in danger of a bug inside your nose or your ear eating your brain. That's not gonna happen. You should seek medical attention as soon as possible, but it's not gonna like, you know, eat the contents of

your skull. What you're actually in greater danger of is bacterial infection in the cavity. Uh. And I mentioned earlier that article that interviews the entomologist Kobe shawl Shall points out that one of the worst ways you can put yourself at risk of infection with a roach in your orifice is to crush it, because this could release its mighty legions of gut bacteria into your own body, and that can lead to an infection. And there's a wonder,

wonderful historic example of this. Yeah, So I want to talk about the English explorer and British Indian Army officer John Hanning Speak who was famous for exploring the Nile River to mind what was believed to be its source in the eighteen fifties. And there's this story I related and Speaks diaries that one night he's resting in his tent and the tent quote became covered with a host of small black beetles, evidently attracted by the glimmer of

the candle. And then he went to sleep even though all these beetles were around, and he later woke up with one of the beatles crawling in his ear. Quote. He began with exceeding vigor, like a rabbit in a hole, to dig violently away at my tympanum. The queer sensation this amusing measure excited in me is past description. What to do? I knew, not so speak. Tried to get it out by washing his ear canal with melted butter.

This didn't work. Uh. Then he tried to dig it out with a knife, and this was a bad move. He only killed and presumably crushed or cut up the insect and wounded his own ear, And then the ear became infected quote for many months. The tumor made me almost deaf, and aid a hole between the ear and the nose, so that when I blew it, my ear whistled so audibly that those who heard it laughed. Six or seven months after this accident happened, bits of the beatle, a leg, a wing, or parts of the body came

away in the wax. Uh. And I should just mention that I actually found the story related in that classic Snopes article about bugs eating through the ear into the brains.

That's where I got the quotes from. But they're originally from uh, I guess speaks diaries, as passed along in a book about Sir Sir Richard Francis Burton, right, Uh yeah, yeah, this is just one of many amazing incidents from the travels of John Hanning Speak and Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, with whom he sought the source of the nile and the bug incident here is actually depicted in the n film The Mountains of the Moon, which starred Patrick Bergen

as as Richard Francis Burton and Ian Glenn most people know as uh Sir Mormont from A Game of Thrones or The End All. Yeah, he played John Hanning Speak. It's uh, I haven't seen it in forever. I when as a kid and and loved it. But it also stars Richard E. Grant, Fiona shap Peter Vaughan, Delroy Lindo, Bernard Bernard Hill, Omar sha Reef. So it had a great cast and I remember being a quite an interesting film and a great introduction to two just fascinating characters

from history. Yeah. Well, I just wanted to mention quickly that Uh, it's impossible to be sure, Like we don't know what actually caused Speaks infection, but it seems very likely that simultaneously crushing the insect and cutting his own ear with the knife made the problem much worse than it would have been if he just let the beetle try to get out, and then that probably may have

led to an infection. Yeah, after you brought this up, I popped out Edward Rice's biography of Burton, and he mentions that that Burton sometimes criticized Speak for a bit of like reckless ambition, especially in the African wilds. But then again the two clashed at times and had like a tremendous falling out and somewhat hated each other later on in life. But at any rate, one one assumes

that Burton was not tremendously easy to get along with either. Um. But at any rate, if you want to see of a cinematic depiction of this this beetle in the ear incident, it is it is in that movie The Mountains of the Moon, along with one of the other more harrowing encounters they had. Also is also depicted in which Somali spearmen tie up and stab speak numerous times with their spears, and then a throne spear skewers Burton through the cheeks

through it, so through one cheek and out the other. Yeah, yeah, you see. And you see all these like later portraits of Burton, and you can often see the scar on each each side of the face. That's like a gearmu Deltro movie injury. It's like what is Oh, it's in

Pan's Labyrinth where the guy gets cheek trauma. Oh yeah, well this was This is a classic case of cheek trauma and a cheek trauma, but also dental trauma because the spear damnit like took out teeth and damaged the jaw, but he was able to They both traveled back to England after the incident and both had had lots of medical care attend to their wounds. Well yeah, so part I guess the moral of the story here is don't

be like speak. If you actually do think you have a cockroach or an insect in your ear or whatever, don't crush it, don't kill it, do your best to stay calm, seek medical attention as soon as possible. A doctor can examine you and tell if something is actually in there or not, and if there is, they can

try to remove the animal if it's actually there. If there's not something in there, you should seek medical attention to They can try to help figure figure out what's going on and possibly prescribe medication to alleviate your symptoms. All right, So there you have it. Obviously, if you have any experience with any of these scenarios yourself, or or if you just have heard some folk tales of such things, or you have a favorite cinematic u uh intrabody bug threat you want to share, let us know.

You can reach us in the in the normal ways. First of all, go to our our mothership, stuff about your Mind dot com. That's where you'll find all the so that's what we'll find. Links out to various social media accounts where you can interact with us. And if you're on Facebook, try joining the Facebook group the stuff to Bow your Mind discussion module. It's a great place

to chat with other listeners and sometimes with us. Hey, and if you haven't subscribed to our other podcast yet, it's called Invention, you should definitely go check that out. You can get it wherever your podcasts are found. And if you like this show, you'll probably like that one is. We bring the same kind of curiosity and approach that we take to stuff to blow your mind, we apply it to techno history, looking at one invention at a time.

So check it out, subscribe if you haven't. Huge thanks as always to our wonderful audio producers Alex Williams and Tory Harrison. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello, you can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com? Every believe