Things found in people's stomachs

A 10-Pound Hairball (unidentified 18-year-old woman - New England, USA)

The New England Journal of Medicine reported on November 2007 how doctors took a 10-pound hairball from an 18-year-old woman after she came to them with pain and a 40-pound weight loss. The woman had been suffering with pain in her abdomen for about five months.

Doctors found a mass there, and when they used a small camera, found that the hairball was taking up nearly her entire stomach. The patient said that she has a habit of eating her own hair, a condition called trichophagia. Doctors tried to use small incisions to remove the mass, but then had to go to traditional surgery to make sure the entire hairball was removed.



The journal's report said the girl left the hospital after five days and was asked to follow up with a psychiatrist. Within a year, she had regained about half of the weight she lost and said she had stopped eating her hair.

Live Frogs and Rats (Yang Dingcai - China)

Yang Dingcai, in southeast China says 40 years of swallowing tree frogs and rats live has helped him avoid intestinal complaints and made him strong. Jiang Musheng, a 66-year-old resident of Jiangxi province, suffered from frequent abdominal pains and coughing from the age of 26, until an old man called Yang Dingcai suggested tree frogs as a remedy, the Beijing News said on Tuesday.

"At first, Jiang Musheng did not dare to eat a live, wriggling frog, but after seeing Yang Dingcai swallow one, he ate ... two without a thought," the paper said. "After a month of eating live frogs, his stomach pains and coughing were completely gone."

Over the years Jiang had added live mice, baby rats and green frogs to his diet, and had once eaten 20 mice in a single day, the paper said.

20 cobblestones (unidentified young woman - China)

In 2006, a girl from Foshan, China, swallowed down more than 20 cobblestones in a moment of anger after a big quarrel with her boyfriend. Initially, she thought the stones would be flushed out after clearing her bowels, but unfortunately they remained intact within her body for the next few days.

To make matters worse, she constantly felt that the stones were knocking against each other within her stomach which caused some pain and discomfort. After visiting the hospital and taking an X-ray, she was advised to undergo surgery to remove the stones. Shocked and not knowing what to do, she tried seeking for help at a local hospital's online forum. As further complications may occur if she delays her medical treatment, doctors have advised her to undergo treatment as soon as possible, with the first attempts through the non-painful gastroscope for extracting stones.

A Plane, a Bike, and so on (Michel Lotito - France)

Michel Lotito (born 1950) is a French entertainer, famous as the consumer of undigestables, and is known as Monsieur Mangetout (Mister Eat-it-all). Lotito's performances are the consumption of metal, glass, rubber and so on in items such as bicycles, televisions, a Cessna 150, and smaller items which are disassembled, cut-up and swallowed. The aircraft took roughly two years to be 'eaten' from 1978 to 1980. He began eating unusual material while a child and has been performing publicly since 1966. Lotito does not often suffer from ill-effects due to his diet, even after the consumption of materials usually considered poisonous. When performing he consumes around a kilogram of material daily, preceding it with mineral oil and drinking considerable quantities of water during the 'meal'. He apparently possesses a stomach and intestine with walls of twice the expected thickness, and his digestive acids are, allegedly, unusually powerful, allowing him to digest a certain portion of his metallic meals.

Magnetic pieces of a block (unidentified boy - USA)

This X-ray shows a boy who swallowed magnetic pieces of a block one at a time. When they hit his stomach, they reconnected.

Bed springs, batteries and so on (unidentified prisoners - Central Prison in Raleigh, N.C.)

X-rays from Central Prison in Raleigh, N.C., show items such as bed springs and batteries that prisoners swallowed to gain trips to outside hospitals.

And more...

A safety pin


A row of button batteries


A car key


A fork