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A man almost died after swallowing two live eels in the belief the ‘folk remedy’ would cure his constipation, according to reports. Disgusting video footage shows medics removing the 20-inch animals – one of them still alive – from a male patient’s abdomen.
Jiangsu Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, in the eastern city of Nanjing, said he ‘has since been discharged from the intensive care unit’, but did not confirm whether the graphic clip was recorded at the facility.
Sun Haijan, deputy head of general surgery, said the unnamed man presented with intense abdominal pain and was going into shock due to a life-threatening bacterial infection.
He described how a CT scan revealed the skeletons of both creatures curled up among his internal organs after chewing their way through his colon and wriggling out of his digestive tract.