[Warning: Contains Sensitive Images] Our understanding of anatomy and physiology blossomed during the medical renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci’s many dissections provided a detailed overview of the human body; William Harvey discovered how the heart pumps blood around the body; and Hieronymus Fabricius made crucial discoveries relating to the reproductive, digestive, and nervous systems.

Today, we continue to build upon the foundations of this knowledge and apply it to modern surgery. Surgeons are now capable of achieving incredible feats of ingenuity. From nerve grafts to robot-assisted surgery, these advancements have saved lives and improved patient outcomes.

But, even in this most extraordinary of fields, some cases stand out. So, without further ado, let us explore just 10 occasions when surgeons went that extra mile and made miracles happen.

10 Fixing an Inside-Out Baby

When expectant mother Melissa Thompson had her ultrasound scan, doctors noticed an unusual structure emerging from the baby’s belly. A defect in the baby’s abdominal wall had resulted in her intestines forming on the outside of her body. The condition – called gastroschisis – occurs when the intestines push through an opening next to the belly button.^[10]

It was not long before complications arose. Doctors were concerned that baby Lily-Rae’s intestines, which were already starting to dilate, could rupture. The team delivered Lily-Rae three weeks early. She was immediately rushed to the operating room, where surgeons were tasked with putting her intestines back inside her body.

The team enveloped the intestines in a protective silo bag and left the rest to gravity. Over the ensuing weeks, Lily-Rae’s insides slowly sank back into to her body. But the family was dismayed to learn that parts of the intestines had died and turned black. Further surgeries were needed to remove the dead tissue. Lily-Rae was then fitted with two stomas – small openings in the abdominal wall that release waste from the body. Fortunately, the rest of the intestines received an adequate blood supply and survived. After five grueling months, Lily-Rae’s insides had returned to their rightful place. She was given the all clear and sent home.

9 Sculpting a Voice Box from Ribs

In 2016, Brooke Kilburn was involved in a car crash. Brooke, then 16 weeks pregnant, immediately booked an appointment with the obstetrician. An ultrasound scan revealed that her baby Cooper had a life-threatening medical condition called total laryngeal agenesis. The condition – only 50 cases of which have ever been documented – was completely unrelated to the crash. “If we hadn’t had that wreck it would have been too late for him,” said Kilburn.^[9]

Total laryngeal agenesis occurs when the larynx fails to develop during the early stages of pregnancy. As a result, there was no way that Cooper would breathe normally outside of his mother’s womb. The doctors predicted that Brooke’s baby had a five percent chance of surviving birth. Brooke sought the expertise of surgeons at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in St. Louis. They came up with a step-by-step plan to deliver the baby safely.

A partial caesarean was carried out, whereby baby Cooper remained attached to his mother’s placenta. This would prove crucial. Since Cooper did not possess a proper airway, the placenta was still needed to supply him with oxygen. This gave surgeons enough time to give Cooper a tracheostomy, just before the full delivery took place.

Without a proper airway or larynx, Cooper spent years on a ventilator and could not speak. But Le Bonheur surgeons set about fashioning a voice box from two of Cooper’s ribs. Pediatric surgeon Ying Zhuge removed two ribs from the patient’s body during a 4-hour surgery. While Zhuge closed the incisions, ear, nose and throat surgeon Jerome Thompson set about reshaping the ribs. Each rib was arranged to form the front and back walls of the voice box. The new airway was then stitched into place and supported using a Teflon stent. After a nerve-wracking, six-week wait, the stent was removed. For the first time, Cooper could breathe without the aid of a ventilator. The team is now working on making an epiglottis to help Cooper eat properly.

8 Sewing a hand to a Patient’s Groin

In 2019, a British carpenter from Walton-on-Thames had an unfortunate run-in with an electric chop saw. 46-year-old Anthony Lelliott caught his hand in the device while cutting planks of wood. The rotating blade tore into Lelliott’s hand, amputating his entire thumb and forefinger. “I don’t know whether it was my brain playing tricks on me, but it was like an out of body experience; I could see myself and see what I’d done. There was blood spurting out everywhere,” Lelliott said of the incident.

The Walton man was transported to St. George’s Hospital in Tooting, London. Surgeons battled for 17 hours to save Lelliott’s mangled hand. But time was running out. The surgical team worried that Lelliott’s detached fingers were starting to decompose.

During the first phase of the operation, Consultant Surgeon Roger Adlard worked to reattach the fingers. Adlard mended the broken bones, repaired the damaged ligaments, and performed tissue grafts from other parts of Lelliott’s body. He grabbed blood vessels and nerves from the carpenter’s foot and arm, respectively. The surgical team then used a very fine needle to stitch the blood vessels together and restore blood flow to the patient’s hand.^[8]

As the operation drew to a close, it was clear that Lelliott’s middle finger was near unsalvageable. The decision was taken to remove the finger and use it to fix the man’s shattered palm. The team then moved on to perform a pedicled groin flap to replace the missing skin. The procedure involved surgically attaching the patient’s exposed palm to his own groin. After two weeks, the skin was perfectly healthy and Lelliott’s hand-to-groin surgery was reversed.

Lelliott is slowly regaining movement in his hand following a series of physiotherapy sessions. The lucky carpenter hopes to regain enough strength and dexterity so that he can return to work.

7 Eyeball Tattoos

When Mandy Liscombe underwent laser eye surgery to treat her glaucoma, she had no idea the procedure would leave her with extreme sensitivity to light. More accurately, the laser treatment created an opening in the iris which was funneling extra light towards the light-sensitive retina. Because light was entering through both the pupil and the artificial hole, too many light rays were entering her eyes. This overload led to Mandy’s vision becoming obscured.

The artificial hole was created as part of the fix for Mandy’s glaucoma. Glaucoma is caused by the improper draining of fluid within the eye. This increases the pressure at the front of the eye, leading to visual problems and damage to the ocular nerve. The hole was designed to relieve the pressure by draining this fluid.

For years, Mandy sought treatment for her botched laser eye surgery. She could no longer watch TV properly, and fears grew over her fitness to drive. Car headlights completely distorted the 63-year-old’s vision. “Once headlights hit me, I really couldn’t see,” she explained.

But along came expert ophthalmologist Mario Saldanha. He created a small pocket in Mandy’s cornea, just in front of the artificial hole. He then filled this pocket with a tattoo ink, effectively blocking light rays from entering the wrong way. “It’s like having a filter in the clear window of her eye but without affecting the colored part, and retaining the artificial opening,” explained Saldanha.^[7]

6 Helping a Three Year Old Walk

Victoria Komada was born with legs that were so badly deformed they bent backwards. The condition – bilateral tibial hemimelia – meant the 3-year-old was missing a number of bones in her lower legs.^[6] Doctors believed that Victoria would never walk using her own legs and recommended she undergo a double amputation. But Victoria’s parents sought the advice of orthopedic specialists in the United States. They were told that a limb reconstruction procedure was possible, but it was expensive and surgeons would need to amputate one of Vicki’s legs.

The family organized a crowdfunding campaign to pay for the surgery. They raised a staggering $234,000 from communities in Britain and Poland. Victoria received treatment at the Paley Institute in West Palm Beach, Florida. During a 9-hour operation, surgeons amputated the right leg. A series of pins were then placed in the left leg, along with an adjustable fixator and strut. The screws were gradually turned each day to realign the bones. A second surgery, lasting six hours, fused the tibia and fibula of the remaining leg.

Working through the pain, Victoria strengthened her left leg and adapted to her new prosthesis. Thankfully, she can now walk, run, and play sports with her friends. “Now she is normal and she can do everything she wants,” explained Victoria’s father. “She has lots of shoes now.”

5 Making a Bladder from Bowels

Surgeons at the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff, constructed a new bladder from a woman’s bowels. Jessica Jenkins, of Rhymney Valley, South Wales, was diagnosed with cervical cancer when she was just 18. While successive rounds of treatment meant the cancer went into remission, Jessica’s bladder was badly damaged.^[5]

Dozens of chemotherapy and radiotherapy sessions had shrunk Jessica’s bladder, making it small and inelastic. This put her at risk of developing kidney failure, meaning surgery was the only option left. Surgeons fitted stents to help with the passage of urine from the kidneys to the bladder. They eventually reconstructed Jessica’s bladder using tissue from her bowel.

But Jessica’s aggressive cancer treatments also rendered her infertile and in need of a surrogate mother. Thankfully, Jessica’s doctors had the foresight to freeze her eggs. The Welsh woman’s mother, Julie Bradford, agreed to carry Jessica’s baby to term. So, in 2016, the 45-year-old gave birth to her own grandson. The miracles of science may not end there, though. Jessica is now researching womb transplants in the hope that she might, one day, carry her own baby to term.

4 Crafting a Penis Implant

In 1978, Mohammed Abad fell under a moving vehicle while playing in the street. The 6-year-old was dragged along the road and sustained severe, life-changing injuries. Abad’s entire penis and left testicle were torn off during the incident.

But, in 2015, the Scottish man went under the knife to receive a penis implant, also dubbed a “bionic penis.” Abad’s new manhood took three years to make. A series of skin grafts were taken from his arm and used to sheath a mechanical cylinder. As part of an 11-hour procedure, surgeons at University College London attached the implant to Abad’s pubic area. They then wired the implant to a controller located in his scrotum. At the press of a button, fluid is fed from a saline reservoir into the penis implant, causing it to swell.^[4]

Abad was quick to try out his new appendage. He made contact with British political candidate and sex worker Charlotte Rose. The two booked a hotel room together and tested out the bionic penis. The first night ended in disaster after Abad’s penis pump failed. The technical hiccup was fixed the next day, allowing Abad to make love for an impressive two hours.

But Abad, now capable of achieving an 8-inch erection, faced a different dilemma. Abad’s sexual partners now complained that his penis was too large. In 2016, he opted to undergo another surgery to reduce the size of his implant.

3 The 25-Hour Face Transplant

In 2016, Cameron Underwood shot himself in the head in an attempt to end his own life. The gunshot obliterated Underwood’s face, leaving his jaw, nose, and cheeks severely damaged. Initial attempts to reconstruct his face proved difficult. Because the 26-year-old Californian was missing large parts of his face, he struggled to perform simple tasks like eating and talking.

A year later, Cameron was placed on a waiting list for a face transplant. The donation came from 23-year-old William Fisher, a John Hopkins student who succumbed to his own mental health issues. “I am thankful that, in honoring his decision, we were able to give life to others,” explained Fisher’s mother. “I don’t think I would have survived Will’s death if not for Cameron. Cameron has his whole life ahead of him – and I love the idea that Willie is helping him have a better life.”

The transplant, which took place at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York, required the expertise of over 100 healthcare professionals. Dr. Eduardo Rodriguez’s team spent 25 hours restoring Cameron’s lips, jaw, gums, teeth, tongue, and lower eyelids.^[3] 3D-printed cutting guides were used to cut the donor’s facial skeleton, producing a graft that complemented the missing portion of Cameron’s face. Surgeons secured the new graft to Cameron’s face using titanium screws and covered it with the donor’s soft tissue.

2 Giving a Patient Two Hearts

In 2011, surgeons at UC San Diego Center for Transplantation used an unusual technique to remedy a San Diego man’s heart failure. The procedure, known as a heterotopic heart transplant, involved installing a second heart into the patient’s chest cavity.

Tyson Smith’s heart failure meant the left ventricle of his heart could no longer efficiently circulate blood around his body. Surgeons could not simply perform a regular heart transplant – replacing the failing heart with a new one – due to Smith’s pulmonary hypertension. The muscle within the right ventricle of Smith’s old heart had thickened to compensate for the resistance to the flow of blood within his lungs. Any new heart would lack this powerful muscle and struggle to deliver blood to the lungs. This would lead to the new heart failing very quickly.

To overcome this problem, expert cardiac surgeon Jack Copeland connected Smith’s old heart to his new one. His old heart, along with its powerful right ventricle, continues to deliver deoxygenated blood to the lungs. Meanwhile, the left ventricle of the new heart pumps oxygenated blood around Smith’s entire body, effectively replacing the failing left ventricle of the old heart.

Tyson Smith went on to make a full recovery and is now the proud owner of two beating hearts.^[2] The transplant was successfully completed on Valentine’s Day.

1 Removing Half a Brain

Jessie Hall suffered frequent seizures as a youngster. The debilitating condition, which Jessie’s parents called “The Monster,” impaired the girl’s movement and resulted in uncontrollable twitches. As it turned out, the Texas girl had a rare neurological condition called Rasmussen encephalitis. The exact cause of the disease remains a mystery. However, researchers believe that Rasmussen stems from a dysfunctional immune system, which attacks the cerebral cortex of either the left or right hemisphere of the brain.^[1] The affected hemisphere then begins to waste away, causing speech problems, partial paralysis, and a loss of motor control.

The family sought treatment from Dr. Ben Carson at John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Carson, who is currently serving as the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, once specialized in removing diseased hemispheres of the brain. As part of a 7-hour operation, Carson and colleagues removed the entire right half of Jessie’s brain. In most cases, the remaining half of the brain assumes the role of its missing counterpart and the condition resolves itself.

Following the operation, Jessie experienced weakness in her arm and impaired vision. But weeks of intense physiotherapy eventually paid off. She went on to make an astonishing recovery and now lives a normal, seizure-free life. In 2015, Jessie addressed a crowd at an international hemispherectomy conference: “Don’t give up. Keep trying. If you do it wrong, fix it.”

The human body is a mystery. And as far as science and medicine have come—and it is incredibly far—the chemical machines that we are are simply too complicated to master in every infinitesimal, intricate way. Physicians still encounter mysteries daily, and some of them have been seriously strange.

Patients have made impossible recoveries throughout history when all seemed lost or faded away for seemingly no reason. People have grown, secreted, emitted, and even become things you would never imagine, even when life and death were off the table. 

With that in mind, this list will bring together medical phenomena that may be wonderful, terrible, or just bizarre, but all of which doctor’s still can’t explain.

Related: 10 Potentially Deadly Accidents That Cured People Of Medical Ailments

10 Decapitated and Survived

As farfetched as it may sound to us, there are actually a few recorded instances in which a person has been decapitated and survived. The reason: the injury is what’s known as an internal decapitation (or orthopedic decapitation, or atlanto-occipital dislocation), in which the skull and spine separate, but the skin and other tissue around the bones remain sealed. This injury results in a head that is only attached to the body via limp, soft tissue.

Here are the statistics: for those who suffer an internal decapitation, 70% die instantly, another 28% die within hours, and the remaining 2% lucky enough to survive have almost all become paralyzed for life. And yet somehow, in 2008, after nine-year-old Jordan Taylor was internally decapitated in a car crash, the young boy almost fully recovered within three months and walked out of the hospital doors on his own. 

As the boy’s mother, Stacey, puts it, “He’s like a little boy again…he is walking—I have to tell him to slow down. This is the best Christmas miracle that I could ever imagine.”

9 The Toxic Woman

One incident heavy on the mysterious side of miraculous but light on the fortunate side is the case of Gloria Ramirez, better known as “The Toxic Lady.” On February 19, 1994, Ramirez visited an emergency room as she was experiencing heart palpitations. Then Ramirez, the physicians in her room, and seemingly the very air around them evolved into something as deadly as it was baffling.

While the staff was treating Ramirez, they noticed her body behaving strangely. Her skin took an oily sheen, and she emitted two strange odors: one garlicky and one like ammonia. Staff began feeling nauseous and lightheaded. A nurse passed out—then a doctor. 

That night, Ramirez passed away, but not before her odd biochemistry caused 23 people to become ill, five of which required hospitalization. What made the Lady so Toxic is still unknown—though may be related to her use of dimethyl sulfoxide.

8 Phineas Gage

Phineas Gage is a legend. Not because he didn’t exist, as he lived a very real life, but because one accident in his life has become, according to some psychologists, “one of the great medical curiosities of all time.” At age 25, Gage’s head was pierced all the way through by a large iron rod, causing the abrupt removal of much of his frontal lobe and, from that day forward, a complete shift in Gage’s personality.

The rod, a tamping iron, rocketed through and out of Gage’s head due to Gage’s distraction while working as a blasting foreman. From that point forward, every detail of Gage’s life is interesting. Though Gage’s physician and employers agreed that his “memory and general intelligence seemed unimpaired after the accident,” both also agreed that his personality changed for the worse. 

His physician writes that Gage was “fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity (which was not pre­vi­ous­ly his custom), manifesting but little deference for his fellows, impatient of restraint or advice when it conflicts with his desires, at times pertina­cious­ly obstinate, yet capricious and vac­il­lat­ing.” Gage continued to make uncharacteristic choices for years, until his last few years, when his behavioral changes seemed to begin reversing on their own.

7 The Dancing Plague

In 1518, a few hundred otherwise normal people in Strasbourg, Alsace (modern-day France) found themselves with an insatiable compulsion to dance. They danced for months on end, even enough to cause death, the incident coming to be known as the Dancing Plague of 1518. The reason behind any of the dancing is still unknown.

The incident began with just one woman who danced in the street and soon spread to hundreds of others. Accounts of the case, like most from that time period, are unreliable and superstitious, leaving the number of victims and number of dead (if any) vague. Nonetheless, it is clear that the event took place in some form and that it has no simple medical explanation to this day.

6 Gluten Delusions

There once was a woman in Massachusetts (whose name is left anonymous) who, at age 37, had a good, normal life. At the time, she was well-liked and working on her Ph.D. Then, seemingly out of the blue, she began experiencing severe hallucinations and paranoia. Anti-psychotic drugs didn’t help. Nothing did. One of her many doctor’s visits revealed that she had celiac disease, but by then, her delusions had turned her doctors into sinister, conspiring enemies, and she paid them no mind.

Eventually, when she hit rock bottom, having lost her job and friends and abandoned her studies, she sought out doctors again. They insisted she begin a gluten-free diet. Within weeks, her symptoms were almost entirely absent. What’s more, when at one point during recovery, the woman accidentally ate gluten, her symptoms returned immediately, and she even attempted to murder her parents. And once again, when she returned to a gluten-free diet, her symptoms vanished—this time in prison.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, the mechanism underlying her story is still being studied and is unlikely to gain a concrete answer soon.

5 Foreign Accent Syndrome

Many different incidents can cause foreign accent syndrome, but most commonly, the cause is a stroke. After the stroke, sufferers begin speaking in an accent different from their own. Frequently, it is from a place they’ve never even been to or encountered at all.

The level to which their speech changes varies, as does the apparent cause. The accent gained can also come from seemingly any region, not even one that primarily speaks the patient’s language. But one commonality to every case is its mysterious neurological mechanisms and the level to which, whether explainable or not, the acquired accents seem impossible.

4 Dead for Forty-Five Minutes

After her incident, Ruby Graupera-Cassimiro told ABC News, “I was dead. My husband tells me, ‘You were gray. You were cold as ice, and you were dead. You had no color in your lips.’” Indeed she was dead—for 45 minutes. Then, seemingly of her own volition, she decided to live again.

Graupera-Cassimiro returned to life after 45 minutes of legal death, which is a miracle in and of itself. But on top of that, she somehow avoided any brain damage and even any burns from the five times doctors tried to jumpstart her heart again. 

During her time under, Graupera-Cassimiro describes a religious experience with a spiritual being, and her impossible recovery makes us not want to question it.

3 The 36-Year-Old Fetus

Imagine at 36 you discover that you were born with a twin you never knew about. Then imagine that you find out your twin is still alive, and even better, is nearby. You might feel like you had been blessed with a miracle. Until that is, you find out exactly how near your twin had been. So near, in fact, that for 36 years, it had been living and growing next to your stomach—surviving by drinking your blood.

That is the story of Sanju Bhagat, who at age 36 went to have a lump in his torso removed, fearing it was a tumor. The lump was somehow both better and worse than a tumor. As one of Bhagat’s doctors recalls, “(the surgeon) just put his hand inside and he said ‘there are a lot of bones inside.’ First, one limb came out, then another limb came out. Then some part of genitalia, then some part of hair, some limbs, jaws, limbs, hair.” 

The most spine-tingling quote of all goes to the surgeon himself, who said, “To my surprise and horror, I could shake hands with somebody inside [Baghat’s body]. It was a bit shocking for me.” The condition, which we know as fetus in fetu, is incredibly rare, and usually, both individuals die before or during birth. In this case, both survived for 36 years. The fetus’s nails were even growing long.

2 Pathological Generosity

The stories of Phineas Gage and the women with celiac delusions demonstrated how major biological changes can cause equally major psychological changes. However, in both cases, the changes were dark and off-putting. Luckily, the story of the Brazilian man known only as João exists to demonstrate the opposite: after suffering a stroke, João became neurologically addicted to charity.

After his attack, João quit his job as a human resources manager and opened a street cart that sold French fries. Well, perhaps sold isn’t the right word, as João gave fries away for free constantly. When he did accept payment for them, he quickly gave it to local beggars and children. He was so generous that he forced his family into relative poverty. 

His neurologist concluded that João was “pathologically generous—compulsively driven to give.” This neurological shift helped some and hurt others, but in either case, remains largely unexplained.

1 Ask and Ye Shall Receive

This particular medical material earns its spot at #1 simply for being a classic and for being a breath of pure, fresh air after some strange twists and turns. At age 56, Greg Thomas was diagnosed with inoperable cancer throughout his head and neck. Doctors instructed him and his family to begin funeral preparations. 

In his supposedly final days, Thomas began stopping by a local church. However, he prayed at its door daily, noticing that it was always locked and becoming increasingly dilapidated. Asking around, Thomas found the owners and requested that he be able to spend what time he had left restoring the church. All he wanted in exchange was the ability to pray inside it.

As he renovated the church and prayed, his condition changed. Thomas remembers that “My oncologist was blown away. She said, ‘Whatever you’re doing, keep on doing it.’” Four years after his diagnosis, the church looked a century younger than it had, and Thomas’s cancer was in full remission. As Thomas puts it, “While I was restoring the church, God was restoring me.”