From classical Rome to the 20th century, the practice of corpse medicine—also known as medicinal cannibalism—ran rampant across every stratum of European society. The top 10 corpse remedies listed below show how extracts from human brains, flesh, fat, livers, blood, skulls, bone, hair, and even sweat were swallowed or applied by monarchs, popes, scholars, and common folk alike.

top 10 corpse Overview

10 Gladiator Blood and Liver

Slain gladiators turned the arena from a blood sport into blood medicine during classical Rome. Romans believed they could absorb the gladiator’s vitality and valor by drinking their hot blood.

Epileptics would crowd a fallen gladiator and suck the “living blood” from his open wound. Roman physician Scribonius Largus went to great pseudoscientific lengths to suggest that the liver of a stag killed by a weapon used to vanquish a gladiator could be a magical cure for epilepsy.

It was not long before simply eating the liver of a gladiator was deemed to hold similar curative effects. When gladiator matches were banned in A.D. 400 epileptics found a new blood source at executions.

9 Blood of a King and Other Criminals

The idea that epilepsy could be cured by the still-warm blood of the deceased lingered well on into the late 19th century. Crowds of epileptics used cups to catch the blood of freshly decapitated corpses at Scandinavian and German scaffolds. In one account from early 16th century Germany, an impatient member of the crowd snatched a corpse and drank the blood straight from its severed neck.

Consumption was not limited to the blood of common criminals. On January 30, 1649, Charles I of England, was beheaded for treason. Crowds rushed forward and washed their hands in the King’s blood. A monarch’s touch was thought to cure the “king’s evil,” which was the name given to swollen lymph nodes caused by tuberculosis, but it seems his blood was even better. After Charles I lost his head, the enterprising executioner reportedly made money auctioning off blood-soaked sand and bits of Charles’s hair.

8 The King’s Drops

While Charles I became corpse medicine, his grandson, Charles II, made his own. Apparently a skilled chemist, Charles II bought the recipe for a popular tincture called “Goddard’s Drops” and made it in his own laboratory. Jonathan Goddard, the physician who invented it, reportedly earned a handsome fee of £6,000, and for close to two hundred years the tincture became popularized as “the King’s Drops.”

The recipe was suitably vile: two pounds of hartshorn, two pounds of dried viper, two pounds of ivory, and five pounds of a human skull. The ingredients were minced and then distilled into the final liquid form. The human skull was the active ingredient and had an important spiritual purpose. Alchemists reasoned that a sudden, violent death trapped the soul within human remains, including the skull. Thus, consumption gave the recipient the vital life force of the deceased.

The King’s Drops’ success as a so-called miracle cure of nervous complaints, convulsions, and apoplexy is somewhat dubious. Instead, it could be deadly. Documents show that it knocked off a few important people. In the case of the English MP, Sir Edward Walpole, the King’s Drops brought on convulsions rather than cured them. Walpole was described as “the saddest spectacle” as he succumbed to the potency of the King’s Drops.

It seems that its only medical success was as a stimulant. Distilled hartshorn turns to ammonia which was a key ingredient in smelling salts. But most of the time, the King’s Drops just appeared to have little effect. On February 6, 1685, Charles II had it hastily administered to him on his deathbed to no avail.

Despite this, the King’s Drops remained popular with the privileged and lower classes. It even appeared as a medical recipe in the cookery book The Cook’s Oracle (1823), which detailed how to distil your home supply of human skull to treat your child’s convulsions.

7 Skull’s Moss

The dubious curative powers of human skull extended to the mildew or moss that grew on unburied human skulls. Called usnea, it was found in plentiful supply on exposed skulls on the battlefield. Soldiers met the required violent end needed to maintain the “vitality,” or life essence, within the body. Somehow this soul essence was absorbed into the skull moss under the influence of “celestial orbs.”

Usnea was used extensively during the 17th and 18th centuries. As a powder, people stuffed it up their noses to stem nosebleeds or used it internally for wide-ranging concerns from epilepsy to menstrual problems. The “father of medicine,” Sir Francis Bacon, proposed its use as part of a wound salve to be rubbed on a weapon. The idea was that rubbing the blade of the weapon would heal the wound it caused.

6 Distilled Brain Mash

In The Art of Distillation (1651), physician and alchemist John French described a particularly revolting preparation of an equally revolting remedy—brain tincture. In a matter-of-fact way, French lays out the process for aspiring practitioners.

“[T]ake the brains of a young man that hath died a violent death, together with the membranes, arteries, veins, nerves, [and] all the pith of the back,” and “bruise these in a stone mortar till they become a kind of pap.” Once mashed, the brain paste was covered in “spirit of wine,” then left to “digest” in horse poo for six months before finally being distilled into an unassuming liquid. French most probably had a fresh supply of young male heads from his work as an army physician, and plenty of left‑overs from dissections done at the Savoy Hospital, where he prepared his brain mash.

Like other corpse remedies, this was not a fad, and references to its use can be found throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. An even nastier version from the 1730s involved the smashing of human brains, hearts, and bladder stones with breast milk and warm blood.

5 Human Fat Ointment

Human fat became big business for executioners during 17th and 18th century Europe. In Paris, people would bypass the local apothecaries and line up at the scaffold for their personal jar of rendered human fat. Viewing the dismemberment and carving up of the corpse at least would have reassured the public they were receiving the genuine article, and not some animal fat knockoff. The human grease was touted as a great painkiller for aches, rheumatoid arthritis, gout, and was even used to treat breast cancer.

It was popular among the elites as well. Queen Elizabeth I smeared the unguent of human fat over her face to treat pits left by smallpox. A recipe from the 18th century for human fat unguent describes a pretty toxic ointment of human fat and beeswax mixed with turpentine. There is a distinct possibility that a similar recipe was used by the queen. This, along with her use of lead‑based makeup, may have accounted for her death in 1603—rumored to be from blood poisoning.

4 Sweat of a Dying Man

English physician George Thomson (c. 1619‑1676), was well‑known for using every conceivable part of the human corpse, including a prescription of urine for plague, and the consumption of human afterbirth to combat excessive menstrual bleeding. But nothing was weirder than his cure for hemorrhoids. The sweat of a dying man (presumably induced from the terror of the scaffold) could be rubbed over your piles. If the executioner did not have sweat on tap, then the touch of the severed hand from the executed could apparently make your hemorrhoids miraculously disappear.

3 Honey Mummy

Mellified Man was basically the art of turning a man into candy. Reported by Chinese physician Li Shih‑Chen in his book, Chinese Materia Medica (1597), mellified man was a by‑product of an Arabian mummification process. The recipe is simple enough: take one aged male volunteer. Bathe him in honey, feed him nothing but honey (apparently, the volunteer would defecate only honey after a while), then when he dies from this diet, encase and seal him in honey for 100 years.

After 100 years, he would be rock‑hard candy that would be administered to heal broken or weakened bones. According to one source, this honey mummy confection was available throughout Europe and China. It is difficult to determine for sure, but not a stretch considering Europeans were consuming a mummy of a different kind for over 600 years.

2 Mummy Powder

Egyptian Mummy took Europe by storm as a cure for everything and anything including blood clots, poisoning, epilepsy, stomach ulcers, and broken bones. Various products existed: “treacle of mummy,” “balsam of mummy,” tinctures, and its most popular form, mummy powder.

Labeled in apothecaries across Europe as mumia, the powder became a staple medical aid from the 12th century to the 20th century. Early medical texts abound with its prolific use across Europe. Mummy powder is even referenced as a product in the archives of the pharmaceutical giant, Merck.

It was believed mummies were embalmed in bitumen. Bitumen removed from mummies was believed to have medicinal qualities, but it was not long before the flesh itself was considered to carry the health benefits. When supplies of genuine Egyptian mummy ran low, a fraudulent business replaced it. Recently deceased corpses were baked in the sun to age and emulate mummification.

Physicians swore by it, but there was one noteworthy detractor, French surgeon Ambroise Paré (c. 1510‑1590) who disparaged mummy powder’s usefulness along with another snake oil of the day, unicorn powder.

1 Red Tincture of 24‑Year‑Old Man

“Mummy” as medicine was eventually extended, legally, to include the flesh of recently deceased men prepared in a kind of pseudo‑mummification process. “Red tincture” was a particularly strange version in the recommendation of using a corpse of a specific age and complexion. Developed by German physician Oswald Croll, it soon became a popular remedy used in London during the late 1600s. Translations of Croll’s original work describe how to make it. “Choose the carcass of a red man [ruddish complexion], while, clear without blemish, of the age of twenty‑four years, that hath been hanged, broke upon a wheel, or thrust‑through, having been for one day and night exposed to the open air, in a serene time.”

The flesh would be cut into chunks, powdered with myrrh and aloe, then softened in wine. Then it was hung up for two days to dry in the sun and absorb the effects of the moon, before being smoked, and finally distilled. Apparently, the stench of the liquid was disguised with the sweet aromas of wine and elderflower.

Daniel is a museum anthropologist and bioarchaeologist who moonlights as a freelance writer.

When it comes to the 10 strangest objects ever pulled from a human body, reality often outdoes fiction. From aquatic predators to self‑inflicted mishaps, these bizarre intruders have found their way inside unsuspecting victims, prompting doctors to perform some truly astonishing surgeries.

10 A Swordfish Bill

A young woman paddling off Santorini’s coast suddenly felt a sharp stab in her upper abdomen. She realized she’d been speared by an angry fish and managed to pull the creature from her body before hurrying to safety.

Imaging—X‑ray, CT, and MRI—showed liver damage, dilated blood vessels, and, most alarmingly, the bony tip of the swordfish’s bill lodged in her spinal canal. Surgeons first controlled bleeding and repaired tissue, then performed a second operation to extract the bill. After a month of antibiotics, she was discharged, fully recovered.

The bill’s remaining portion was recovered nearby. Ichthyologists identified it as belonging to a swordfish (Xiphias gladius). According to a 2010 BMC Surgery review, only four swordfish attacks have been documented in the literature: one thoracic trauma, one knee injury, and two head traumas. One tragic case involved a 39‑year‑old fisherman whose right eye was impaled; the bill penetrated his brain’s third ventricle, causing hemorrhage and death. Researchers believe the fish mistook the fisherman’s flashlight for prey.

9 Pea Plant

In 2010, 75‑year‑old Ron Sveden from Massachusetts arrived at the emergency department with a suspected collapsed lung. Initially thought to be emphysema, his shortness of breath and cough prompted a thorough work‑up.

Radiographs ruled out cancer but revealed a tiny, one‑centimeter pea plant inside his lung. Months earlier, Sveden had inadvertently inhaled a pea, which lodged in his trachea instead of his esophagus. The warm, moist environment of the lung proved ideal for the seed to sprout.

When asked about the ordeal, Sveden quipped, “One of the first meals I had in the hospital after the surgery had peas for the vegetable. I laughed to myself and ate them.”

8 Who Is The Hairiest Of Them All?

An 18‑year‑old American woman presented with abdominal pain, distension, and a dramatic 40‑pound weight loss. Endoscopy revealed a massive 5‑kilogram clump of human hair—a trichobezoar.

Doctors diagnosed her with trichophagia, also known as Rapunzel syndrome, a rare condition where sufferers ingest their own hair. The hair accumulates into an indigestible mass that can fill the stomach and even extend into the intestines.

Another case involved a young woman from Kyrgyzstan who suffered similar symptoms. Surgeons extracted a 4‑kilogram hairball, confirming that both patients had abandoned their hair‑eating habit.

7 A Nail To The Brain

Chicago resident Dante Autullo was building a shed when his nail gun misfired, striking his head. Assuming it was a minor graze, he and his fiancée tended the wound and continued with the project.

The next day, feeling unwell, he agreed to a hospital visit. X‑ray revealed a 9‑centimeter nail embedded in his brain. Neurosurgeons drilled two burr holes, removed the nail and a bone segment, and replaced the defect with a titanium mesh.

The nail passed within millimeters of a motor‑control region, yet Autullo escaped lasting deficits. He famously requested the surgeon give him the nail and skull piece to create a framed display.

6 The Human Bomb

In 2006, Private Channing Moss of the 10th Mountain Division was caught in an Afghan firefight when an RPG detonated nearby, propelling its tail fins into his abdomen.

Company medic Jared Angell stabilized Moss while medevac teams, against protocol, evacuated him with the live ordnance still inside. At a field hospital, an explosives expert first removed the fins, then carefully extracted the rocket, detonating it safely after surgeons completed the procedure.

After four surgeries and extensive rehab, Moss earned his Purple Heart, walking out of the hospital on his own two feet.

5 40 Knives

An Indian man, aged 42, secretly swallowed 40 knives over several months. Embarrassed, he only reported abdominal pain, delaying diagnosis.

Diagnostic imaging exposed the metallic arsenal. Surgeons prepared for a lengthy operation, ultimately spending five hours extracting folded and exposed blades up to 18 centimeters long.

Doctors suspect pica—a disorder driving consumption of non‑food items—was at play. Pica can stem from iron‑deficiency anemia, pregnancy, stress, trauma, or mental health issues. Historical cases include a French patient who swallowed over 4,000 francs and a British woman who ate sponges.

4 Glass Bottle

A 73‑year‑old Mississippi farmer, lacking proper latrine facilities, fashioned a makeshift toilet on a wooden board. While attempting to defecate, the board gave way, and a glass bottle embedded in the ground forced its way into his rectum.

The bottle’s neck shattered during the fall, complicating removal. Anesthetized, surgeons used obstetric forceps to extract the bottle and applied sutures to control bleeding.

The journal Annals of Surgery notes other bizarre rectal foreign bodies—cucumbers, carrots, broom handles, test tubes, spectacles, suitcase keys, tobacco pouches, tool boxes, stones, and even a frozen pig tail.

3 Under Pressure

New Zealand truck driver Steven McCormack slipped while standing between his cab and trailer, breaking a high‑pressure air hose that pierced his left buttock. The hose’s brass nozzle remained lodged, inflating his abdomen like a balloon.

Co‑workers turned off the air supply and applied ice. Doctors discovered his lungs filled with fluid, and the air had expanded his thorax, stressing his heart.

After draining fluid, removing the nozzle, and managing the wounds, McCormack’s body eventually returned to its normal size, despite days of excessive flatulence.

2 Ectopic Teeth

While extra teeth (supernumerary) are uncommon, ectopic teeth—teeth growing in abnormal locations—are even rarer. A 59‑year‑old woman presented with a blocked left nostril and a foul odor lasting two years.

CT scans revealed a tooth lodged in her nasal cavity, coated in greasy material later identified as the fungus Aspergillus, explaining the odor.

In another striking case, 12‑year‑old Ashik Gavai from Mumbai suffered from odontoma, a benign tumor producing over 230 extra teeth in his lower jaw. Surgeons spent seven hours using a chisel and hammer to extract them, leaving him with a normal set of 28 teeth.

1 Surgical Forceps

In 2009, roughly 48 million surgical inpatient procedures were performed in the U.S., making retained foreign objects (RFOs) a notable risk. The Joint Commission defines RFOs as “never events” caused by communication failures and improper counting.

A 36‑year‑old woman underwent liver surgery to remove a hydatid cyst. Years later, she experienced abdominal pain; a toilet visit revealed a handle of surgical forceps expelled from her colon.

Imaging confirmed the remaining corroded forceps, which surgeons extracted. She sued the hospital and surgeon. A similar case in Vietnam saw a patient live with a 15‑centimeter forceps for 18 years before removal.

Other reported RFOs include sponges, gloves, scissors, retractors, guide wires, and clamps.

These ten astonishing cases illustrate how the human body can become a repository for the most unexpected objects. Modern medicine’s ingenuity turns the impossible into reality, one bizarre extraction at a time.

Going into surgery can be downright terrifying; each procedure brings a maze of steps, safety checks, and preventative measures that must line up perfectly for a smooth recovery. Trusting the whole team—nurses, anesthesiologists, surgeons, and everyone in the operating room—is essentially a leap of faith. Yet, amid the hustle of an estimated 28 million operations each year, some objects slip through the count, leading to the very real nightmare of discovering 10 troubling items hidden inside a patient after the sutures are gone.

10 Troubling Items Left Inside Patients

A French woman opted for a cutting‑edge operation in April 2017 to stop her heavy periods without undergoing a full hysterectomy. The promise was simple: after the surgery she would be free of bleeding and pain. Instead, she woke up with a gnawing ache in her lower abdomen—the very symptom that had driven her to the operating table.

She called her doctor, who brushed it off as weight‑related discomfort and handed her a prescription for painkillers. The medication did nothing, and three days later the pain sharpened into stabbing contractions. Those contractions forced her to push out a surgical glove and five compresses that had been unintentionally left inside her, along with a large pool of blood that sent her straight to the emergency department.

A similar drama unfolded in England in 2013 when Sharon Birks underwent a routine hysterectomy. Three days post‑op she was given antibiotics for a presumed infection, yet the pain persisted. Believing the catheter was to blame, she headed to the bathroom, only to feel a pressure that coincided with the emergence of a surgical glove from her vagina. No lasting damage occurred, but the experience was undeniably terrifying.

These unsettling stories illustrate how a seemingly minor oversight—a stray glove—can turn a healing journey into an unexpected nightmare.

Talk about an unplanned delivery.

9 Needle In A Haystack

The old saying about finding a needle in a haystack takes on a chilling new meaning when a Tennessee man, John Burns Johnson, emerged from a nine‑hour heart operation only to discover a surgical needle was missing. An X‑ray confirmed the needle was still lodged inside him, prompting an immediate second surgery that failed to locate it.

Unfortunately, the needle remained hidden, and a month later Johnson succumbed to complications directly linked to the foreign object. An autopsy finally retrieved the needle, confirming the grim outcome.

This isn’t an isolated incident. A Florida woman who had a caesarean in 2003 lived with chronic back pain for 14 years, until an X‑ray revealed a broken epidural needle embedded in her spine. The needle had fractured into three pieces, causing nerve damage and extensive scarring.

Needles account for only about ten percent of retained surgical items, yet the consequences can be fatal, underscoring the importance of meticulous counts.

8 Throw In The Towel

A Californian man underwent abdominal surgery in April 2014 to excise a bladder cancer. Months later, he experienced relentless bowel pain, fatigue, and a loss of mobility that left him fearing a cancer recurrence.

What the doctors didn’t anticipate was that a surgical towel had been left behind. The forgotten towel lodged in his abdomen, mimicking a tumor and causing the debilitating symptoms.

Towels represent roughly 2.1 percent of retained items and are invisible on standard X‑rays. In 1995, an Ohio woman’s lung surgery left a green, balled‑up towel inside her chest; she lived with the sensation of something moving for seven years until her autopsy revealed the culprit.

While the Californian patient eventually recovered after the towel’s removal, the incident led to the surgeon’s dismissal and a lawsuit that highlighted how such oversights can devastate lives.

7 No Sponge About It

Sponges are essential for soaking up blood during surgery, yet they become a nightmare when inadvertently left behind. A Japanese woman endured intermittent abdominal bloating for three years, eventually discovering two surgical sponges inside her abdomen—remnants from a caesarean six years earlier that had adhered to her stomach folds and colon.

Sponges dominate retained‑item statistics, comprising about 70 percent of all cases. Two‑thirds of these incidents lead to severe infection, injury, or even death.

In 2007, a woman in California who had undergone a combined bladder and hysterectomy was misdiagnosed with gastrointestinal issues. When bleeding emerged, doctors finally identified a massive sponge mass that had become embedded in her intestines, necessitating removal of a large intestinal segment.

These harrowing examples underscore the critical need for rigorous sponge counts in every operation.

6 Wire Not?

Surgical wires are commonplace, but when one goes missing, the consequences can be serious. In England, a routine procedure in August 2018 left a wire inside a patient’s body. The omission wasn’t spotted until twelve hours later, prompting a swift follow‑up surgery that removed the wire without lasting harm.

In Philadelphia, Donald Gable returned home after heart surgery feeling fine, only to discover during a follow‑up visit that a two‑foot wire had been silently residing in his chest for six weeks. Fortunately, surgeons extracted it before it pierced any vital vessels.

Wires also serve as guideposts in catheter procedures. At Albany Medical Center, two patients ended up with guide wires left inside them, only identified after routine X‑rays.

During a caesarean, a probe wire was accidentally cut. Staff noted the missing segment but assumed it hadn’t entered the patient’s body. An X‑ray weeks later proved otherwise, forcing another operation to retrieve the stray piece.

Although none of these cases resulted in major injury, they highlight how easily a tiny metal filament can slip through the cracks of surgical safety protocols.

5 Rock, Paper . . . Scissors?

When 69‑year‑old Pat Skinner went in for colon surgery in 2001, she was warned that post‑op discomfort was normal. Yet her pain was far beyond the usual aches, prompting her GP to order an X‑ray that revealed an 18‑centimeter pair of scissors lodged against her tailbone.

The scissors had become embedded in surrounding tissue, forcing surgeons to perform an extensive operation that also required removal of part of her bowels.

In 2016, a man who had undergone surgery after an accident discovered, via X‑ray, that the same pair of scissors—now rusted after 18 years inside his body—were still present. The rusted handles had grown into his organs, necessitating a three‑hour surgery to extract them.

Both patients recovered fully, but the incidents serve as stark reminders that even commonplace tools can become dangerous relics when left behind.

It seems the surgeons weren’t playing with scissors; they were playing with lives.

4 To Scalpel Or Not To Scalpel?

A veteran named Glenford Turner underwent prostate removal in 2013. The operation ran longer than expected, yet he left the hospital with no warning of any issue. Months later, persistent abdominal pain led him back to his doctor, who ordered imaging that uncovered a scalpel blade left inside his body, drifting between his bladder and rectum.

The rogue scalpel was successfully removed, relieving Turner’s agony. A contrasting case involved Victor Hutchinson, who sought help for gallbladder‑like symptoms. After a heart‑bypass surgery months earlier, a scalpel had vanished from the operating room. Though staff scanned his chest, they missed the blade, which had migrated to his abdominal cavity and lodged near his spine.

When an X‑ray finally located the instrument, doctors deemed it too risky to extract, leaving Hutchinson with a permanent, unwanted souvenir.

These stories illustrate how even the most trusted surgical instrument can become a hidden hazard when counts go awry.

3 You’ve Got This, Clamp

Clamps are indispensable for holding tissue steady, but they can be forgotten once the sutures are tied. In 2011, a patient who had a gastric‑band removal discovered a 20‑centimeter clamp still inside them three days later, after unexpected bleeding forced a second surgery that ultimately required spleen removal.

This incident underscores how even routine procedures can conceal dangerous oversights, turning a simple clamp into a life‑threatening liability.

2 Retract This!

Retraction devices are essential for exposing surgical sites, yet when one is misplaced, the results can be alarming. In Seattle, Donald Church set off an airport metal detector a month after tumor removal, prompting a CT scan that revealed a 33‑centimeter retractor lodged in his abdomen, pressing against his chest and causing severe discomfort.

The University of Washington Medical Center acknowledged that this wasn’t their first such incident; a year earlier, a woman had a retractor left inside her after cancer surgery, only discovered after a month of unexplained pain.

Another patient endured 27 years of intermittent pain after a 1979 polyp removal, only to learn via X‑ray that a 28‑centimeter retractor had been overlooked, residing beside his pelvis for nearly three decades.

These cases demonstrate how a seemingly innocuous piece of equipment can become a long‑term burden when forgotten.

1 Everything But The Kitchen Sink

While many of the previous anecdotes involve a single stray object, Dirk Schroeder’s 2009 cancer operation turned into a nightmare of epic proportions. Post‑op, he suffered relentless pain, fatigue, and a host of unexplained symptoms that doctors dismissed as normal recovery.

A home‑health nurse eventually noticed a gauze pad emerging from his stitches. Scans revealed a staggering total of sixteen foreign items: swabs, a 15‑centimeter roll of bandage, a compress, multiple needles, and even fragments of a surgical mask.

Approximately 1,500 patients each year experience retained items, but it’s rare for so many different objects to be forgotten in one surgery. Schroeder required two additional operations to extract the debris, highlighting a profound breakdown in surgical inventory protocols.

His story raises unsettling questions about how an entire suite of tools could vanish unnoticed, leaving a patient to endure months of misery.

The word doctor actually comes from the Latin word for “teacher.” These were meant to be people of knowledge and expertise. People who knew things the rest of us didn’t. That sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? In a general sense, that still holds true. But if you pay attention to the news, you know that not every doctor is all that smart and some are doing some extremely questionable things.

10. The Liver Scribe

Simon Bramhall was a British surgeon who was tasked with saving people’s lives. He performed two separate liver transplants in the summer of 2013 and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to say he saved the lives of the patients he worked on. The problem was that wasn’t all he did.

While he was in there,he used a tool called an argon beam coagulator. It’s a tool that shoots ionized argon gas at a cut, allowing the wound to coagulate the blood without contact, effectively stopping it from bleeding. The electrical current that ionizes the gas can also destroy tissue, which is how it’s used in some cancer treatments. And, if you’re a guy like Dr. Bramhall, it can be used to burn your initials in someone’s liver.

Bramhall signed his initials on two separate livers and no one would have been any the wiser if not for one patient rejecting the transplant. When doctors went back in, they found the branded organ.

Bramhall was found guilty of assault, paid a fine, and lost his license to practice medicine. He then took up writing novels and has one called “The Letterman” which is about what he did. The description of the book includes the line “who wins when everyone loses?”

9. The Marrow Cure

If you ever want to discredit someone who still believes vaccines cause autism, direct them to Dr. Hugh Fudenberg, an immunologist and arguable madman who apparently knew less about science than a schnauzer.

Fudenberg believed he could cure autism and any doctor would probably want to believe that’s true. However, Fudenberg’s cure was giving children his own bone marrow. He was a collaborator with Andrew Wakefield on that study that has been cited for years now by anti vaxxers as a reason to not vaccinate their kids despite how often it’s been debunked as fraud. He also believed flu vaccines were causing Alzheimer’s and his crackpot research that has been thoroughly debunked ended up being cited by Bill Maher on Larry King Live.  He also lost his license to practice after the state board determined he was illegally obtaining medication for his own personal use.

8. The Daddy Doctors

Those who meet qualifications to donate sperm can make between $70 and $100 per donation, depending on where they go. Some donors can end up fathering hundreds of children. But this all typically follows a process of a man qualifying and following set procedures to ensure he is healthy and fits the profile needed. If a doctor wanted to sidestep those rules, do you think he could? The answer is yes. And it’s happened more than once.

A Dutch doctor was determined to have fathered 49 children in secret, swapping his own genetic material with that of donors. Families became suspicious when their children exhibited characteristics not in line with those of the donor, such as brown eyes when the donor and mother had blue eyes. Plus, some of them just looked like the doctor.

A doctor in Canada did the same thing, impregnating at least 17 women before he was caught. Some of the sperm used was his own, but some was just a mystery. Seventeen were identified as his, but 83 more children had unidentified fathers. That resulted in him not only losing his medical license, but a $13.3 million class action suit.

7. The Sterility Doctor

Javaid Perwaiz was an OB/GYN in Washington when he was running a health insurance scam to line his own pockets. He would perform unnecessary surgeries and bill insurance companies for them. Effectively, he was robbing the companies but also destroying the lives of his patients as well, none of whom needed the irreversible procedures he performed. Because of his speciality, he performed things like hysterectomies and sterilizations.

He bilked the government and insurance companies of more than $20 million. Law enforcement seized his assets, which included a Bentley and two homes.

He committed 52 counts of health care fraud, which ended up giving him 59 years in prison. But the human toll was far greater, considering that he needlessly robbed numerous women of their ability to have children. It’s not clear if he ever faced any specific punishment for what amounted to serious physical assaults against his victims.

6. The Organ Thieves

Word is a human heart can make you a millionaire on the black market. A liver is worth a little over half that much. A kidney is about a quarter. So if you have the skill to remove, handle, store, transport, and sell those organs, you could have a good side hustle as a serial killer. Lucky for the rest of us that most people can’t or won’t do that. But most people isn’t everyone.

Pathologists in Israel were harvesting organs from dead Palestinians without consent, a charge they admitted to after a Swedish paper accused the government of killing the Palestinians specifically for that purpose.

According to the government,they did harvest things like skin, corneas, hearts and bones not just from Palestinians but Israelis and foreigners, all of which was done without consent. But, they also claimed, it was over a decade prior to the report coming out and they hadn’t done it since.

5. The Baby Seller

The cost of going to the hospital in America is astronomical. Giving birth costs somewhere between $5000 and $11000 depending on your state. A C-section costs more. And if you need a room for overnight, you can expect the cost to double. So it’s not hard to imagine the cost of having a baby can be pretty stressful if you don’t have insurance or some other means to cover it.

If you wonder what happens when someone can’t afford it and they live in a country that’s less forgiving of debts, wonder no more. In 2021 reports emerged of a couple in Tulamba, Pakistan who couldn’t afford the private hospital bill for the delivery of their child. The doctor suggested a method of settling the debt – they could sell the baby. The couple refused, so the doctor took the child and sold it, anyway.

Police later arrested the doctor and, weirdly, there was no word on the baby.

4. The Hells Angels Hit

If you ever find yourself on trial for doling out fraudulent opioid prescriptions, make sure you think twice about ordering a hit on the witness against you. It’s just going to make things worse.

Anatoly Braylovsky had already been warned about giving out shady prescriptions, but he kept doing it, selling them for money. So when he was finally charged with it formally, he decided that he could maybe hire a hitman from the Hells Angels biker gang to make the problem go away. He broached the subject with a guy who turned out to be an FBI informant. An agent then went undercover as the hitman to make sure the doctor was very sure about what he wanted. He told the supposed hitman that he’d spend five days in prison before his trial and it was the worst thing he’d ever experienced. He needed to make sure he was never going back, which meant getting rid of the witness against him.

Getting caught in his murder for hire scheme has added a charge of obstruction of justice to the medical fraud that he was already charged with.

3. Dr. Nudes

It’s been a joke on the internet for a long time now that people will send you unsolicited nude pics with far too great a frequency. And by people we mean guys. And by nude, we mean a rather specific part of their anatomy. As many as 80% of men and 50% of women have received unsolicited nude pics. And while this is an offensive pitfall of life on the internet, you certainly don’t expect to experience this in real life. And certainly not at a doctor’s office. And yet that’s what happened to patients of Canadian Dr. Nigel Phipps.

Phipps was a family doctor and, according to accusations, he showed cell phone pictures of himself naked and semi-naked to 11 patients and three staff members. The medical board ended up suspending Phipps for 14 months, but didn’t take his license. Instead, he’s forbidden from treating patients without another healthcare professional present and he needs to see a psychiatrist as well as pay for therapy for those he victimized.

In what seems to be a weird twist, the doctor-rating site RateMDs has him listed as a 4.5 out of 5 star doctor. These include reviews from after his suspension.

2. The Biggest Liar Ever

No one likes a braggart or a know it all, which means very few people must have liked Paolo Macchiarini, a doctor once described as a trailblazer in the world of stem cell research. His wikipedia page introduces him as a conman.

Macchiarini was instrumental in introducing a new kind of windpipe surgery that involved transplanting a new esophagus grown with stem cells into patients. He used a donor esophagus and seeded it with new cells. Six of the eight patients who received the surgery ended up dying. The doctor was accused of falsifying data and committing fraud.

Even in his private life, Macchiarini couldn’t keep things above board. He started an affair with a producer from the show Dateline and even got engaged to her despite the fact he had been married for 30 years already. He told people that the Pope himself was going to officiate the wedding and guests would include the Clintons, the Emperor of Japan, and then-President Obama.

1. Dr. Sextsalot

The internet is awash on statistics about teen sexting, just one more thing for paranoid parents to worry about. You know what far less people talk about? Doctor sexting. And which one worries you more? The ones where a couple of kids say inappropriate stuff to each other late at night or the one where the man responsible for maintaining your anesthesia during surgery is rattling off filth in the middle of your surgery?

Arthur Zilberstein got suspended when he was found to be repeatedly sending dirty text messages in the middle of procedures, including one surgery during which he sent 45 messages.

The nimble fingered doctor was rattling them off during appendectomies, epidurals and, of course, cesarean deliveries because what’s more conducive to sending dirty text messages than that? Some of his texts were inviting a woman, a former patient, to come to the hospital to have sex.

Zilberstein was also apparently snapping off pics of his nether regions in various hospital rooms, taking medical records to look at nude pictures of patients, and prescribing pills without making records of it.