Eel chews through man's intestine after he swallowed them alive to cure constipation

A 51-year-old unnamed construction worker had to be rushed to the hospital nearly 24-hours after he swallowed two live eels. Believing that the folk remedy would cure his enlarged prostate and constipation, the man almost died after ingesting the animals. Doctors had to remove the eels from the man's large intestine. The eels had chewed through the intestine wall and one was still alive at the time of removal.

The incident took place on Thursday in Nanjing, China. The colleagues of the construction worker who was living alone in the city took the man to the hospital after the pain in his stomach became unbearable. An X-ray showed the two nearly 20-inch long eels in the man's body.

After being ingested, the eels moved into the man's intestine before biting through the wall. The intestinal walls are thinner than the stomach wall so the eels were able to bite through it. The stomach was filled with faecal matter, blood, and water due to the intestine wall being ruptured. If left untreated, it could lead to fatal bacterial infection.

Even though the man waited for a day before going to the hospital, the doctors were able to save the man's life.

The Daily Mail reported that Sun Haijan, the deputy director at Jiangsu Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, shared what the surgeons found inside the man's body. The eels were reportedly found outside the intestines in the man's lower abdomen. They managed to wriggle through a 0.8-inch-wide hole that they gnawed into the man's sigmoid colon.

The man recovered in the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital and was discharged once he recovered from the surgery.

The Sun pointed out that damage caused by eels are not a rarity. A live eel was removed from a man's colon in 2018 after he had inserted it as a remedy. In 2017, a Chinese vlogger had shocked the internet by inserting an eel into her vagina live on camera.