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a) and c). The woman who injected lubricant into her face told ABC News: “By the following day [my whole face] was just completely inflamed. [The lubricant] expands, it’s like rubber, and your own collagen forms scar tissue around it… it looked like horrible blisters.” People who do this kind of thing to themselves suffer from a condition called “body dysmorphic disorder”—which means they drive themselves nuts about one particular part of their body, to the point where they’re willing to self-operate.
b). The A
a). They were known as “barber surgeons.” The most common service they provided was “bloodletting”—where you cut a gash in your arm and let your blood run out into a bucket. Personally, I’d have been happy with a short back and sides.
a). The poor guy, who was 70 years old and mentally ill, died from septicaemia within six days. The others are real cases written about in The Psychiatrist, although the bright spark with the bicycle changed his mind at the last minute—and ended up fracturing his skull instead.
DOCTOR! DOCTOR!
a). He was sacked and fined for making out prescriptions to himself, then booked himself into rehab. He wasn’t struck off, though—and he went on to kill over 200 patients, that we know of, at least.
a). The woman later withdrew her case and the doc was exonerated.
b). He went to jail. He allegedly told one woman that his magic potion would stop her gums bleeding, but warned it might “taste fu
c). “I hope that what I’ve done will reassure men that vasectomies can be relatively pain free,” he told the BBC. He added that he’d been thinking of getting the snip for a while, but wanted someone trustworthy to do it. “Eventually I just thought, ’sod it, I’ll do it myself,” he said.
c). The Gallup poll came out in 2010 and showed just how much dough gets spent on “defensive medicine”—basically, doctors covering their own arses in case a patient takes ’em to the cleaners.
MUTANT STRAINS
a). When the bones of tiny, hobbit-like creatures were found on a remote Indonesian island, Flores, some scientists thought they might have been humans with a crazy genetic disorder who lived 18,000 years ago. Others said they were a different species altogether.
a) and b). Although it looked like she had four arms and four legs, she was actually two people. After a mind-blowing 27-hour operation, little Lakshmi—who was worshipped as a Hindu Goddess by some Indians—now goes to school and can walk on her own. The poor kid still needs more surgery, though.
a) I almost fell out of my fucking chair when my research guy told me about this. It ain’t the antifreeze you put in your car, mind you, but an “antifreeze protein” found in certain Antarctic fish that stops ’em dying from the cold. They’ve even started to use the stuff in some low-fat ice creams—although it’s grown in a lab, not taken directly out of some smelly old flounder.
c). An Austrian monk called Gregor Mendel had the mega-brainwave that led to modern genetics after growing and studying 29,000 pea plants between 1856 and 1863. He didn’t get any recognition during his lifetime, but at least he never went hungry in the lab.
b). Said one of the scientists who cloned her: “Dolly is derived from a mammary gland cell, and we couldn’t think of a more impressive pair of glands than Dolly Parton’s.”
PERSONAL SKILLS
c). I’m told the other two greetings work in Oman (nose kiss) and some parts of Niger (“Wooshay!”)—but always double-check before giving a strange foreign bloke a smacker on the conk.
c). “Don’t put your phone on the dining table, or glance at it longingly mid-conversation,” it says. Other rules: don’t make calls from the shitter; don’t have phone conversations in public about money, sex, or your haemorrhoid attack; and think carefully before choosing “My Humps” as a ringtone.
a). Not that I’d know—I don’t have the first fucking clue about computers. Experts say the human brain can only handle a maximum number of 150 real friends, so if you’ve got more than that, you might wa
b). During the heist—which the boss helped to plan—his employees were held at knifepoint and one teller was punched in the face. The boss pretended to be a hostage until the cops showed up and realised that one of the masked robbers was his girlfriend.
a). “There were problems with money in the workplace and basically the stress of him being the owner and ru
GREY MATTER
All of them. a) is also known as “muscle dysmorphia,” ’cos sufferers never think they look “ripped” enough, b) is usually caused by a major brain injury, and c) is described by experts as an “exaggerated startle reflex”—in other words, you pretty much crap your pants when you’re surprised. Weirdly, it was first discovered in French-Canadian lumberjacks living in Maine, USA.
a). It means you’re turned on by people who commit crimes. It’s also known as “Bo
a). I ain’t exactly a brain surgeon, but I’m told that’s more or less true (apparently headaches come from blood vessels, the membrane around the brain, and other nerves). If you’re ever unlucky enough to have brain surgery, you can even get away with just a local anaesthetic on your scalp. As for the other two answers: your brain could power only a 10-23w bulb; and the biggest emotional memory trigger is thought to be smell.
b). That’s what the scientist Stephen Juan said in his 1998 book The Odd Brain. Most thoughts are turned into very short-term memories and then forgotten. Or make that “all thoughts” in my case.
c). That makes ’em the most commonly prescribed drugs in the country—after high blood pressure medication (according to a 2005 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
SEXY BEAST
a). The serotonin released when you bonk is like nature’s aspirin, according to one specialist, Dr. Vincent Martin—who was recently voted the Best Doctor in the World by married men everywhere.
c). Diphallia means you’re born with two dicks (one usually bigger than the other). It ain’t exactly common, though: there have been only 100 cases since the first one was discovered in 1609.
c). The “buyer”—a 38-year-old Australian businessman, if you believe what you read in the press—backed out at the last minute ’cos his wife found out. It still ain’t clear if he got his $250,000 deposit back. The whole thing was a PR stunt organised by a knocking shop in Nevada.
b). The festival is held every year on March 15—and everyone gets blasted on sake. The guys who carry the giant dick have to be exactly 42 years old, ’cos it’s believed to be an unlucky age.
a). The beauty contest is known as the Gerewol and happens every September, with the guys trying to show off their height and the whiteness of their eyes and teeth. As if that weren’t freaky enough, they also get out of their minds on a drink made of psychoactive bark.
HIGH EXPECTATIONS
a). If you milk the venom and dry it out, you end up with a drug called bufotenine, which—when smoked—gives you the same kind of high as LSD. Don’t try it, though, ’cos it’s illegal (and the toads are endangered). A former Scout leader in California is one of the few people who’ve ever been arrested for taking a “toad trip.” He told agents that his mind was blown so wide open, he could “hear electrons jumping orbitals in my molecules.”