A man in China has been hit by dizziness, headaches and nausea nearly 15 years after he ate raw snake gallbladders and drank medicinal wine soaked in raw snake skin.
The man’s health became so bad that he had to use a wheelchair and required a catheter to urinate, according to Yangcheng Evening News.
The source of his problems was snake parts that left strange orange parasites in his spinal cord, said doctors at Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, in the south of the country.
“Faeces from the parasites have fully polluted the patient’s spinal cord,” said Huang Minjun, the doctor working on the case.
“The parasites have reproduced and grown a lot. Some worms were as long as 6cm. It was very horrible.”
Identified as Spirometra mansoni, the parasites are commonly found in snakes, frogs, cats, and dogs.
Following surgery, the man, surnamed Guo, needed to take anti-parasitic drugs to ensure there were no eggs left inside his body.
Doctors believe that the parasites came from the raw snake gallbladders he ate and snakeskin medicine he drank 15 years ago.
The man said that at that time he had “too much inner heat”, so he followed a folk therapy that required him to ingest the snake ingredients.
According to widely believed Chinese folk tales, raw snake gallbladders have high medicinal value, and eating them can treat conditions such as heatstroke, coughs and food poisoning.
Snake wine is also considered beneficial to health. It is thought to boost kidney function, relieve pain and treat headaches.
Doctors said that the man would have become paralysed and incontinent if he had waited much longer.
They have also warned the public against drinking polluted water or eating uncooked meat that could contain parasites.