Maggot Tea

It wasn't enough for the medical brainiacs over at OHSU to reintroduce the use of live leeches to help free blood flow to damaged arteries. (The "Ick Factor" of that procedure alone should have put Oregon on the map for all time.) But then along came Maggot Tea Bags.

Scientific one-upmanship is an ugly, despicable practice, and in the following case it's downright disgusting. The good news is for us; using Medical Maggot Tea Bags is a lifesaver!

A Dutch scientist at the "prestigious" Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands recently proclaimed that the hideous larval maggot of the blowfly--itself an aficionado of rotting human flesh--is a great tool to clean out wounds. I guess the Dutch never heard of Q-Tips and rubbing alcohol!

Apparently, Dr. Gerrolt Jukema decided one day to toss a handful of blowfly maggots into his patients' wounds, and let them do his dirty work. Naturally, the blowflies dug in face-first like Louis Anderson at a seafood buffet. Trouble was, they started shitting too. Again, kind of like Louis!

According to Dr. Jukema, blowfly maggots must "eat the bacteria infecting necrotic tissue in order to survive. If the bacteria are removed, the infection cannot spread, giving the wound a chance to heal."

Another problem was that patients complained they could feel the maggots munching on them. I guess the Dutch haven't heard of anesthesia either!

But rather than moving on to other means of cleaning and disinfecting open wounds (such as my own brilliant idea of having junkyard dogs lick 'em out), they stuck to their maggots, but devised an ingenious means to wrangle them.

They put them in tea bags!

This way, the maggots can suck up as much infected goo as they like (through the fibrous material), without being able to deposit their feces into the wound! Inside the bags, they simply crap on each other!

Rumor has it, Jukema's research also includes using crocodiles to permanently eliminate migraines--but they've yet to find a tea bag big enough to hold them!