This is from the UK Guardian online.
Improbable research: chicken bone injury leaves a fowl smell
Baffling medical mystery of the poultry worker who stank for five years
A man who dressed chickens for a living
cut his finger on a chicken bone and carried the stink with him for half
a decade. Photograph: Orlando Kissner/AFP/Getty Images
Four doctors in Wales rose to fame because of a man who pricked his finger and smelled putrid for five years.
The
doctors were hit nose-on with one of the most baffling medical
mysteries on record. It all started with a chicken. The case ended
happily – yet mysteriously – half a decade later, the stink having
vanished. The Lancet published an account of this called, accurately,
A Man Who Pricked His Finger and Smelled Putrid for 5 Years.
The
report, written by the relieved but puzzled physicians, ends with a
plea: "We ask assistance from colleagues who may have encountered a
similar case or for suggestions to relieve this patient's odour."
Here's
what happened. In September 1991, a 29-year-old man who dressed
chickens for a living cut his finger with a chicken bone. This fateful
prick cause his finger to soon become reddish and smelly. The man got
himself to the Royal Gwent Hospital, in Newport, Wales, where Drs
Caroline Mills, Meirion Llewelyn, David Kelly and Peter Holt took him
under their care.
The doctors treated the man with the antibiotic flucloxacillin. His hand still smelled.
Then they tried a different antibiotic, ciprofloxacin. His hand still smelled.
Next came erythromycin. Still his hand smelled.
Next up: metronidazole. The smell persisted.
The
doctors delved into the hand surgically, but found nothing there of
interest. They did a skin biopsy and cultured the microorganisms from
it, hoping to discover some noxious bug. Here, too, they found nothing
of interest.
Meanwhile, the man continued to stink.
The doctors took stool cultures. These stank, too, but only in the ordinary way.
The
doctors tried everything they could think of: isotretinoin, psoralen,
ultraviolet light treatment, colpermin, probanthene, chlorophyll, and
even antibiotic withdrawal to allow restoration of normal flora. All to
no avail.
As they put it: "Although the clinical appearance
improved, the most disabling consequence of the infection was a putrid
smell emanating from the affected arm, which could be detected across a
large room, and when confined to a smaller examination room became
almost intolerable."
After five years the man still stank. The
doctors wrote up a description of this curious case, and published it in
hopes that some physician somewhere had encountered a similar problem
and could suggest a way to relieve the patient's distress.
For
treating, and of necessity smelling, the unfortunate man who pricked his
finger and smelled putrid for five years, the doctors – together with
their unnamed patient – won the 1998 Ig Nobel prize in the field of
medicine.
Their acceptance speech spoke of their hope to advance
medical knowledge: "We published this case to seek help. Despite
enormous amounts of correspondence, nobody had ever seen anything like
this before, and no suggestions were effective. Our story, however, does
have a happy ending.
Our patient no longer smells putrid. Thank you very much."
• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize
