By and large, nature is disgusting. It's chock full of bugs and hobos and
other things that roll in feces. But amidst that slurry of nasty, science has
been finding a number of medical breakthroughs. Nauseating, repulsive medical
breakthroughs.
Hippo Sweat
But, in studying these chubby, ill-tempered animals from a distance, one of the first things scientists noticed was their sweat. Rather than being clear like human sweat, hippo sweat is red and viscous. Noticing this was totally weird, researchers collected a bunch of hippo sweat probably by sacrificing a few grad students and running a swab across some hippo ass while they were distracted.
Also this is how Hippo Trees are made.
Maggots
As it turns out, maggotkind's shitty reputation isn't entirely deserved. They're basically nature's answer to antibacterial soap. Maggots eat dead flesh, and doctors long ago realized that the maggot's tendency to wolf down dead skin can help people with infected wounds from succumbing to gangrene, at the low cost of stomach turning revulsion.
That's right, our mortal medicines cannot harm these highly advanced mutant bacteria, but they're not shit when put up against the heroic maggot. While bacteria can evolve to become capable of fighting off medicines, they haven't quite figured out how to jump their last evolutionary hurdle and become uneatable.
Leeches
As you can imagine, this was all about as scientific as anything taught in a Deep South biology classroom. But, thanks to the reverence future generations of doctors held Galen in, it remained a prominent medical treatment for centuries.
Recent studies have shown that leech saliva is basically a damned miracle elixir. Their spit is lousy with anesthetic, antibiotics and beneficial enzymes and anticoagulants that could prevent heart attacks and strokes.
Blister Beetle Poison
That's because they're full of a toxin called cantharidin, which is secreted by the male blister beetle and given to the female when they're mating, kind of like a really shitty fruit basket (which is to say any fruit basket). While not generally lethal to humans, their venom does cause extremely painful welts that look more obscene than genital warts.
So there's still hope for Spanish Fly, right? Are they working on that?
Shrimp Shells
The only problem with eating shrimp is that you can never eat all of the damn things. You can eat the guts, even that little poop chute they call a vein to keep it classy, but you can't really do anything but slurp the shells and let them pile up next to your recliner.
By zapping out some of the chains in the atoms making up shrimp shells, this patch is able to control even hemorrhagic bleeding with incredible success, putting mankind one step further in our insatiable quest to kick death in the balls forever or, failing that, make drunken knife throwing competitions a little less lethal.
And after the knife-throwing we can all have a snack. Everybody wins!
#1.
Hookworms
While hookworms are undeniably horrible for the poverty-ridden denizens of Third World Nations, they could prove extremely useful to those of us that won the cosmic jackpot and grew up in a developed country.
Professor David Pritchard and his team of bad ass Men of Science have a theory that small hookworm infections may be the most effective allergy medication on earth. Hookworms force your body's immune system to go into the physiological equivalent of a quarterback blitz in order to protect your intestines from the ravenous swarm of nematodes. Maintaining such a high-level assault force stops the rest of your immune system from going into overdrive, which renders your body unable to have a severe allergic reaction.
Thanks, you terrifying bastard.
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