Lithopedion.

Stone baby.

"I felt as if my presence had been rejected....I wanted to erase my life."

Said Kazushi Suganum, who is working to help those who are, as he was, hikikomori.

"A teetotalling Texan whose family thought he was addicted to booze was in fact suffering from a rare disease..."

"... where his stomach turns the food he eats into beer."

Too much brewer's yeast in the 61-year-old's gut meant that whenever he ate starch, it sparked a chemical reaction leading to fermentation....

"He would get drunk out of the blue," said Barbara Cordell, dean of nursing at Panola College in Texas. "On a Sunday morning after being at church, or really, just any time. His wife was so dismayed about it that she even bought a Breathalyzer."

Oculolinctus.

Eyeball-licking.

"My boyfriend started licking my eyeballs years ago and I just loved it. I'm not with him anymore, but I still like to ask guys to lick my eyeballs. I just love it because it turns me on, like sucking on my toes. It makes me feel all tingly.’...

‘Nothing good can come of this,’ Dr David Granet, a San Diego ophthalmologist, told The Huffington Post. ‘There are ridges on the tongue that can cause a corneal abrasion. And if a person hasn't washed out their mouth, they might put acid from citrus products or spices into the eye.’

I hope Rand Paul weighs in on this.

"Tycho Brahe Died from Pee, Not Poison."

News from the 16th century. I know the linked story was published last November, and I'm sorry I didn't get it out more quickly, which is perhaps something Tycho Brahe might have said (in Polish).

Brahe was long thought to have died from a bladder infection after politeness kept him from excusing himself to use the bathroom during a royal banquet in October 1601, causing his bladder to rupture. However, scientists who opened Brahe's grave in 1901 to mark the 300th anniversary of his death claimed to find mercury in his remains, fueling rumors that the astronomer was poisoned. Some even accused [his not-yet-famous assistant Johannes] Kepler of the crime.

But the new results don't point to any such intrigue. While analyses of Brahe's teeth are not yet complete, tests on his bones and beard hairs show that mercury concentrations in his body were not high enough to have killed him....

Also discovered: Brahe's fake nose was probably made of brass, not silver.

Anyway, it was Kepler who gave the original the first-hand account of this story:

... Tycho had refused to leave the banquet to relieve himself because it would have been a breach of etiquette. After he had returned home he was no longer able to urinate, except eventually in very small quantities and with excruciating pain.... Before dying, he urged Kepler to finish the Rudolphine Tables and expressed the hope that he would do so by adopting Tycho's own planetary system, rather than that of Copernicus. It was reported that Brahe himself had written his own epitaph, stating "He lived like a sage and died like a fool."

I arrived at this story today because I was worried about people who might think too much about Rand Paul and take Gabriel Gomez's boast too seriously. 

"Nodding Syndrome: A Devastating Medical Mystery In Uganda."

"Santiana says that for Denis, as with most children affected, it began with the pathological nodding of the head nearly a decade ago."

He's 16 now, she says, but you can only get a glimpse of his age in his face – he looks half the size you'd expect him to be. He rarely moves. He hardly speaks. If he wants water, she says, he'll take a cup nearby and tap the cement floor with it. Most everything else is nonsense, hallucinations.

"He's just in his own world," Nyeko says.

"What If You Couldn't Just Say 'Cheese'?"

Oh! These photographic subjects have facial nerve problems. I thought they were completely normal people who resisted the manipulations of a professional portrait photographer.

"Angus was 21 years old and living in Michigan when she started noticing the effects of gigantism."

"Her svelte, 5-foot-8, 135-pound figure vanished, replaced by too-big hands and feet and tight pants. She shot up three inches, and even her head was growing."