Ever heard the horror tales of how they used to treat wounds in the old days with leeches? I remember hearing about some adventurers, perhaps in the Amazon jungle, who had applied these bloodsuckers to their injuries to heal them. Sounds awful.Well, how about using maggots for medicinal purposes? Can you imagine any possible circumstance that would warrant you sticking a few maggots into a wound? Well, wonder no more. Maggot therapy has emerged as the latest health craze in marvellous Pattaya, the coastal mega-resort on the coast close to Bangkok.
The Bangkok Hospital Pattaya, a very upmarket respected institution, claims the larvae do a perfect job of healing wounds by eliminating dead cells. Apparently, active cells are not destroyed as the enzyme produced by the maggot only affects dead cells and bacteria. After only one session lasting a few days, the wound is perfectly clean and on the road to recovery.
I am not joking. The wound-healing maggots are produced in a laboratory and are described as 'surgically sterile'. The number of maggots used depends on the severity of the wound, a small cut on the finger will only warrant 5 or six of the creepy crawlies, while a severe injury to your leg that could lead to bone infection may demand 500-600 of them.Now, I don't know about you, but I am going to have to be pretty severely injured to let a doctor drop a few hundred maggots into my body for a day or two. The publicity material from the hospital assures potential customers that the little larvae will even get rid of the 'nasty smell that comes from necrotic wounds'. Ooooh, yuck.
And just in case you think this superb therapy is a bit whacky, the hospital has come up with a great publicity line. Maggot healing, according to the press release, " is undoubtedly for the lovers of natural therapy, but must be administered by a doctor".
So, don't think you can go 100% natural and do your own thing with some crawlies harvested off a rotten piece of meat. Oh, no, you'll need to be under the supervision of a team of doctors in a first-class hospital. Preferably the Bangkok Hospital Pattaya, where a luxury suite can cost you just a tad more than a beachfront hotel down the road.
Oh, amazing, amazing Thailand, you just gotta love it!
