Strange, Weird & Bizarre Medical Cases & Facts

So, like I’ve said before, I’m totally obsessed with this show on The History Channel called Stan Lee’s Superhumans.  On the very first episode, they featured this guy named Gino Martino (actually his name is John Ferraro) who can break stuff over his head.  And not just boards and stuff like that.  Try steel beams.  Check this out:

How, oh how, is this possible?  The beams aren’t fake, that’s one thing.  And this guy’s amazing head-butt powers are further examined on the History Channel show.  He breaks a cinderblock by placing the cinderblock on his head and having someone drop a BOWLING BALL on it. He breaks another cinderblock by having someone hit it with a sledgehammer.  Most of these activities would kill someone, or at least seriously scramble their brains, but Gino/John is able to do this with little side effects.  No, it’s not super easy for him, but he can shake it off pretty quickly.

SPOILER ALERT!

So, after doing the tests and things on this guy, the show’s scientists or doctors or whatever discovered that this guy’s skull is, like, 14.5 mm thick.  The average man’s skull is about 6.5 mm thick, which means that Dudester here has a skull that is over twice as thick as an average skull.  How completely cool is that?

Unfortunately for Gino/John, his SKIN isn’t super thick, so when he does things like breaking metal over his head, or hammering a big nail into a board with his forehead, he still gets a little bloody.

But despite his tendency to get all gory, John Ferraro is actually sort of a superhuman.  He has a super thick skull, which makes this self-proclaimed “Head Butt King” exceptional.  Stan Lee named him “The Human Anvil,” and we’re all sort of hoping he gets his own book, right?

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This is an unfortunate rare genetic illness that has a very grim prognosis, usually.  Most babies born with it do not survive.  This is because the condition itself causes very stiff skin, which can restrict the baby’s breathing and cause the baby unable to suckle.  Also, babies born with this illness often contract infections, because their skin can harbor a lot of bacteria.

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I watched a movie once where a girl was a zombie, but didn’t know it.  That’s, like, the opposite of today’s weird disease, which is a condition that makes someone think they are dead or that their insides are rotting.  It’s called Cotard’s Syndrome, named after the guy who discovered it.  Jules Cotard was a French neurologist lectured about the syndrome,  le délire de négation, which was characterized by depression and despondency, for sure, but in more extreme cases the patient would doubt their very existence – be it physical or spiritual.  Most felt that some part or all of their body was putrefying or dead, and most had a very weak grasp on the here and now.

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