Medical practice can be the perfect source of inspiration for horror movies. Medicine can tell about real "walking dead", werewolves or own killer hand.
The walking Dead
Kotard's disease, or "zombie syndrome", has become a real mystery for doctors. Those suffering from this disease are sure that they are either rotting alive or have already died, and everything that is happening around them is "life after death." The true causes of the disease are unknown, among the possible are deep depression, a tendency to schizophrenia and head injuries. Cotard's syndrome is not distinguished as a separate disease - it is classified as a form of depressive-paranoid schizophrenia.
The disease was first described in 1880 by the French neurologist Jules Cotard, and since the 19th century, these cases have been recorded more than once. The most famous was that of a Scotsman badly injured in a car accident. After undergoing treatment and leaving the Edinburgh hospital, he decided to take a break and went on vacation to South Africa. Halfway through, he was "covered". By the time he arrived in South Africa, he was finally convinced of the thought that he had died in an accident, and is now in hell. Even his mother, who went with him, could not convince him otherwise. The unfortunate man thought that she was actually sleeping at home, in Scotland, and her soul accompanied him on his journey through hell.
Fermenting bowel syndrome
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People with "fermenting gut" or the so-called "inner brewery" syndrome turn any food and drink inside of themselves into alcohol. Therefore, they are always a little tipsy. The cause of the disease is the inability of the stomach to break down sugar into carbohydrates - instead, it is engaged in fermentation. In addition, the human body with fermenting intestines is unable to process ethanol resulting from the consumption of starchy foods. One bottle of beer is enough for such people to gain 0.37 ppm.
Fortunately, this is a very rare syndrome, with only 11 cases reported worldwide today.
Werewolf syndrome
Hypertrichosis, or excessive hair growth, which is also often called "werewolf syndrome", manifests itself, as you probably already guessed, in excess body hair, atypical for a certain age and gender. The syndrome can be both congenital and acquired - after a head injury, anorexia nervosa, uncontrolled use of hormonal drugs. This disease mainly occurs in women. Only acquired hypertrichosis can be treated - by eliminating the causes of the disease and physiotherapy.
Old children
Progeria is somewhat reminiscent of the "disease" from the movie "The Strange Case of Benjamin Button", the protagonist of which was born a shriveled old man and grew younger with age. In the case of progeria, the opposite is true. Children are born with no abnormalities, but after two years they begin to age quickly. First symptoms: hair loss, wrinkles. By the age of 13, such people usually live their entire life cycle. True, science knows a case when a Japanese stricken with Progeria lived up to 45 years.
This is usually a congenital disease. For some reason, the patient's body turns on the aging mechanism earlier: a decrease in telomere length and a violation of stem cell homeostasis. Fortunately, Progeria is rare - only 80 such cases are known in history.
Foreign accent syndrome
The so-called foreign accent syndrome looks truly "mystical". After a brain injury, a stroke, and persistent severe headaches, a person wakes up in the morning and realizes that he can only speak his native language with an accent. And with the accent of a country where he has never been. Doctors attribute this to damage to the parts of the brain that are responsible for speech. Unfortunately, the patient does not become bilingual, he only has an incorrect pronunciation. But, who knows, maybe this rare disease is another key to unlocking all the abilities of the human brain.
Impaired perception of the integrity of one's own body
A strange syndrome, the carriers of which do not feel complete until they amputate one or another part of the body. They are not lovers of "thrill" sensations, just their brain perceives the leg, hand, fingers (depending on the case) as an alien object that belongs to anyone, but not them. Neither psychotherapy nor pills save patients from obsession, although there is a case when one such patient began to feel less doomed after taking antidepressants and cognitive-behavioral therapy.
It is worth noting that such a hated limb is usually complete and healthy. She is not paralyzed, moves normally, reacts to all commands of the nervous system. This is the main problem of BIID patients. The surgeon cannot amputate a healthy limb, otherwise he risks being sued. Therefore, patients often look for a surgeon for years who would agree to amputate a perfectly healthy and perfectly functioning arm or leg. To speed up the process, they go to extreme measures, sometimes even with danger to their own lives: they shoot themselves in the kneecap, freeze their leg or take up a saw. People with BIID know exactly where the amputation should be done, and after the amputation they can indicate that such and such a part was not finished to them after all. After the operation, they feel unusually happy and regretfulin their own words that they had not done so before.
Alien hand syndrome
If in the previous case, such hated limbs of the patients are healthy and obey all the orders of the nervous system, then in case of alien hand syndrome, they (hands) lead a completely independent lifestyle, usually not coinciding with the wishes of the owner. Another name for the disease is "Dr. Strandljave's syndrome" in honor of the hero of Stanley Kubrick's film "Doctor Strangelove", whose hand sometimes by itself either raised in a Nazi greeting, or began to choke its owner.
The symptom was first described by the German neurologist Kurt Goldstein in the 19th century. He observed a patient who, in her sleep, began to strangle her own left hand. Goldstein did not find any mental abnormalities in her. Only after death in the girl's brain was found damage that disrupted the transmission of signals between the hemispheres, which led to the development of the syndrome. This disease became a real disaster in the 1950s, after doctors began treating epilepsy with hemispheric dissection. Moreover, in most cases, the hand showed obvious aggression towards the owner.