Several years ago, a teenage boy injected himself with mercury, believing he'd be able to develop superpowers similar to his favorite characters from the X-Men movie.
An IFLScience report said that in 2014, a 15-year-old boy and himself injected attempting to develop superpowers akin to his favorite from the famous film, but such an attempt led him to the hospital, instead of the so-called "Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters."
The teenager was presented with a tertiary care trauma, with numerous large ulcers on his forearm, which had not vanished for two months.
Aside from the lesions, the boy seemed healthy and didn't experience any health problems. Without any apparent cause, the team looking after the patient suspected the boy's condition may have been because of substance abuse.
Doctors' X-Men Knowledge Doubted
According to his doctors, who reported his case in the Journal of Laboratory Physicians, the teenager was transferred to a psychiatric group.
As indicated in the report, the boy had recently seen the movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Commenting on the case, the authors of the study said, "Mercury," one of the film's characters, was among the boy's favorites.
Such liking has led him to inject himself with mercury from a broken thermometer and a sphygmomanometer.
Nevertheless, even though the doctors are certainly spot on with their medical knowledge, science reports have said, these experts' knowledge about X-Men needs to be questioned.
This comes after the medical experts called the movie "X-Men Wolverine," and the character Mercury does not appear in any of the movie franchises of X-Men.
Comic Aficionado
A Daily Star report said the boy, in a foolish scheme, allowed spiders to bite him "in a bid to become" Spider-Man, an iconic hero.
Meanwhile, the boy of Mercury in the popular comics is composed of a non-toxic metal that resembles mercury, which she can reshape and eventually go solid at will.
Such an extraordinary case was also featured in the National Centre for Biotechnology Information, which showed the injuries suffered by the unidentified patient after he intentionally injected mercury into his body.
As earlier mentioned, medics had suspected that substance abuse may have been one of the reasons, and thus, they performed a psychiatric evaluation.
Inspired by X-Men Comic's Mercury
The teenage individual revealed he had deliberately injected himself with mercury which he had managed to extract out of a thermometer at least thrice.
The report also specified that Mercury inspired the boy, a character from the X-Men, featured in several comic versions of the film, Mirror reported.
Interestingly, it also said that the boy had a previous background of multiple bites by spiders for the stimulation of Spiderman. Surprisingly, as a result of the psychiatric evaluation, the boy did not have any mental condition. In fact, he was even found to have a normal IQ.
On the other hand, Doctors performed toxicology examinations to check for mercury levels in the blood of the teenager.
He was able to manage miss all of his major blood vessels while he was injecting the chemical element into his body. However, there was a need for the ulcers to be cut out, and there was no need for him to undergo any skin graft. Reports indicated that this young individual is expected to fully recover from the condition.
NO Signs of Chronic Poisoning
The said report on the incident concluded that the teenage individual did not develop any clinical indications of chronic poisoning, proving that the said mercury injected in his body has a low risk of systemic toxicity.
After dead tissue and mercury had been removed, the teenager was discharged from the hospital and did not continue to absorb further the mercury into his systems.
The team emphasized that the hospital admission of the boy was beyond ordinary, with most cases of intentional mercury injection being considered as "suicide attempts."
Report about the incident is shown on Simon Miller's YouTube video below:
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