Doctors were baffled after discovering a patient had been injecting himself with his own semen in an attempt to cure back pain.

The unnamed man, 33, who was admitted to a hospital in Dublin, had devised the cure independent of any medical advice and had been injecting himself for a year and a half before medics discovered what had been going on.

His unique pain relief method was discovered after he went to doctors with severe pain in his lower back and they quizzed him on a red rash and swelling in one of his arms.

The man had swelling in his right forearm which was infected with cellulitis because he had been injecting semen into it

They told him the self-medication had left him infected with cellulitis.




Dr Lisa Dunne wrote in a case report in the Irish Medical Journal: ‘He had devised this “cure” independent of any medical advice.

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‘He revealed he had injected one monthly “dose” of semen for 18 consecutive months using a hypodermic needle which had been purchased online.’

The man’s condition did not improve despite his semen injections, but a short hospital stay did relieve some of his pain, the doctor said.

He discharged himself from the Adelaide and Meath Hospital in the Republic of Ireland’s capital, before doctors had a chance to remove the semen.

Doctors did an X-Ray to rule out an object in the man’s arm

Dr Dunne said this was the first reported case of ‘semen injection for use as a medical treatment’.

He had ‘failed multiple attempts at injecting the bodily fluid,’ she wrote, in what he called an ‘innovative method to treat back pain’.

She also explained that there had never been any tests on the effects of injecting semen into human veins or muscles.

Dr Dunne also said that the lessons of the case could be applied ‘on a broader scale’ as it demonstrates the risks involved with medical experimentation ‘prior to extensive clinical research’.

The only past examples of semen injections mentioned in the journal were experiments done by injecting human ejaculate into rats and rabbits.

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