Side Effects and Injuries
Swallowing practitioners have reported sore throats—dubbed "sword" throats, in the business—when first learning, after frequent consecutive performances, or after swallowing curved swords or several swords at once. Swallowing multiple swords simultaneously over time can also lead to distension of the esophagus. Less common are reports of lower chest pain as a result of practicing the "drop." Such injuries rarely require medical attention; the performers simply refrain from swallowing swords for a time. A minor injury may predispose the performer to sustaining a more major one; these more serious injuries include perforation of the esophagus, stomach, lungs, and other organs in proximity to the path of the sword, as well as intestinal bleeding. According to Dr. Brian Whitcombe and Dan Meyer, "One swallower lacerated his pharynx when trying to swallow a curved sabre, a second lacerated his esophagus and developed pleurisy after being distracted by a misbehaving macaw on his shoulder, and a belly dancer suffered a major haemorrhage when a bystander pushed dollar bills into her belt causing three blades in her oesophagus to scissor." As a result of ongoing research by Witcombe and Meyer, at least 29 deaths have been reported as a result of sword swallowing injuries since 1880.
Read more about this topic: Sword Swallowing
Famous quotes containing the words side effects, side, effects and/or injuries:
“What is done for science must also be done for art: accepting undesirable side effects for the sake of the main goal, and moreover diminishing their importance by making this main goal more magnificent. For one should reform forward, not backward: social illnesses, revolutions, are evolutions inhibited by a conserving stupidity.”
—Robert Musil (1880–1942)
“It seems incredible, and I love them no less; and I can say that I would rather die than see any diminution of it on one side or the other.”
—Elizabeth I (1533–1603)
“Like the effects of industrial pollution ... the AIDS crisis is evidence of a world in which nothing important is regional, local, limited; in which everything that can circulate does, and every problem is, or is destined to become, worldwide.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Men are not only apt to forget the kindnesses and injuries that have been done them, but which is a great deal more, they hate the persons that have obliged them, and lay aside their resentments against those that have used them ill. The trouble of returning favors and revenging wrongs is a slavery, it seems, which they can very hardly submit to.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)