A 15-year-old kid injected himself with mercury in order to attempt to develop superpowers that are similar to a character from X-Men known as Wolverine. This happened in 2015 and the boy then arrived in a tertiary care trauma center for this experiment.
Boy Ends With Large Ulcers on Forearm
According to IFLScience, the boy then had multiple large ulcers on his forearm which had not gone away for more than two months. Aside from the lesson, he appeared healthy and also had no other problems to speak of.
With no obvious cause, the team suspected that it might have been caused by substance abuse. He was then transferred to a certain psychiatric team as reported in the Journal of Laboratory Physicians, who got the full story.
Reason Behind Mercury Attempt
The boy reportedly watched the movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine as per the author, he liked a character called Mercury in the film. He then decided to inject himself with mercury that was reportedly taken from a broken thermometer and sphygmomanometer. X-men's very own wolverine has also inspired the design of certain self-healing materials that are capable of conducting electricity.
Doctors, however, are surely spot on with their own medical knowledge and the article notes that the boy tried to become the character known as Mercury coming from the comic books. Mercury is capable of melting and solidifying at will due to her very own mercury-like blood or maybe Wolverine whose bones are reportedly coated in fictional metal alloy adamantium.
Previous Attempts Involve Spider Bites
The investigation found that the boy had previously allowed spiders to bite him in order to try to be like Spiderman. This, however, was not deemed the most pressing instance due to him injecting mercury into a number of sites in his arm. For those that haven't watched the X-men movies, here's how to watch X-men in chronological order.
Tests then confirm that he had certain elevated levels of mercury in his own urine. Thankfully, the boy had only been able to inject the metal somewhere under his skin instead of his veins. This minimized the damage which otherwise could have been worse if it entered his bloodstream.
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Results of the Attempt
The team then carefully cut into the said lesions and it was revealed that the cut-section showed hemorrhagic and necrotic areas that had exuded shiny droplets of mercury. After the removal of dead tissue and mercury, the boy was then able to leave the hospital and the mercury was not absorbed further into his system.
The team then stressed that the boy's very own hospitalization was quite unusual with a number of cases of deliberate injection of mercury were actually forming part of suicide attempts. Surprisingly, it was noted that the boy had no other psychiatric problems and also had a normal IQ.
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Written by Urian B.
