fly attack man dies!

A man has died after swallowing a fly which laid maggots in his stomach that gruesomely ate him when he was still alive!

This true story is reminiscent of the old Burl Ives (an American folk singer) song `I know an old lady’, which starts with the lyrics: `I know an old lady who swallowed a fly, I don’t know why she swallowed the fly, I guess she’ll die.’
I have to confess to using a little bit of tabloid journalism here, to being a little bit sensationalist. The maggots didn’t gruesomely eat him when he was still alive, they quite naturally ate him when he was still alive; this is what maggots do. But heck, most people think that maggots are gruesome and `gruesome’ it makes the story more appealling, makes it more appetising, so to speak.
Anyway, here’s the story
`The medical world of Vienna has been much occupied in the consideration of an extraordinary case. It is, states the Standard correspondent, that of a young man of means, who, after six months’ painful illness, which puzzled all the doctors consulted, including specialists from Germany, died a few days ago from the consequences of having swallowed a living bluebottle fly, which laid its eggs in his intestines, the eggs developing into maggots, ate their way through.
When the cause of the patient’s ailment became known, he was too weak from malnutrition and loss of blood for an operation to be risked. No such case hat occurred before in Vienna. but one or two are mentioned in medical literature.’

First published in a British newspaper on 15th. December 1882