- Doctor? You don't need no stinking doctor. - Let's talk about that.
♪ (theme music playing) ♪
- Good Mythical Morning! - First off we wanna remind you that if
you wanna impress all your friends the easiest way to do that is by watching
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- Okay, usually when there is something that is happening inside of your body...
- Yeah? - ...that needs to be fixed, you go to a
professional person, usually a doctor, who surgerizes the inside of you to
fix something. But! In rare cases, people sometimes surgerize
themself! It's called self surgery and we're
gonna be talking about some sensational self-surgeries today!
- Lemme uh, tee this one up for you, Dr. Evan O'Neill Kane, uh...
- You might wanna put your cereal down, just, you know, just giving you
fair warning. Or keep eating it, you know what? Keep your
cereal, I don't care. - Challenge accepted.
Uh, Dr. Evan O'Neill Kane was um, a medical pioneer and a chief surgeon
in a New York City hospital in the 1920's, okay? Um, here's a picture of him.
Uh, basically, he looks like a hybrid of Colonel Sanders and a Monopoly Guy
...and maybe a baby. - I can see that, I can see all three of them there!
- Now, I found this picture on FindAGrave.com, which is...
- Oh! That's my favorite site! - An excellent website...
- I find graves all the time! - Yeah, FindAGrave.com, uh, he was
buried in Kane, Pennsylvania. - Oh...good note.
- His last name is also where he was buried. Anyway! Uh, he suffered from
acute appendicitis , and what does that mean you gotta do, Rhett?
(snaps) You gotta get that thing outta there... - But it's so cute...
- And you, if you're the chief surgeon and you want to prove that you don't
need to be put under, you can just do it with local anesthesia. What do you do?
You perform the surgery on yourself! Dude set up in his office...
- He was trying to prove that he didn't have to go to sleep to have the surgery done?
- Correct. And that would have made it harder for him to do the surgery himself...
which I think selfishly he kinda wanted to. - Yeah, unless he's into sleep surgery.
- (doctor's voice) "Check this out, I'ma take out my own appendix." But he wanted
to illustrate that you could do it with local anesthesia, set up some mirrors
and then got his scalpel, made a large incision...and then pulled the thing out.
Thing is there were three other doctors there... - Yeah he's got quite a posse there.
- In case something went wrong, but he did it all himself 'cause nothing went wrong.
Did I mention he only has nine fingers? - Until now, you had not said that.
- Yeah, uh, two years earlier, he amputated his OWN finger, because it was infected.
- You gotta watch out for this guy. - I know, if you're his body!
- He'll cut himself open in a heartbeat! - If I'm his body I gotta watch out for myself,
- 'cause he's liable to surgerize me. - But he is his body...
- Right. - Weird.
- Ten years he had a hernia and he's like, "I'ma fix that myself too!" Then he died
of pneumonia a little bit later... - Well, Link...
- He couldn't surgery that. - You had a doctor, well I've got an artist.
That's right, artist and scientist Amanda Fielding... - Little less qualified, right off the bat.
- Back in 1970 she was suffering from what she called a strange condition where she
was exhausted all the time. - Okay...
- I think I may be also suffering from this... - So she was "sleepy"?
- No. She was exhausted. - Okay. Okay dude!
- There's a difference, Link! There's a difference!
- Alright, man! - Anyway, she thought that a procedure
called trepanning could help her out.. What's trepanning you ask? Uh, well
it's when you put a hole in your skull. And this sounds crazy, but we's been
doin' it for a long times us humans. - Well you can't say, "This sounds crazy,
BUT..." there should be no but! - No, no...going back 10,000 years!
You find 10,000 year old skulls they got holes in them, in the middle ages,
this is what they did. You had a problem, "Put a hole in his head!" Sir Timothy's
having trouble? "Drill a hole in his head!" They did it in the Middle Ages,
they've done it all throughout history. - It kinda like parallels with a...
- It still happens! - ...like blood-letting kind of a thing?
- Well, meaning that it probably doesn't work? Yes. But, the modern, uh, day, the
modern understanding of this according to Amanda is that when your heart beats,
the blood pulsates in your brain. And the skull is hard after you're an adult. And so,
it can't fully pulsate. But you put a little hole in there, it's like letting a valve out. That...
it's something like that. I don't know, that sounds crazy, right?
Crew: (laughter) Anyway, she believed in it and therefore
she requested from some doctors to have it done. Talked to like a bunch of
doctors over four years. They wouldn't do it, long story short...
Together - "She did it to herself..." - She videoed this but you can't watch it
because you have to be invited to a private screening. But, we do have
some screenshots. - By whom?
- Her. She got us to invite you. - (laughing) She's like...
- Amanda if you want us to be there, we'll be there! Anyway, she tapes
glasses to her face (not to look like the invisible man) but to not get blood
in her eyes. She uses a dental drill, a foot operated dental drill (drill noises)
on her freaking head, and she has to pour water up there because the bone
is smoking. She's got a smoking bone on her head and she has to pour water up there.
- Did she anesthetize her head? - Uh, uh probably...sure. I'm sure she
did. Anyway, after she drilled the hole, she said...first of all she lost a liter of
blood during the process, but she still said, after that, she had a rising up, she
was rising up with a feeling of elation and relaxation, otherwise known as "I Just Lost
A Liter of Blood" feeling. And then she had a steak and went to a party! And you know
what? Today, here she is with a parrot on her shoulder! You can't argue with that.
- Yeah, that's proof that, uh, she's totally got it together. - Here's to you, Amanda!
- Ugh. Uh, okay, take a deep breath and move on...uh, let's take a trip to Rio
Taleo, Mexico in the year 2000. So I'm traveling in time.
- But not too far! - Not too far. We gotta keep it close.
40 year old, Inez Perez, she was pregnant with child, her eighth child. Now, that
means she's like a pro at this right? - She's had a lot.
- Well she's also evidently, tired of it. She goes into labor at home, uh, 12
hours later she's still in agonizing pain, no baby in sight, she decides to resolve,
the situation herself, uh, you can guess what happened...
- Yeah... - Step one: 3 glasses of hard liquor to sedate herself...
- Oh! - And then she grabs a 15cm (that's a
six inch) knife from her kitchen...and she starts sewing a vertical exit wound for the baby.
- Vertical? - Vertical. Not horizontal.
- That's not even the right way to do it... - That's not how they do it now, but I
think a long time ago they did it that way. But I don't think she was referencing
any medical manuals. - You're not supposed to do it yourself either.
- No, you're not. Step one is don't do, don't try this at home or, yourself.
- Oh, gosh. - Um, oh man, she cut the umbilical cord with scissors...
- Of course... - And then she passed out. The baby was
delivered and was fine, and then she passed out. Uh, six, a few hours later she wakes up
and sends her six year old to get help... - Oh, the six year old's been there the whole
time! Where were the other kids? - I dunno maybe they were out running around.
- Could they have gotten a doctor to begin with? - It seems like she did everything out of order.
- (impersonating woman) I'm gonna cut this baby out of me then send my
kids to get a doctor! - She went to a hospital that was eight
hours away...and then ten days later she was released, totally fine, but she
does not suggest that other moms should do this. - Oh, thanks! Thanks for the warning, Inez. Uh, okay...
- Ramirez Perez...That's how ya say it! - Okay, brace yourself for the South
Carolina farmer known as Samson Parker. Let's go back to 2007. He's out at the
cornfield, and he's working with the harvester - the thing that just takes the
stalks and takes the corn off of 'em... - I call it a combine, but...
- Combine. Something like that. So anyway, it gets jammed with some stalks. And he's
like, (impersonating farmer) "Well, buddy I gotta get in there and do something about this!"
- I hope that your story is that he performed surgery on the harvester...
- Nope. This is called "Self-Surgery". - Yeah. I'm not feeling good about this.
He sticks his hand in there to get some of the stalks out, lo and behold, the combine
pulls his hand in. But he has a glove on. So it doesn't immediately do any damage
to his hand when he gets it caught. - Okay....
- But it's constantly pulling him in there. He's fighting this thing, right? He fights
the machine for an HOUR. Uh, knowing, that this thing's gonna y'know, "I'm
going to die if I can't get my hand out of there." He's tryin' all kinds of ways
to get his hand out, can't do it. He grabs this uh, large iron, uh, rod that he had
that was laying around... - (laughing) In his pocket?
- And he sticks it in there and he's trying to pry the machinery apart so he can
get his hand out but he can't do it... - And it's still moving?...
- It's trying to move but it can't because of his hand. So, he's losing the ability to
keep his hand out of there. So he takes a pocket knife out of his pocket. That's
where he keeps his pocket knife, in his pocket... - (making "no" noises)
- He's from South Carolina, they do things RIGHT down there. And he
begins cutting his fingers off in order to get his hand out. BUT - STOP THE
PRESSES - this is what happens when he tried to cut his fingers off: the rod
that he had in the combine starts causing all these sparks, which then set the ground
around him on fire. Now he has a wall of fire surrounding him! He said that his skin
was melting off like plastic.... - (gasps) This is like a stupid circus act!
- So he takes the knife, and moves from the fingers to the forearm, just under the elbow...
- Wh-wh-what?? - And begins to cut it, SON!
- Why? Because there's sparks? - Because he thought he's gonna die!
I don't know! He went for the place that he thought he could get through!
- (impersonating farmer) "There's already a hinge here!" - He starts cutting it, and then he gets
down to the bone and he...okay this is the part that gets crazy...he gets down
to the bone, he realizes he can't get through, and so he collapses ALL HIS
WEIGHT on his arm, BREAKS the bone off, RUNS out of the fire....
- NOOO! - And today, he's a bionic person, with a fake arm!
- He lived though, I mean, kudos to that dude. - Yeah. Samson Parker, man.
- Like 127 hours, dude. - But even better. Even better because
there was a combine, it was in South Carolina, there was fire...that's way
better than James Franco and a canyon in Utah. - And there were people going by on the
interstate just waving. Why is he standing on the interstate?
- Yeah, so close to his machinery. - He's like here I was on the interstate..."Hey!"
- Look at him, keepin' that stuff runnin' - (laughs)
- Oilin' it up! - Oh my Gosh man...can I just take a breath?
- Congratulations to all of you who have performed surgery on yourself and lived
to tell the tale and got featured on Good Mythical Morning! But I do not recommend
doing any of the things that we have described today.
- I do recommend liking and commenting on this video. - You know what time it is!
"Hi, I'm Tashin." "And I'm Cameron!"
"And we're from Fairfield, Texas and it's time to spin the Wheel of Mythicality!"
- Imaginary studies show that all liquids taste 10% better in Good Mythical
Morning mugs! You can get yours at rhettandlink.com/store!
- Click through to Good Mythical More, we will share our own personal surgery
stories. Oh man, I had one surgery twice. That was a nightmare.
- Link can only say "Fish". Uhhhh....so, uh, uh, what you wanna eat for lunch today?
- Fish. - Okay, where you wanna go?
- Fish. But where, where do you wanna get the fish?
Link: Fish.