When he isn't telling us "true facts" about various animals, Ze Frank is improving the health of our stuffed animal friends. What's inside of teddy? Candy, meat, and a few items that don't belong inside a healthy toy.

No offense to modern horror movie directors, but when it comes to pioneering straight-up ickiness, anatomists and biological sculptors from the late 1600s to mid-1800s had today's fright-masters beat by centuries.

Here's a hint: it's another part of her body. As in, it was once attached to her person elsewhere, only to be removed and tucked away inside her belly for safekeeping.

Earlier this afternoon, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal's Zach Weiner floated an interesting thought: "One day," he mused, "there will actually be a pill that grows your penis six inches."

Feast your eyes on a gruesome "wound man" from London's Wellcome Library's collection of medieval anatomy diagrams. This above wound man hails from the 1400s and offers all sorts of valuable advice on how to remove swords from his torso and extremities. And here are a few more of his colleagues from 1420-1430s Germany,

Here's a reason to leave any and all tonsil examinations up to the professionals. From an article last year in the journal BMJ Case Reports comes this anecdote about a woman who managed to keep a pen marinating in her gut for a quarter-century until doctors plucked it out. Report the authors, who are physicians in…

When an Indian man asked a doctor to examine his irritated eye, the doctor discovered the man had a little squirming company. A 15-cm parasite was swimming about around the fellow's eyeball, and the surgery was recorded for Internet posterity.

On Star Trek, surgeons can perform complicated operations without so much as cutting into the patient — and soon this could be the case in real life, as well. Researchers at Caltech have developed a new visualization technique, where highly focused light and ultrasound are applied to illuminate the body's interior,…

Plenty of kids accidentally swallow bugs or eat dirt while playing, but 12-year-old Anil Barela went a bit further: he accidentally inhaled a nine-centimeter fish while playing in river in central India's Khargone district. The fish was still alive and flapping when the doctors performed a bronchoscopy.

It's fun to reflect on the past's starry-eyed visions of the future. We all know this. But reviewing retro-futuristic predictions in the field of medicine is always especially entertaining.