10 Daily Things

First off, in case you are confused, the photograph at the right is of a male Eunich. A eunuch is a castrated man; the term usually refers to those castrated in order to perform a specific social function, as was common in many societies of the past. In ancient China castration was both a traditional punishment (until the Sui Dynasty) and a means of gaining employment in the Imperial service. At the end of the Ming Dynasty there were 70,000 eunuchs in the Imperial palace. The value of such employment—certain eunuchs gained immense power that may have superseded that of the prime ministers—was such that self-castration had to be made illegal. The number of eunuchs in Imperial employ had fallen to 470 in 1912, when their employment ceased

Eunuchs castrated before puberty were also valued and trained in several cultures for their exceptional voices, which retained a childlike and other-worldly flexibility and treble pitch. Such eunuchs were known as castrati. Unfortunately the choice had to be made at an age when the boy would not yet be able to consciously choose whether to sacrifice his sexual potency, and there was no guarantee that the voice would remain of musical excellence after the operation.

Additional Eunuchs Images >>>

More Bizarre Traditions >>>

The video shows a 1991 surgery in which the world’s largest intact tumor, a whopping 303-pounder, was removed from an unnamed 34-year-old female patient’s abdomen.

The man with the largest hand in the world will be looking forward to a normal life after undergoing radical plastic surgery at Shanghai No. 9 People’s Hospital.

Liu Hua, a 24-year-old Jiangsu Province native, was born with a left thumb, index and middle finger much larger than normal. Liu was suffering from a rare disease called macrodactyly, a birth defect in which toes or fingers are abnormally large. The cause of the disease is unknown but bone and soft tissue grows at an extraordinary rate.

Read the full story >>>

A Chinese man recovers from surgery that removed part of his facial tumours, which weigh more than 20 kilogrammes in total.

[VIA]

Hypermobility (also called double-jointedness, hypermobility syndrome or hyperlaxity) describes joints that stretch farther than is normal. For example, some hypermobile people can bend their thumbs backwards to their wrists, or bend their knee joints backwards. It can affect a single joint or multiple joints throughout the body.