A 62-year-old man is rushed to the emergency room, complaining of severe stomach pains. At first the doctors aren’t sure what the problem is, so they X-ray his stomach and find a large mass there, heavy enough to push his stomach downwards. They operate, and are surprised to discover more than 5 kilograms of coins, worth $650 in total.
This isn’t a joke. It happened just a few years ago in France, and highlights the effects of a strange condition called pica – the compulsion to swallow non-food items. The word pica comes from the Latin for magpie, a bird famed for eating almost anything it…
