It’s once again time to crane our heads sideways in bafflement at all the strange ways people got sick or hurt this year.
Young doctors are taught the lesson that when they hear hoofbeats, they should first assume it’s a horse, not a zebra—a reminder that most illnesses can be explained by the mundane. But sometimes zebras do show up in an emergency room or outpatient office, and when they do, doctors (and journalists) love to write about them. Here are some of the weirdest cases and other freak occurrences to have popped up in the medical literature and media this year.
