The great medical debates – such as how to cure the common cold – will have to wait because researchers are deeply involved in a vastly more important question: What are the side effects of swallowing swords?

An article in the British Medical Journal focused on how to “evaluate information on the practice and associated ill effects of sword swallowing.”  Why?  Was someone holding the tip of a sword to these researchers’ gullets?  Was playing with scalpels insufficient for them?  Was bigger always better for them?

A Sword Swallowers Association?

Whatever their reasoning these researchers – with apparently nothing else to occupy their time – decided to conduct the research by sending letters to all the members of the Sword Swallowers’ Association (www.swordswallow.org).  Yes, I didn’t know there was such a group either, but leave it to the researchers to ferret them out.  They were able to recruit 116 swordspersons from 116 countries, from which 46 of them were further examined. Facts uncovered were (are you waiting in breathless anticipation?) that the average age when sword swallowers first started swallowing their swords is 25, but some were as young as 13 (what were the parents thinking?).  The average length of a swallowed sword was 176 cm, but some were as long as 191 cm.  The average weight was 79 kg.  Amazingly, the researchers discovered that some swallowers took in multiple swords at a time.  Twenty-five of the subjects had swallowed more than one at a time and one of them had taken in 16 at the same time. 

The research turned up facts that most people with a brain would have known without the research.  For example:

• Major complications are more likely when the swallower is distracted or swallows multiple or unusual swords or when previous injury is present.
• Perforations mainly involve the oesophagus and usually have a good prognosis.
• Sore throats are common, particularly while the skill is being learnt or when performances are too frequent.
• Major gastrointestinal bleeding sometimes occurs, and occasional chest pains tend to be treated without medical advice.
• Sword swallowers without healthcare coverage expose themselves to financial as well as physical risk.

Finding The Obvious

Finally, our intrepid researchers concluded “sword swallowers run a higher risk of injury when they are distracted or adding embellishments to their performance, but injured performers have a better prognosis than patients who suffer iatrogenic perforation.”

There is surprising detail in the research paper, which is complete with photos and x-rays of the sword swallowers insides.

And what new and useful information have we all gained by knowing all about sword swallowing.  Say the researchers “many performers accept a financial as well as a physical risk” when they do their thing.  No kidding?

Perhaps a better use for some of these swords would be to perforate any further research efforts by these research idiots.  Perhaps a “Z” carved somewhere on their person would make them more hesitant to do such absurd research and spend someone else’s money doing so.

Click here for more articles by The Writin’ Cowboy.