A Finger Up The Bum Cures Hiccups

Not one study, but two – both with the same conclusion: interminable hiccups can be cured with a ‘digital rectal massage’. For ‘digital rectal massage’ read someone sticking their finger up the patients bum and wiggling it around a bit.

I can see the logic, after all I was told from a young age that giving someone a shock could cure hiccups. Maybe the reason I’m not a scientific prize winner is that I thought shocks involved jumping out from behind a corner and shouting ‘boo’, not whipping someone over your knee and shoving your finger where the sun don’t shine.

It seems though that I’m in the minority since not one, but two groups have published papers on this… alternative medicine. The first, by Francis M. Fasmire of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine was called “Termination of intractable hiccups with digital rectal massage”. The second, hailing from a group at the Bnai Zion Medical Center, Haifa, Israel was entitled “Termination of intractable hiccups with digital rectal massage”… hang on a minute, someone’s not been keeping their eyes on their own work.

Since we first heard about these results last year not one single hiccup has sounded through the corridors of Null HQ – funny that.

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