"Eaten To Death By Maggots"

Sharon · #1 ● 05-17-2012, 04:32 PM

2011:

A DISABLED Austrian man was eaten to death by maggots in his bed while his partner slept beside him.

The 61-year-old retiree died in an ambulance on his way to hospital in Vienna on Tuesday with the maggots having partly devoured his back.

Paramedics notified police after discovering the shocking state of hygiene in the man’s home, and his 34-year-old partner was questioned over his condition.

“The man had not wanted to be washed for a long time,” a police spokesman said.

According to police, the couple had been together for around a decade, and the victim’s partner had slept in the same bed right up until his death.

The dead man had been paralysed for several years following a stroke.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news...#ixzz0v4DTa1w1

Some types of maggots found on corpses can be of great use to forensic scientists. By their stage of development, these maggots can be used to give an indication of the time elapsed since death, as well as the place the organism died. Some maggots are leaf miners. Maggots are bred commercially, as a popular bait in angling, and a food for carnivourous pets such as reptiles or birds. Some maggots which eat dead, but not living, flesh have been used medically, being introduced into wounds to clean them. Other maggots, such as the screwworm, eat live flesh. In the early days of medicine, maggot infestations of wounds (myiasis) were inevitable. The wounds that were infested tended to be less life-threatening than wounds without the infestation, so until the development of antibiotics it was common practice to leave the maggots. After antibiotics, the presence of maggots became viewed as unhygienic.