A 61-year-old man in China was rushed to the hospital, where doctors extracted 42 pearls from his body.
The man had them embedded in a bid to rid him of his severe leg pain.
The man underwent emergency surgery in Changsha, Hunan Province in Central China, where doctors removed pearls from his waist, hips and legs.
The man, named Zou, had severe leg pains for years, as well as pains in his lower back and was introduced to the remedy by a friend. A relative who underwent the same procedure got better, so Zou thought he would try it as a last-ditch attempt to get rid of his chronic pain, which left him unable to walk.
Pearls have been used in Chinese medicine for decades. They are thought to encourage detoxification and inflammatory properties. Crushed pearl powder is also used as a relaxant when consumed as a tea.
The tea is also used as a beauty treatment, as the pearl's minerals are thought to make the skin clear and beautiful, most frequently as a remedy for acne or acne-scarred skin.
Doctors extracting the pearls found that Zou had contracted bilateral femoral head necrosis, where the blood supply to the bone is interrupted.
