There are many cultures associated with an "alternative" approach to medicine that harnesses supposed cures that can be traced back thousands of years. That includes China, although one questionable remedy led to a woman landing in the hospital after she swallowed a bunch of live frogs in an attempt to address her back pain.
There are plenty of people who buy into the concept of alternative medicine, just like there are plenty of doctors, nurses, and other certified professionals who would tell you it would simply be referred to as "medicine" if it actually worked.
That particular topic can be a tricky one to discuss based on how many disciplines can be lumped in under that umbrella, including those that can be objectively dismissed as pseudoscience and others that are proven to have some merit despite not being able to rival the kind of treatment you can get from modern medicine.
That includes the realm known as "traditional Chinese medicine." That wide-ranging term encompasses disciplines including acupuncture and herbal therapies that some studies have shown to be clinically beneficial, along with plenty of other treatments that are firmly shown to cause more harm than good.
That's certainly the case with one approach that led to a woman in China being diagnosed with a parasitic infection after an ill-fated attempt to address a herniated disk.
The aforementioned herbal remedies represent a fraction of the natural ingredients that are harnessed in traditional Chinese medicine, which has come under controversy over the endangered animals that are hunted and trafficked due to the demand for ingredients like tiger bones, pangolin scales, and rhinoceros horns.
However, those are far from the only animals that can purportedly help with pain, and there's apparently a folk remedy that asserts you can alleviate yours by swallowing live frogs and tadpoles.
According to The Telegraph, an 82-year-old woman who resides in the vicinity of the Chinese city of Hangzhou decided to go that route after suffering a herniated disc and recruiting members of her family to round up some frogs without revealing what she planned to do with them.
They delivered, and the woman -- identified only as "Zhang" -- swallowed three frogs (which were "smaller than the palm of a hand") in one sitting before downing five more the following day. She subsequently found herself dealing with abdominal pain that left her unable to walk, and doctors who examined her discovered damage to her digestive system in addition to some parasites that had set up shop in her body.
She spent two weeks in the hospital before being discharged and (presumably) being told not to swallow any more frogs.
This is far from the first time physicians in the country have been presented with a similar case. A paper published in 2024 chronicled the downsides of the fairly widespread practice of eating live tadpoles for similar reasons, while another woman had a tapeworm removed from her breast in 2018 five years after consuming "just" three live frogs to treat her rheumatism.