The life of a galley slave was miserable, pulling an oar all day long to propel himself to a penal colony. In 1774, a French galley slave named Bazile complained of illness. He was under the care of two different doctors for about five weeks before he died. Not knowing what the problem was, Dr. Fournier did a post-mortem. He found the man's organs in such an odd state that he decided to wait for his colleagues to witness the complete autopsy.
A few hours later, more than fifty people – physicians, surgeons, students and others – were there to watch the autopsy. Dr Fournier began by pointing out that the stomach was an unusual shape, distorted into an elongated cuboid by its contents. Then he made an incision into the organ and removed a catalogue of items so extensive and bizarre that one of his assistants recorded it for posterity.
The man had ingested 54 foreign objects, some large enough alone to cause his death, yet he lived under medical observation for more than a month. See a list of what was found inside, and the investigation that followed, at Thomas Morris. -via Strange Company