Maggot Therapy and Cancer

The primitive, carrion-breeding habit of blowflies has been known, recorded and used for medical purposes for centuries past. The aboriginal Ngemba tribe of New South Wales, Australia commonly used maggots to clean suppurating or gangrenous wounds, a practice which they traced back to their remote ancestors [1]. The Hill people of Northern Burma were observed during World War II placing maggots on a wound and then covering them with mud and wet grass [2]. The Mayans of Central America ceremoniously exposed dressings of cattle blood to the sun before applying them to certain superficial tumors. After a few days, the dressings were expected to squirm with maggots [3]. Modern maggot therapy was founded by a military surgeon Willian Baer who recalled that during the war, soldiers whose wounds were infected with maggots did far better than their wounded comrades whose wounds were not similarly afflicted [4]. He began to use the technique more widely but unfortunately, several of his patients developed tetanus and he established the importance of sterile maggots for future work [4,5].