A teenager recently injected himself with lethal mercury with hopes of gaining superpowers that their favorite X-Men superhero has.
The 15-year-old boy said that he wanted to become Mercury, a superhero from Marvel Comics.
The thing is, he did not get the superpowers, instead, he ended up with painful ulcers and they were not healing.
Not only that, but he also allowed spiders to bite him with hopes of becoming like Spider-Man.
In the Marvel Comics, the body of Mercury is composed of a non-toxic metal that resembles mercury, which she, yes the character is a she, can reshape and solidify at her own will.
The exact date of the incident was not shared with the public.
However, the case was written up in a report that was published in the National Centre for Biotechnology Information.
It was reported in the case that the boy visited a trauma centre in India with multiple non-healing ulcers on their left forearm.
The boy later told the doctors that he deliberately injected mercury into his body.
At first, the doctors suspected that the boy had been abusing drugs, which resulted a psychiatric evaluation.
The teenager later told them that he had intentionally injected himself with mercury, which he got to extract from a thermometer at least 3 times.
In the report, they said that the boy was inspired by the character Mercury from the X-Men franchise.
Publishers said:
Interestingly, he had a past history of multiple bites by spiders to simulate Spider-Man. Surprisingly, he had no other psychiatric problems and had a normal IQ.
Doctors later carried out a number of toxicology examinations to check out the mercury levels in the teenagers blood.
The good thing is that the boy managed to miss all the major blood vessels while he injected the mercury.
And for the ulcers on his skin, the doctors had to cut them out via a skin graft.
The boy is expected to make a full recovery.