I cut off my finger. A Ural man who cut off his fingers for his wife backed down

The event is certainly out of the ordinary, but such things happen, what can I say. Yesterday a man came alone and cut off his finger. How? Very simple. He and his friends decided to barbecue. We drank and ate. They wanted to repeat the appetizer. He began to chop wood for a new batch of coals and with an ax cut off part of the phalanx of his thumb.

It’s good that the men advised me to immediately poke my finger into the salt and treat it with vodka. After that, the wound burned very strongly, it stung, but the bleeding stopped quickly.

I gave him advice to treat the wound with sea buckthorn oil. He’ll come back in six days and I’ll see how he’s doing. In general, of course, severed fingers are a state of shock. But salt really helps a lot when wounded.

Therefore, the expression “don’t rub salt in my wound” needs to be rephrased and said - be sure to rub salt in the wound! This will help stop the bleeding faster.

Algorithm of actions

In general, if, God forbid, you or someone around you cuts off your finger or has it torn off, then act immediately. If it’s winter, then the severed part can be saved and even sewn on. If it’s in the summer, then most likely it won’t be possible to save it, so all your attention is on bleeding.

You need to stop the bleeding by bandaging your finger below the injury site. If you vomit right from your palm, then tighten your wrist. Hold the constriction until you turn blue, then loosen it for a while and control it so that the tissues do not suffer from lack of oxygen.

There is always vodka or alcohol in the house. Therefore, treat the wound with them. If you have 3% hydrogen peroxide in your first aid kit, treat the wound with it. The peroxide will oxidize the wound and the blood will stop flowing. Take a pain reliever.

Be sure to see a doctor after emergency care. It is important for a specialist to examine the damage and prescribe therapy.

That's all for today. Be extremely careful when handling sharp objects. Take care of yourself!

If a person accidentally injured himself and cut off his finger (for example, due to careless handling of tools), he needs urgent help. When a finger or limb is amputated, seconds count. Don't be confused. Seek medical attention immediately. Check the victim's pulse and pupils, listen to breathing. If there is no breathing or pulse, proceed to chest compressions. While waiting for doctors or if medical care is unavailable, take the following steps.

Protect yourself

Wear disposable rubber gloves to protect against infections that can be transmitted through blood. If there are no gloves, use waterproof material - a plastic bag, bag, oilcloth, gauze (at least in several layers). Try to stop the bleeding.

• Use direct pressure using a clean (preferably sterile) bandage. If the bandage becomes saturated with blood, do not remove it. Place another one on top and press down firmly. If necessary, use all your strength, but try to slow down or stop the bleeding.
• Elevating the injured limb above the level of the heart will help stop the bleeding. If possible, immobilize her with splints. Use available materials: boards, cardboard, a brush stick, rolled up newspapers and magazines, a folded blanket, a paddle, an umbrella, a pillow.
• If bleeding continues, apply pressure to arterial pressure points, these are where large arteries run close to the skin over the bone. For example, on the hand such a point is located with inside above the elbow. To find it, grab the victim’s hand in the right place, pressing thumb to the rest - this will create the necessary effort.
• Use direct pressure while pressing on the point.
• If the wound still continues to bleed heavily, apply a tourniquet slightly above the injury site.
• If the arm is amputated at the shoulder, you will not be able to apply a tourniquet. Instead, press firmly on the stump with dry gauze or your hand. When the bleeding stops, place sterile gauze into the wound. Place a folded towel on top. Wrap it around the victim's body and tie it over the pad under the other arm. Then apply a bandage to the sealed wound. Pass the bandage across your chest and back and tie on the other side under your armpit, over the pad.
• Don't loosen the tourniquet!

Save the amputated part

Wrap the amputated (cut off) finger in dry sterile gauze, a clean towel, a sheet and place in a plastic bag. Place the package in plastic dishes or a Styrofoam container and line it with ice or cold water bags.

• Do not place the amputated part in ice, water, dry ice, or formaldehyde.
• Do not cover it directly with ice, as this may cause frostbite. The frostbitten part usually does not survive.

Do not cover the injured limb (for example, with clothing). She should be visible.

J. Zeccardi

"What to do if you cut off your finger"- article from the section

The cutting off of the finger was carried out after circumcision.
Webster says the following about this: “After partial recovery, they found themselves in the face of a masked man, who with one blow of an ax cut off the little finger of his left hand. Sometimes, the candidates offered as an additional victim index finger the same hand."
In Russian and other folk tales, the hero very often loses a finger in a hut, and specifically the little finger of his left hand. Loss of a finger often occurs in the following situations: 1) Baba Yaga and similar creatures. A finger is cut off here to find out if the boy is fattened enough. 2) Likha the one-eyed (Polyphemus). Here the running hero sticks his finger to some object. The dash is already overtaking him, but he cuts off his finger and at the cost of the severed finger saves his life. 3) In the house of robbers. The victim's finger is cut off because of the ring. In addition, there are a number of isolated cases. The Japanese Yakuza have their fingers cut off as punishment, just like thieves in the zone
You can generally notice that the hero sometimes returns from his exploits without a finger.
Sometimes cutting off a finger serves as the mark of a false hero. For a finger and a toe and a belt from his back, he buys the sought-after curiosity from the hero and passes it off as his own, and then incriminates himself based on the severed fingers.
In a Vyatka fairy tale, a goat says to the children: “Cut off a finger from your hands!” I’ll taste you. He throws his fingers on the stove, but they don’t fry. “No, they’re not greasy, it’s not time to fry.”
In the German fairy tale, the finger is only felt, but not cut off. In a Russian fairy tale, a finger is chopped. “The brown one... makes a noise: “My daughters, my good daughters are beautiful, cut off his finger - his little finger.” The finger is cut off, “No, mom, it’s not fat.”

Another situation in which the hero loses a finger is when he stays with Polyphemus and others like him. This detail alone makes us compare Yaga and Polyphemus. Russian Polyphemus lives in the forest, in a paddock, behind a fence. His one-eyedness can be compared to the Yaga's blindness. If the hero pours tin into his eyes before fleeing, then this can be compared to a girl covering the witch’s eyes with dough. Finally, like the yaga, Polyphemus is the owner of animals, but unlike the forest animals that the yaga controls, Polyphemus breeds sheep, cows or goats. In one version, the hero is thrown over the fence by Likh along with the bull, which he grabbed onto. To keep the hero, Likho (“Need”) throws a golden ax and a golden chain after him (remember that Polyphemus also throws a stone after Odysseus). The hero is a blacksmith, he is tempted. “The blacksmith was jealous, wanted to steal the chain, was afraid and put one finger on it, and the finger stuck to the chain. The blacksmith saw that things were bad, took out a knife and cut off the finger and went home.” Similar: “He did not spare his hand, he cut off his hand and left him.”

Seeing that instead of a finger, an entire hand is cut off in the forest, we can assume that this is also where “Kosoruchka” originates - the motif of a girl whose brother cuts off a hand or both hands in the forest. These hands then miraculously grow back.

A finger is also cut off from girls dragged into a forest house by robbers. “The robbers poked out one of her eyes with a fork, tore off her skin, and with the other they cut off the finger on which there was a gold ring.” In other cases, on the contrary, the robber grooms themselves do not have a finger or hand. “They settled the matter and sat down to feast. The groom had no hands, so he put on black gloves and filled them with sand.” When asked about this, he replies: “Well, he says, his hands hurt a little.” Often a finger dropped into a forbidden vessel or cauldron also falls off.

Orestes also comes to mind here. In Messenia, seven stadia from Megalopolis, there stood a temple of goddesses called mania. There, Orestes, as a result of the murder of his mother, fell into madness and, in a fit of rage, bit off his finger. Not far from the temple there was a hill with a stone finger on top. This elevation was called dactulon mnema
In the work of N.P. Dyrenkova “Receiving a shamanic gift according to the views of Turkish tribes”) provides excerpts from a huge amount of material showing that the feeling of chopping, cutting, sorting out the insides is an indispensable condition of shamanism and precedes the moment when a person becomes a shaman. Among the Turkic tribes of Siberia, the forms of this cutting are exactly the same: it is performed in a state of hallucination. Here are some excerpts from these materials. The Yakut shaman Gerasimov told the ethnographer A. A. Popov how he became a shaman. He suddenly (while looking for the lost deer) saw three ravens in the sky, felt a blow to his back and lost consciousness. “Spirits” came to him and began to torture him. “He was beaten with ropes and belts, reptiles bit into his body. He was dipped in blood clots, he choked in blood, had to suck the breast of a terrible old woman, his eyes were gouged out, his ears were drilled, his body was cut into pieces and placed in an iron cradle” and etc. According to the records of many researchers and observers, the future shaman of the Yakuts “experiences all the torments of cutting off the head, cutting and boiling the body.” Teleut shaman Koyon (hare) began shamanizing after a vision. “Several people cut her body into pieces at the joints and put her in a cauldron to cook. Then two more people came. Again they cut her meat, gutted it, and boiled it.” This is a typical picture of a shaman’s visions before he assumes shamanic functions. The question arises - why do all shamans hallucinate in the same way, and why the images of these visions, sometimes down to the smallest detail (cooking in a cauldron, etc.), on the one hand, coincide with what is performed as a ritual in America, Africa, Polynesia, Australia, on the other hand , with the material that the fairy tale gives us?
In the ritual we have a more ancient form, firmly associated with the production basis and social organization these peoples. The Turkic peoples represent a later stage of both industrial, social and religious culture. The fairy tale contains the same material at the stage of relict in a completely new, changed social situation. It can be pointed out that at the stage of ancient and ancient Eastern states this motif is present in religion, but in a different form: here it is not the shaman who is torn to pieces, but a god or hero. The most famous example is Orpheus. But Osiris in Egypt, Adonis in Syria, Dionysus Zagreus in Thrace, Pentheus and others are also cut down. All of them “die a premature violent death, but they do not completely die: they are resurrected and become the subject of cult” (Reinach).
Osiris is the basis of Freemasonry in the Egyptian mysteries, its roots

As Jacobi points out, the Buddha himself cut his body into pieces and reunited them again - this version is given by Asvagosha.

The motif of cutting and reviving is very popular in fairy tales. You can set several types of it depending on the plot and large number individual cases without an organic connection with the plot: One of the plots in which there is cutting is the tale of a bride in a forest robber's house, a variation of which is " Bluebeard". A girl in a forbidden closet sees Bluebeard's hacked wives. From Grimm: "But what did she see when she looked inside? A large bloody basin stood in the middle, and in it lay dead, chopped people. There was a scaffold right there, and on it was a shiny ax." When the sorcerer discovers that the girl was in the forbidden closet, "he threw her to the ground, dragged her by the hair, cut off her head on the scaffold and chopped her up, so that blood flowed on the ground ". In a northern fairy tale, a girl and a boy end up in a house of robbers. She is invited into the house:

““Come in for lunch.” They came in, poured some steak and brought white bread, they brought beef - the arms and legs were boiled whole.” When the robbers arrive, “they ran into a strange room (i.e., into the room of wanderers) - they drag the boy by the mahalo into the kitchen. The fire is heating up and the cast iron is boiling. died. They brought the boy out onto a plate, sat down to eat: they ate and calmed down to sleep."

In such cases, it is important to us that the cutting is carried out in the forest house. In a Yakut fairy tale, two girls end up in an iron yurt with a scary old woman with one leg and one arm. Girls hear how next room she cuts human flesh - cuts off arms and legs. This is how she feeds the girls. One of the girls' head is cut off and hanged on a tree. The head does not die and cries. The interesting thing here is that the girls eat the meat that has been cut up. In Russian fairy tales such food is refused. But in Russian fairy tales, the cut up and revived one allows the hero to drink human blood. This blood is a source of extraordinary power. ""Give him strength!" - Drew a bottle of blood from his ribs, hands it to him and says: "If you feel a lot of strength in yourself, leave it to me, don't drink it all." Vanya drank this bottle and sensed immeasurable strength in himself; (Not at all didn’t leave it to the hero).” Chopping off the head occurs in fairy tales such as “Gusli-samoguda”. "Are there 12 merchants with you?" - "Eat". He ordered them to be taken to prison and said: “Now sit down and don’t sleep, otherwise you won’t receive the harp.” The merchant's son sits and sees: the merchants with whom he arrived are led past him one by one and their heads are cut off, and the corpses are thrown into prison, and they come to life there."
Traditions coming from the depths medieval Europe and taking as a basis the symbol of the Hand, as both an instrument and the very process of the Work to which this instrument is directed. In both cases, the hand is the right one. The theme of the right hand separated from the body runs like a red thread in many medieval works. For example, in many witchcraft grimoires, appealing to the authorship of Albertus Magnus, but in fact clearly having a much more profane origin, a certain Hand of Glory is described, made from the body of a hanged man and mummified in a special way with a candle made of human fat inserted into it, supposedly supposed to bring people around into a daze, which the robbers could easily take advantage of.
in the Gospel itself there is no mention of severed hands; in the apocrypha it is said “Finally they cut off his right hand with an ax and again threw him into the same prison,” and in “The Passion of Christ” it is said that his hands and feet were “beaten off.” Severed right hand is also clearly visible in the image of the Shroud of Turin, which according to legend was used to cover the body of Christ after his crucifixion. The same theme is present in Renaissance images (for example, in Fra Angelico's "The Mockery of Christ", which depicts a blindfolded Christ surrounded by severed hands), as well as some icons of Byzantine origin

Original post and comments at

“I will seek justice through legal means”

People seek justice in different ways: some go on a hunger strike, others organize single pickets, and others inundate law enforcement agencies with complaints.

But the methods used by Igor Gubanov, now a former janitor from Magnitogorsk, make him feel uneasy. The man cut off two fingers on his left hand: first the little finger, and a week later the ring finger. In this creepy way, Igor tried to reopen the investigation into the rape of his wife. The man assures that his wife was violated in one of the Magnitogorsk police stations, where married couple that evening she was brought in for disorderly conduct. The investigation into that incident was discontinued due to the absence of a crime, after which the investigators began to have complaints against Igor’s wife. On August 17, the woman should be charged under the article “Knowingly false denunciation.”

Why did Igor Gubanov decide to stop his “action of despair”? How did you decide to take such a terrible step? MK spoke with the man and his lawyer.

Our call found Igor Gubanov at the moment when the man was bandaging himself. He assures that he can easily cope with this procedure on his own. “While serving in the army, I was seriously injured, I saw how they bandaged me, I know what medications I need to take to prevent sepsis.”

He cut off his first finger, the little finger on his left hand, on August 7th. At home, with an ordinary hacksaw for metal.

That day I took the day off, and my wife went to work. I went into the bathroom and tied my finger with thread until it went numb. And he started sawing. It hurt terribly, especially when it got to the bone. When my wife came home, she started crying and begging me not to do anything to myself anymore. But I publicly declared: “if there is no objective investigation, I will cut off the second one.”

A week passed and there was no response from law enforcement agencies. And so on August 15, he decided to repeat the terrible procedure.

I took an ordinary blade and went out into a vacant lot, where there were fewer people. And he slashed... What did he do with his fingers then? I have them at home in a jar of alcohol. My wife and I will go to the village and bury them in a grave in the cemetery. This is what you need to do according to the signs.

- But the fingers could have been sewn on?

What's the point of cutting your fingers so you can sew them on later? No, that's not why I did it. It’s just that at that time I saw no other way to achieve justice other than to take such a step. But in the end, I didn’t achieve anything. Today I made a promise to my wife, relatives, the organization “Public Verdict”, which provides legal and psychological assistance, abandon such methods. If two severed fingers did not lead to anything, then a third one is unlikely to help. Now I will seek justice through legal means.

Igor has been seeking justice since January 26, 2016, when, according to the man, the incident itself occurred.

That day, or rather evening, they were taken twice to one of the Magnitogorsk police departments. Both times the spouses were taken from a rented apartment where they had rented a room. Igor assures that a neighbor with whom they did not have the warmest relationship complained. It was after the second arrest that Gubanov’s wife was allegedly taken out of the cell, dragged into the office, beaten and raped.

They wrote a statement the next day, but for a long time they could not stop beating their wife. It seems that there was no referral for a forensic examination, which should be issued by the police.

We managed to achieve this direction a week after we contacted Investigative Committee. We started conducting an internal audit.

As a result, a case was opened, but under the article “Excess of official powers by unidentified police officers.” This happened, according to the man, only after his wife passed a polygraph test.

And on July 7, Igor finds out: the case was closed due to the absence of a crime. But a new one has been filed against his wife - for knowingly false denunciation.

On the same day, the man decided to take extreme measures. In all his appeals (even to the website of the President of the Russian Federation), the man demanded one thing: to make public the video recording from the police station on the day on which, according to his version, illegal actions were committed with his wife. They say that on the recording you can see who took her out of the cell and at what time and where he took her.

I have a refusal order. It states that the recording was seized on January 28, with a total of six files. But supposedly the wife is not depicted on it. But if we are not in the video, make it public - and all the fuss will end there, all the questions will disappear by themselves,” Igor gets excited.

There are still several controversial issues in this case.

Salima wrote in all her statements that she was raped. And an investigation into this fact was carried out, but in a rather strange way,” says Dina Latypova, a lawyer at the Public Verdict Foundation, who represents the interests of Igor’s wife. - For example, Salima was shown photos of all the men from that police department. And she pointed to two people - one, according to the woman, beat her, the second raped her. But for some reason, samples of biomaterial were taken only from the first one. What does he have to do with it? She also pointed to another person as the alleged rapist.

Another strange moment: after Salima’s statement was accepted, she asked to take all the clothes she was wearing that evening as evidence.

But for some reason they only took swimming trunks and leggings. And a few weeks later they tell us: for the examination we need a bra, a jacket, and even a fur coat. “What can you find on things if during this time they have already been washed at least five times, and we actually sold the fur coat to a pawnshop - we really needed money,” Igor is indignant.

Now Salima's lawyer is preparing a petition to the regional court.

If you had to choose which part of the body to cut off, the most the best solution it would be to choose one of the fingers. This choice is easy to explain, because you still have nine spare fingers, and you most likely will not bleed to death, as if you cut off a leg or arm. People have been deliberately amputating their fingers for the past 20,000 years, and in some parts of the world, it is still a very common practice.

If all your fingers are in place, but your nails are without a manicure, then sign up for a beauty salon http://www.deliyabeauty.com, manicure, pedicure. In a word, everything is done. And don’t be afraid, no one will touch your fingers. ;)

10. Mourning

The Dani people of New Guinea sacrifice the fingers of young girls when members of their family die. They believe that the ghosts of dead warriors will strike fear into everyone in the city unless they are given enough little girls' fingers. But the ghosts of the leaders are considered the worst here, so in the past, when the leader died, every girl in the tribe sacrificed her finger. Some elderly Dani women had only one finger left in their old age. The procedure of cutting off fingers may seem very painful, but the Dani came up with a rather creative solution for anesthesia. They knew that a precise blow to the inner condyle of the humerus would completely shut off the ulnar nerve, which controls sensation in the ring and little fingers, leaving them numb. Before Dani’s amputation, they took a stone and hit the girl’s ulnar nerve with all their might. While the girl was confused and feeling numb, they cut off her finger with a stone ax. Apparently, Dani’s funeral looks much more enchanting than ours.

9. Healing impotence

IN West Africa, if a man dies without conceiving a single child throughout his life, in some tribes they cut off one of his little fingers and insert it directly into the rectum. His spirit supposedly feels so embarrassed by the presence of an amputated finger-suppository that upon returning from the spirit world to the world of the living, it is reincarnated as a fertile woman. This custom ensures that the tribe will have a sufficient number of women of childbearing age to support the development of future generations. Supposedly it was believed that this ritual also gives masculine powers to all tribal wars. The knowledge that your relatives will soon make fun of your butt seems to be able to ruin even the most serene dying moments. This ritual is less traumatic than Dani's, since death itself is a fairly effective anesthetic. However, it must be quite unpleasant for the person who is obliged to insert a finger inside a corpse.

8. Fishing

As a sign of dedication to their profession, Australian Aboriginal women fishing tie a coarse web around their fingers and wait until their upper phalanges die from loss of blood and fall off completely. After the finger dies, the women go to sea and throw their finger into the ocean to be eaten by fish. The Aborigines believe that there is a magical connection between the eaten finger and the hand from which it was cut off. The finger supposedly wants to return to its hand, but since it is inside the fish, it brings the fish along with it. This “magic” was considered so strong that even, according to the aborigines, they endowed fishing nets made by a woman who cut off her finger with a special attraction for fish. Women who donated their fingers for the benefit of their trade are highly respected among their fellow villagers, and the amputated limb of a finger is a symbol of their high social status.

7. Improved vision

The Shambhala people live in the Usambara Mountains, a place in northeastern Tanzania. In the past, mothers from the Shambhala tribe who had a child with poor eyesight would cut off one of the fingers of the sick child and drip the blood from the severed finger directly into the child's eye. This kind of blood transfusion into the eye, they thought, improved vision and cured many eye problems. But this is not the only interesting eye treatment practiced by ethnic Tanzanians. Shambhala also know a plant that supposedly cures blindness. They believe that it loses its power if it is touched with hands, so healers collect it with their mouths and then spit it onto a cloth, which is then applied to the eyes of suffering people.

6. Apology

The Japanese Yakuza is one of the largest, oldest and most feared criminal organizations in the world. When a Yakuza member makes a mistake, he apologizes by cutting off one knuckle of his finger, wraps it in silk, and presents it to his boss. For big mistakes you will have to give up additional phalanges, which can be cut off from the same finger or any other. This practice is known as yubitsume. It allows yakuza bosses to judge a person's reliability at first glance. And approximately 42 percent of the Yakuza are missing at least one phalanx.

You can even pay off card debts with your fingers. It is possible that this tradition originated in feudal Japan, when cutting off the little finger caused difficulties in handling the weapon, making the victim more dependent on his feudal master. It should be noted that offering knuckles as an apology may not work outside of a criminal organization.

5. Preventing infant mortality

The Ashanti tribe believes in a world of shadows that exists alongside the material world. When a child is born, it is impossible to immediately tell whether he is a person or a ghost. If the child lives eight days, then it is probably human. If he dies, then he will definitely be a wandering ghost sent from the shadow world by the ghost mother to frighten living people. The dead child's fingers are cut off, the body is mutilated, and the corpse is buried among the refuse of the village. The child's family pretends to be very glad that death helped dissuade the ghost mother from sending ghost children to people again.

These people also believe that evil spirits are to blame for the death of babies. They say that after one of these spirits kills a child, it remains at the child's burial site and continues to kill babies. To curb it, parents cut off a finger from the hand of each subsequent child. These fingers are buried in the grave of the first child, so that the spirit can eat the delicious children's fingers and not dream of eating the rest of the children.

4. Food

Speaking of tasty fingers, I must say that large number people had their fingers eaten in experiments with autocannibalism. After one man's finger was permanently mangled in a car accident and amputated, he wanted to keep it. He took it home, boiled it with salt and ate it. Another man became obsessed with cannibalism, so he decided to try cutting off his fingers and boiling them. After he cooked one finger, he planned to chop off the rest and cook them too, but he soon came to his senses and went to the hospital for medical help instead. Some people criticized his actions, but since he only ate his finger, the law enforcement officers did not find any crime in his actions.

A Serbian man A man named Zoran Bulatović cut off his finger with a hacksaw and ate it as a protest against his inability to buy food due to the Serbian government's refusal to pay wages to textile workers. He commented on his actions and feelings with the quite predictable words that “this hurts like hell.”

3. Marriage proposal

IN Western world, engaged couples decorate each other's fingers with expensive stones, which symbolize the strength of their feelings, in the form of financial investments. It also shows how much they are devoted to each other that even the use of child labor to produce these rings does not make any difference.

But wedding rings may be lost, stolen or given as collateral, but in the case of finger amputation, you definitely won’t have any problems. It's like a sign that can't be taken away. The Hottentots (note a tribe in southern Africa) cut off the fingers of the bride and groom as a sign of their eternal affection for each other. If one of the spouses dies, the other can remarry, but the living spouse must cut off two of his own fingers in order to free the dead spouse from spiritual bonds. It is clear that divorce is a rare occurrence among the Hottentot tribe.

2. Protest

Protesters go to great lengths to demonstrate that they mean business, and finger amputation is certainly one of them. the best ways insist on your own. One jailed Australian cut off his finger and tried to mail it to the Australian Supreme Court to protest prison conditions. The Correctional Service Commissioner was not impressed and remarked: “He probably won’t be able to count now.” until ten."

IN South Korea, a mother and her son were so upset over a dispute over a tiny rock between Korea and Japan that they decided to publicly cut off their fingers. In another incident, 20 South Koreans publicly amputated their fingers to protest Japanese politicians who visited war memorials commemorating Japanese soldiers who served in World War II. One Chinese artist cut off his fingers in Tiananmen Square to protest the Chinese government. Then he buried his fingers in porcelain flower pot. The practice even reached America, where a gun activist and city councilman cut off his own index finger and convinced a friend to deliver it to state legislators as they debated gun control legislation. But lawmakers were not convinced by his argument.

1. Treatment of urinary incontinence

Some members of the South African Xhosa tribe perform inkviti - ritual sacrifice little finger to calm the anger of the spirits of ancestors. The Xhosa believe that this sacrifice is necessary to prevent bedwetting and ensure good health. Before the operation, healers bind and cover the child's eyes before cutting off his little or ring finger, after which the bleeding is stopped with mud taken from mole waste and the wounds are rubbed with the dung of a young cow.

Inkwiti is still performed today, and native practitioners caution people against rushing to condemn the ritual unless they have at least a passing understanding of Xhosa culture. After all, many Westerners pay people to insert blades through their ears, eyebrows, or nipples so they can place decorative pieces of metal in the resulting holes. So when we call something strange, it all depends on how you look at it.

The material was prepared by Natalya Zakalyk - based on material from the site