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Mirin Dajo: The Human Pin-Cushion

Mighty_Emperor

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What Geller was to physicists, the Dutch “Wonderman” Mirin Dajo was to doctors. On June 23, 1947, the day before the world would officially enter what would become known as the “UFO age” (with the UFO sighting of Kenneth Arnold), Time Magazine reported on this “Miracle Man”. It stated: “In times of stress ‘miracle men’ have a habit of bobbing up with ‘messages’ for a world in search of signs and wonders. Some swallow swords, some are buried alive, some sleep on tacks. Others – the more conservative kind – merely possess ‘supernatural powers.’ Last week Zurich was agog over the latest miracle man. Nightly at the Corso, the city's largest music hall, a 35-year-old Dutchman named Mirin Dajo stood stoically while an assistant seemed to push swords and spears through his chest. ‘I am no artist,’ Dajo said, ‘but a prophet. If you believe in God, your will can dominate your body. People wouldn't believe me if I started to talk. But after seeing my invulnerability they will.’ The act was a great success. So many people fainted that waiters demanded payment of checks before each performance.”

www.philipcoppens.com/mirindajo.html

You can now see the act on YouTube but be warned it is not for the weak of trouser:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqOoWQVk6-k

How is it done? My best... stab woud be that it relies on the same principle that help some people survive being accidentally run through with objects. The object tends to push the organs and arteries out of the way. It still must hurt liek Hell though.
 
Mighty_Emperor said:
How is it done? My best... stab woud be that it relies on the same principle that help some people survive being accidentally run through with objects. The object tends to push the organs and arteries out of the way. It still must hurt liek Hell though.

There's a congenital condition that leaves people unable to feel pain. Just a thought, but perhaps he was a sufferer.
That said, does anyone else think there should have been more, or indeed any, blood, what with a sword sticking through him and all?
 
A few more pictures have emerged along similar lines (although not as spectacular) as they seem to involve the object passing through the skin an fat layers and not the body cavity:

"Major General Barnum was obviously a well-fed general," he writes, "with a lucky layer of extra fat under his skin .... The bullet that struck him in the left front of his abdomen obviously ran around his body outside the tough muscle layers ... exiting in the rear. The skin grew down into each end of the bullet tract, the way it does when a woman's ears are pierced. By running a ramrod through the wound it was kept open.

More with picie (that is perfectly safe for even the mildly queasy (I assume):

http://community.livejournal.com/vintag ... 93796.html

Extreme body modification - not safe for work or the weak of stomach (the images are thumbnailed on that page so you can still read the background although the tempation to view them is then a little bit stronger):

http://modblog.bmezine.com/2007/01/27/mirin-dajo-ii/
 
Their previous post has a bit more informaiton.

A site in Dutch:

www.mirindajo.nl/cover.htm

They suggest he had healed fistulas like:

http://wiki.bmezine.com/index.php/Fistu ... t_Piercing

Which is essentially what the Major General has above and Mortado the Human Fountain devloped:

Mortado actually had holes bored through his feet and hands. These holes were not traditional piercings and, while seated in a specially constructed chair, copper tubes were feed through the wounds. Water was then pumped through those pipes at high pressure and Mortado became a fountain.

Remarkably, there was no trickery in Mortado’s crucifixion-like wounds. When not seated in his chair, Mortado placed corks into his wounds to keep them from healing over.

www.thehumanmarvels.com/2007/01/mortado ... ntain.html

There has been an explanation along these line son the Beeb although the show is not exactly hard hitting documentary work (I laughed when I realised who the magic expert was):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvEH64F6Upk
 
RE: The case of Major General Henry Barnum ...

... More with picie (that is perfectly safe for even the mildly queasy (I assume):
http://community.livejournal.com/vintag ... 93796.html

The webpage link is still 'good', but the photo is MIA.

Here's the same photo as it appeared in a follow-up article on Wired ...

pokeimagelt1.jpg

SOURCE: https://www.wired.com/2007/01/major-general-h/
 
RE: The case of Major General Henry Barnum ...



The webpage link is still 'good', but the photo is MIA.

Here's the same photo as it appeared in a follow-up article on Wired ...

I've found one way of faking this effect although, admittedly, this needle doesn't go 'through' the flesh as deeply as the above pictured example .. I've got some liquid latex, I might give the fake technique a trial later..

 
I ran across another photo relating to Henry Barnum, from the collection of the (US) National Museum of Health and Medicine (originally the Army Medical Museum).

It demonstrates that Barnum's permanent perforation wasn't solely a hole through fatty tissue.

This is Barnum's actual / preserved ilium (girdle-structure of his pelvis). The hole in the upper portion of the ilium is where the musket ball (and presumably the probe / rope in the earlier photo) passed through him.

 
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