House Of The
Dragon's Cringe-Worthy Episode 2
Scene Is Surprisingly
Accurate
By NINA STARNER
TV - Movies
"House of the Dragon" is following in the footsteps of its predecessor "Game of Thrones" by not shying away from scenes that can make your skin crawl. This brings us to a particular sequence from Episode 2 that probably grossed a lot of fans out... but it is pretty realistic for a show set in an approximation of the Middle Ages.
After Viserys Targaryen cuts his finger on the Iron Throne and seems to contract gangrene, he ends up putting his hand into a bowl of maggots as a form of treatment. While this seems insane, using maggots to excise dead or damaged tissue and leave healthy tissue behind has a very long real-world history — but how old is this practice, really?
Swansea University professor Dr. Yamni Nigam says that "The oldest record [...] between maggots and human wounds is in the Bible." She adds that members of the ancient Mayan Indian tribe would soak a rag in cow's blood and leave it out; once the cloth was wriggling with maggots, it would be placed on wounds to treat them.