His doctor’s prescription for his unbearable pain seemed absurd. It worked.

The burning sensation started adjacent the apical of Gregory Maassen’s near arm. It rapidly dispersed to his precocious backmost and chest, and wrong a month, his full assemblage was burning — from his ears to his feet.

Maassen, 51 astatine the time, spent astir days successful furniture but struggled to sleep. He visited doctors who administered tests, including humor draws and an endoscopy, but nary could pinpoint his aesculapian condition. One doctor, Maassen said, thought the symptom was owed to intelligence illness.