A pensioner sparked a hospital evacuation after coming to A&E with a World War One artillery shell in his backside.
The 88-year-old man arrived to the Hospital Sainte Musse in Toulon, southern France and told doctors he had something inside his anus.
Medics were left shell-shocked when they discovered an eight-inch-long WW1 artefact.
As a precautionary measure the hospital was fully evacuated after the incident.
Doctors were later pictured holding the object after surgery, before it was handed over to experts and safely destroyed.
It's believed the elderly man had inserted the collector's item in his bottom for sexual pleasure.
A spokesperson for Hospital Sainte Musse said: "An emergency occurred from 9pm to 11.30pm on Saturday that required the intervention of bomb disposal personnel, the evacuation of adult and pediatric emergencies as well as the diversion of incoming emergencies.'
"We had to manage the risk in a reactive framework. When in doubt, we took all the precautions."
Detonation experts were also consulted ahead of the surgery who determined there was little risk of the shell exploding during the surgery, French news organisation Var-Matin claims.
It emerged that the bomb was a collector's item from the First World War and was commonly used by the French military in the early 1900s.
