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I have a really big obsession with parasites of all kinds. They creep me out, but I like to read books on parasitology and the various cultural depictions of parasites throughout history. Creepy as hell, but awesome.
You might enjoy a show called Monsters Inside Me.
http://www.animalplanet.com/tv-shows/monsters-inside-me/
That specific eyeball one. The indigenous people there in Ghana would smoke it out. Theyd fill this wooden tube full of this herbal smoke theyd roll up into a cigarette and hold it up to their eye. It rarely worked though.
Parasites. You won't like them so much if you ever visit most of Africa for any length of time. Bot and sweat flies. Jiggers. Mango worms, malaria. And that's just scratching the surface. I went to Ghana and got malaria and had a couple of jiggers taken out of my right big toe a week or two after getting home. Little larvae maggots that wormed their way under my skin and burrowed in. It hurt so bad just from two of them I could hardly walk and I saw people there whose feet had HUNDREDS Of them. Even in their hands. This one guys toenails and both little toes had fallen off from them. There's also this thing you can get from drinking the water there and it's a tiny worm that matures in your lung then migrates either up into your cornea, where it will drill it's way out after a while, or down to the soft tissue in your genetials. Causing horrific elephantitis like symptoms.
Really anywhere in a more under-developed country. It's not just Africa. Places in south America, China, eastern Europe And remote places in India and the Philippines and places like that. It's like they thrive where there isn't modern medical infrastructure to detect and deal with them. Because a general worming treatment only kills around 29% of the parasites that are able to infect humans. And almost all of those are confined to the digestive tract or bile ducts. Most others need direct surgical intervention to remove, and many places just don't have the resources to perform things like removing a worm that's the thickness of a hair from under the lining of someone eye.
Parasitologist? Bioscience geek. Yeah, you're weird, in a beneficial way. Interesting is these symbiotic parasitic kinds of creatures. I think of Lichens.
We pulled a tick off our dog Sunday. It was so engorged that it was about the size of a jelly bean. Creepy!