I work in a microbiology lab...
We test anything and everything that could harbour bacterial infection in humans, ranging from simple cotton-bud swabs of skin, to amputated body parts, as well as anything that can be removed from the body, by natural or mechanical means! Some organisms need help growing to a detectable level, so we put the sample into an airtight jar of nutrient liquid for a period of time (between two days and a fortnight), before transferring it to an agar plate. After two weeks, these can whiff a bit.
By far the worst was the rounded lid from a can of deodorant. This came to the lab having been surgically removed from the nether regions of a lady after it had dislodged from the can whilst being used for a purpose for which it was not designed. It must have been lost for some time, as the black plastic had actually discoloured, now a shade of light brown.
The lid was so full of anaerobic bacteria that just five days into its two week incubation period, it produced enough gas to blow the lid clean off the jar. The smell was atrocious, a combination of vindaloo based diarrhoea, swamp gas, rotting fish and dead tramp, causing one of my colleagues to run out and be violently sick. What state the patient's clunge was in, I dread to think.
That held the record for the worst smelling sample ever processed for 12 years. It was only beaten last year when we received a necrotic anus.
(Captain Coffee Break, Thu 23 Jan 2014, 13:59, Reply)