In cases involving trauma, a rectal exam is one way to assess for neurological damage. In our malpractice-mad society, this resulted in a frivolous lawsuit:

A construction worker claimed in a lawsuit that when he went to a hospital after being hit on the forehead by a falling wooden beam, emergency room staffers forcibly gave him a rectal examination . . .

. . . says in court papers that after he denied a request by NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital emergency room employees to examine his rectum, he was “assaulted, battered and falsely imprisoned.”

His lawyer . . . later learned the exam was one way of determining whether he had suffered spinal damage in the accident.