If you do not know the origin of the bodies of little girl, you will say she died a few days ago. You need to know, this little girl is named Rosalia Lombardo died in 1920 at the age of 2 years because of pneumonia. Rosalia's father, Official Mario Lombardo, it was very sad for his death, his body was embalmed by Alfredo Salafia, put in a glass coffin, and placed in the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Italy.
Not much is known about the life of Rosalia, and, until now, not much is knew about the Salafia preservation methods.
Embalming as a means of memorializing the dead has ancient roots, dating all the way back to the Egyptians beginning in 3200 BC.
During this period, embalmers removed the internal organs before
rinsing the empty cavity with palm wine and filling it with natron
salts. Over the next 40 days, the body would begin to dry out and
mummify. The internal organs—which were washed, coated with resin and
wrapped in linen strips upon removal—were either placed back into the
body’s cavity at the end of this process, or stored in canopic jars.
This method is very different from the
one used today, in which preserving fluids are pumped through the
corpse’s vascular system. The end result is very different as well.
Instead of a dried-out mummy that bears little resemblance to the
living, you get a corpse that looks more or less as if it is sleeping.
Vascular embalming became popular in the mid-19th century,
and was largely driven by the sentimental desire to return the bodies of
dead soldiers to their hometowns for burial during the American Civil
War.
Rosalia open her eyes
Rosalia open her eyes
Embalming techniques varied greatly in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. For many years, Salafia’s formula remained a mystery. That was until Dario Piombino-Mascali
at the Institute of Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano tracked down
Salafia’s living relatives who had in their possession a number of the
embalmer’s handwritten papers. In his notes, Salafia revealed that he
injected little Rosalia with a mixture of formalin, zinc salts, alcohol,
salicylic acid and glycerin. It was the latter which prevented the
little girl’s body from drying out too much. It was the zinc salts which
gave her corpse its rigidity and stopped her cheeks and nasal cavity
from caving in.
Little “Sleeping Beauty” draws thousands
of people to the Capuchin Catacombs each year. Visitors armed with
cameras and iPhones each vie to get a shot of her lying in her glass
coffin. But for me, Rosalia is an unsettling sight. She is a reminder of
the dangers of childhood in a pre-penicillin era, and represents her family’s unwillingness to let go of her even in death.
In her defiance to decay, Rosalia Lombardo has become Death’s doll, an eternal playmate that can neither age nor disappear.
Nearly 100 years after her death, Rosalia looks unnervingly alive. In
2009, an MRI of Rosalia’s corpse produced the first 3D image of the
little girl and revealed that all her organs were perfectly intact.
Moreover, in time-lapse photos, Rosalia’s eyes open and shut, showing
her blue irises to be nearly undamaged by decomposition (video below).
The eyelid movement is most likely caused by changes in room temperature
and humidity down in the catacombs, yet it has fueled many cult beliefs
that Rosalia’s spirit returns to the body.
