Uncover the mysterious body of fresh corpses after 89 years

After his death in 1920, the body of a two-year-old girl in Italy did not decompose. This is one of the best preserved mummies on the planet.

Looking Rosalia Lombardo is like sleeping in a coffin.Photo: National Geographic.

Rosalia Lombardo came to the afterlife 89 years ago due to pneumonia. Today, people call her "sleeping beauty" because if you look at the glass of the coffin, you feel like Lombardo is still breathing. Her coffin was gathered at the famous Capuchin tomb in Palermo, Italy.

Over the years, many scientists are keen to know the secret of making Lombardo's body not decompose. Now, Dario Piombino-Mascali, an anthropologist from the Institute of Mummies and Ice Research in Bolzano, discovered the chemicals that people used to embalm her.

To uncover the mystery, Piombino-Mascali searched for information about the man who embalmed Lombardo. It was Alfredo Salafia, an embalming expert. After finding Salafia's surviving relatives, he was shown some of his expert handwritten memos. In such a paper, Piombino-Mascali discovered the substances that the Salafia introduced into Lombardo including formalin (formaldehyde solution), zinc salts, alcohol, salicylic acid and glycerin.

Formalin - widely used by embalming experts - is a product created after dissolving formaldehyde into water. This is a solution that can kill bacteria. Salafia was one of the first to use formalin to embalm. Along with the dry environment in the tomb, alcohol helps Lombardo's body lose water and becomes dry. Glycerin helps her body not lose too much water, while salicylic acid prevents the growth of fungi.

However, Melissa Johnson Williams, executive director of the American Association of Mummies, said that it was the zinc salts that made the Lombardo body virtually unchanged after 89 years. According to her, zinc atoms have caused petrification in corpses, making tissues unable to decompose. Today, mummified experts no longer use zinc.

"Zinc makes the Lombardo body become as hard as stone. If you take the body out of the coffin and stand on the ground, it will not fall," Williams added.