Here is one shocking story a little girl in the form a mummy. You heard it right; she is preserved in the form of a mummy now. We are talking about the pretty faced Rosalina who seems to be just sleeping after she came from her play in the garden. She has been preserved there since the last 90 years in a small wooden and glass topped coffin. The place we are talking about is the Capuchin monastery in Sicily.
This girl died of bronchial infection in Dec 1920 when she was a mere 2 years old. But surprisingly she is not alone and is given company by another 2000 mummies which are almost 400 years older. She was one of the last few persons to be mummified after which the process was banned finally. You can see in the pictures that some of the mummies are kept in open wooded boxes like that Of Rosalina and the rest are arranged on straight benches. Some of them even hang from the wall in different stages of decay.
Some of the mummies have a nose and cheek in place but others aren’t in the best of the shape. These mummies were covered by the famous National Geographic Magazine which dates back to 16th century or so. They were so kept that the mummies used to dry out than getting rotted. Silvestro of Gubbio seems to be the oldest mummy still in place who died in 1599. He is still covered with the then religious robes.
A special procedure was followed to preserve them. The dead bodies were undressed and kept in special chambers so that the fluids in the body could easily drain out and it could get preserved for generations. After a period of six months when the total fluid drained out, the body were doused with the help of vinegar and then they were put inside those wooden coffins as per their last wishes.
The mummies were divided into several areas where they were rested. A separate section was devoted to teachers, doctors, professors, soldiers and lawyers who were dressed as per the job they used to do. In the recent times a special injection was used to preserve the bodies. After seeing the mummified body of Rosalina every one used to think that it was a doll. When x rays of the body was done, it showed that all her organs are very much intact. This area is a special tourist attraction and a great place for scientists to do some further research and learn things like diseases, life expectancy in the previous centuries.
