Silver Wing Shinygold

... Praise of Folly

Conservation of the body after death.

case of non-decomposition of the body of the subject in question
Name: Bernadette Soubirous (Saint).
Date of death: April 16, 1879.
Age of death: 35 years.
Characteristics before death: impressive array of diseases and moral suffering.
Place of burial: vault, dug into the ground, a chapel in the garden of the convent of Saint Gildard.
exhumation of the corpse before exhumation
:
Date: 1909
ratio of doctors: the humidity was such that he had destroyed the clothes and the rosary, but the body was intact. Teeth, hair and nails were in place. The skin remains supple to the touch

"The thing - wrote the health, confirmed by the reports of magistrates and constables
present - does not seem natural, especially as more bodies are buried in the same place, have dissolved and that the body Bernadette, flexible and resilient, has not been even a mummification to explain how the conservation

Second exhumation:
Date: 1919
ratio of doctors: the situation described in the report looks the same as that of 1909, no sign of dissolution , no unpleasant odor, the skin was darker than before, but this was thought to be due to washing of the body occurred in 1909.
Third exhumation:
Date: 1925
ratio of doctors: the body appeared intact and was then performed the autopsy.
autopsy report: The internal organs were perfectly intact, including the liver.


report on this first case under analysis:
premise that it is impossible or at least difficult to verify the authenticity of the data collected: not able to retrieve medical records from sources that we could safely say. But I can show two paths to follow.
1) The body has been subjected to drugs or other substances that have preserved from decomposition. I cite the case of Rosalia Lombardo, who died in December 1920 at the age of two years, whose body, treated by Dr.. Solaf, has been preserved completely intact (I add, however, that the treatment on the child's body has not been completed). The corpse is still kept in the catacombs of the Capuchins at Palermo in a normal glass case. I intend therefore state following the first solution that Bernadette's body may have been treated with drugs, even if no entry has been disseminated about it.
2) The body has not undergone any treatment of any kind, so you need to find a different cause: - There is the possibility (although I have no basis on which to say this, because I do not have such knowledge) that some bacteria or organisms have retained the same body by eating bacteria that were supposed to break down the body. - It may be that the burial ground had particular characteristics in its composition. - There another case unidentified.