When two year old Rosalia Lombardo died of pneumonia during the Spanish Influenza Outbreak in 1920, her father was beyond devastated. Like many parents before who’d lost a child, Lombardo wanted to hold on to her memory, and he would go to extreme lengths to do so. Instead of burying his little girl, he commissioned taxidermist Alfredo Salafia to embalm her using the method Salafia had been perfecting for the past 20 years. What Rosalia’s father didn’t realize is that his daughter would become the world’s most beautiful mummy.
Rosalia is so perfectly preserved, in fact, that she looks like a toddler taking a nap. Lying in a a glass case with her chubby cheeks, smooth skin and bow-topped head, the public deemed her “Sleeping Beauty.” She seems like a child eternally asleep, not the remains of a little girl who died almost a century ago. But even more incredibly, her internal organs are almost as well preserved as her outer features, though they have shrunken over the years. She rests with around 8,000 other corpses in the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Italy, but none of them come close to her level of preservation—or popularity.
So how did Salafia preserve a body so perfectly back in 1920? Until 2007, it seemed like Salafia’s methods had gone with him to the grave, but after extensive research, scientists tracked down his surviving relatives and discovered a hand-written memoir that contained the chemical concoction he used in the embalming process. He called his formula the “New special method for the preservation of an entire human cadaver in a permanently fresh state”. Considering Rosalia’s incredible preservation, it seems the recipe lived up to its name.
His memoir reveals that Salafia had been on the forefront of modern taxidermy, and one of the first to use formalin, a widely-used chemical by modern embalmers that kills bacteria. To this he added glycerin to keep her body from drying out and salicyclic acid to prevent fungus; but most importantly, the zinc salts he included petrified her body, leaving her perfectly intact. The entire process was done with minimal effort by simply injecting the mixture into the body, probably in the femoral artery. One further touch may explain how Rosalia’s features remain so perfect. In his memoir, Salafia also mentions another method of applying paraffin wax diluted with ether to the body’s face to keep their features as life-like as possible.
Salafia’s magical formula didn’t come out of thin air. He started by experimenting on animals until he found a method he believed would work on humans. When he was able to prove his methods to authorities, they granted him access to unclaimed human bodies that had been well-preserved in the morgue. Thanks to a solid reputation, Salafia began embalming prominent members of the community, including an Italian cardinal and senator. In 1910, he built a business for himself in New York, extending his brand and even giving demonstrations at the Eclectic Medical College (Sounds like Victor Frankenstein’s alma mater). Until he died in 1933, Salafia sold his formula to funeral homes in the United States—without giving away the ingredients, of course.
Rosalia is an amazing feat of science, but let’s face it: she’s incredibly creepy. What’s even creepier is that she seems to open her eyes every now and then. That, however, is due to an optical illusion not by Salafia’s design. Or is it…? With Salafina’s skill, there’s no telling.
