Hofmann Lehrbuch mummy

Eduard Ritter von Hofmann (1837-1897): "Lehrbuch der gerichtlichen Medicin." Vienna, 1878. / taken from translation "Atlas of Legal Medicine", Philadelphia 1898. (from pp. 444-445.)

English: Plate 56: Natural mummified cadaver.


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The mummified cadaver of a man, aged 50 years, who hanged himself in an airy attic of a family vault, and was not discovered until the lapse of ten years.
The illustration is taken from the Handbuche zum Gebrauche bei aerirhtlichen Ausgrabungen unci Aushebnuy (Manual for Use at Legal
Exhumations), by Orfila and Lesueur, Part II, 1835. It presents an instructive example of so-called natural tnununitication of a human body.
The body was found in a sitting posture hanging by a pocket handkerchief, and covered with cobwebs and dust. Of the clothing there
remained but crumbling vestiges. The arms were placed as are a drummer's in action, and were in great measure deprived of soft parts. The form of the body was in general maintained. This was dependent upon the preservation of the hard, leather-like, shrunken skin, which was earth-colored, deprived of epithelium, and resonant when tapped. The panniculus adiposus and musculature, with the exception of the shrunken and dried tendons, were wanting. They were in great part replaced by dust-like detritus and a quantity of the excrement, dried larvae, and chrysalis-remains of the beetle — dermestes lardarius. Of the internal organs there were found only dried vestiges of the lungs. On the head, there were only withered remains of skin, to which hairs of the head and beard were still attached. On the neck the groove produced by the strangulation-band was still discernible.
The man disappeared during November; that is, at a time of the year when conditions favorable for the processes of putrefaction were
not present. This and the fact that the cadaver remained in an airy space protected from rain had induced a gradual drying of the entire
body, although putrefaction had begun, but had been arrested in consequence of the absence of moisture. This drying was followed in the
course of time by destruction of the musculature and of the organs by carrion-insects and their larvae, until finally only the resistent skin remained as an empty dried envelope encircling the skeletal frame-work. This latter, with the remains of the tendons and the fasciae*, had not the body been discovered, would probably have lasted for many years to come.


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Italiano: Tavola 56: Cadavere mummificato di un uomo sulla cinquantina che si impiccò. Il cadavere venne scoperto solo dopo dieci anni.