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Modern Mummies: The Preservation of the Human Body in the Twentieth Century
For many, a mummy is an Egyptian pharaoh, wrapped in cloth, found thousands of years later in a pyramid by archaeologists. But mummies need not be ancient. Modern-day mummies can be found under glass in special tombs built in their honor, in private collections where they have come to rest after decades on the carnival circuit, in dissecting rooms of medical schools, and in the basements of funeral homes waiting for decades to be claimed by the next of kin. Stories about the famous (Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Eva Peron) and the not-so-famous (Leslie Hansell wanted her body mummified to bask in the sun rather than being buried in the cold ground) mummies are told here in great detail. The book includes a comprehensive study of the successful prolonged preservation of the human body, and delves into the law and science of modern mummification.
263 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1998
116 people want to read
About the author
Christine Quigley
7 books15 followersChris Quigley has been reviewing morbid books since receiving an MA in 2007 from Georgetown University, where she has worked since 1986. As of June 2009, she is on long-term disability leave. She delivered the keynote address at the first Museum of Funeral Customs symposium (Springfield, Illinois), consulted with the producers of the National Geographic Channel’s Mummy Road Show, and authored five morbid books of her own - Death Dictionary, The Corpse, Modern Mummies, Skulls and Skeletons, and Conjoined Twins - all published by McFarland & Co.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 17, 2015
I really enjoyed this book! It sparked several bits of me doing further research into various mummies discussed in this book. There were a lot of fascinating tales I'd not heard of. I did find the bits about air crash victims kind of went on, but other than that I was fascinated.
January 12, 2012
The subtitle is closer to the subject of this book that the slightly misleading title. Quigley's definition of mummies is not limited to fleshly corpses but to any human remains. For instance, I wouldn't consider the victims of the Andes-crash soccer players' cannibalism to be mummies, even though some bodies were frozen in the snow against the day their flesh needed to be consumed. Perhaps the opacity of definition is mine, but the term mummy to me implies a length of post-mortem survival in the flesh. A couple of months doesn't justify the term in my mind.
There are other moments where Quigley wanders off topic. I'm not sure I would consider the skeletons in teratology collections to be mummies, even when the infants' bones remain unburied for decades. There's a leap Quigley makes from scientific specimens to pre-term fetuses in carnival sideshows, which leads to a brief history of "bouncers," rubber babies meant to slide under the laws about possession of unburied corpses. The information is interesting, sure, but felt a little like padding.
Still, let me assure that there is a wealth of fascinating information here. Want to know about the experiment reproducing the Egyptian method of embalming? Curious how the "Visible Man" was sectioned for your computer screen? This is the book for you.
In fact, the chapters about fully preserved human corpses, many of them displayed for lengthy periods, grants this book its place of honor on my bookshelf. The usual suspects are here: Vladimir Lenin, Eva Peron, the Capuchin mummies, the Museo de las Momias of Guanajuato, Elmer McCurdy. Better than that, Quigley traces the mummy (or mummies?) of John Wilkes Booth, the tradition of mortuaries preserving the bodies of people whose families neglected to pay for their burial, the modern corpses that show remarkable preservation and may perhaps perform miracles.
This is not a book for sissies. Although there could be more photographs overall, some of them are quite shocking. The body of the woman who had converted to adipocere in the Austrian lake was enough to chase away my seatmate on the bus. While the explanations of the body's processes of decay or preservation are always presented in a clear-eyed and very understandable manner, we are talking about the smells and textures of dead people. It makes for intense bedtime reading.
This review comes from Morbid Curiosity #4.
There are other moments where Quigley wanders off topic. I'm not sure I would consider the skeletons in teratology collections to be mummies, even when the infants' bones remain unburied for decades. There's a leap Quigley makes from scientific specimens to pre-term fetuses in carnival sideshows, which leads to a brief history of "bouncers," rubber babies meant to slide under the laws about possession of unburied corpses. The information is interesting, sure, but felt a little like padding.
Still, let me assure that there is a wealth of fascinating information here. Want to know about the experiment reproducing the Egyptian method of embalming? Curious how the "Visible Man" was sectioned for your computer screen? This is the book for you.
In fact, the chapters about fully preserved human corpses, many of them displayed for lengthy periods, grants this book its place of honor on my bookshelf. The usual suspects are here: Vladimir Lenin, Eva Peron, the Capuchin mummies, the Museo de las Momias of Guanajuato, Elmer McCurdy. Better than that, Quigley traces the mummy (or mummies?) of John Wilkes Booth, the tradition of mortuaries preserving the bodies of people whose families neglected to pay for their burial, the modern corpses that show remarkable preservation and may perhaps perform miracles.
This is not a book for sissies. Although there could be more photographs overall, some of them are quite shocking. The body of the woman who had converted to adipocere in the Austrian lake was enough to chase away my seatmate on the bus. While the explanations of the body's processes of decay or preservation are always presented in a clear-eyed and very understandable manner, we are talking about the smells and textures of dead people. It makes for intense bedtime reading.
This review comes from Morbid Curiosity #4.
June 27, 2011
An excellent resource and guide, but much of the information is very outdated. I plan to check out the latest (paperback) edition to see if crucial updates have been made-- maybe start with that edition.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews