Mummies: Back from the Dead

Bodies donated to science generally serve as interactive textbooks for the next generation of doctors, providing them one litigation-free chance to let their spectacles fall into a patient's thoracic cavity. But some corpses go beyond the call of duty. Among these, one corpse at the University of Maryland School of Medicine particularly stands out. Thirteen years ago, the donor—then a man in his seventies—died of a stroke, and the body was handed over to Bob Brier, an Egyptologist at Long Island University, and Ronald Wade, director of the Maryland State Anatomy Board. After removing and pickling all the organs except the heart, Brier and Wade buried the body under hundreds of pounds of natron (basically baking soda and salt) for 30 days to dehydrate it. Once they removed the clumps of soggy natron, Brier and Wade sprinkled the desiccated body with frankincense and myrrh. What they ended up with looks ...