I read a short story many years ago in some ISAAC ASIMOV PRESENTS type knock off magazine, though with more of a horror bent. In it, a man digging in his garden unearths a century old grave, in which, under thick glass, is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, perfectly preserved. Somehow he realizes the coffin is vacuum sealed. In any case, at some point his inner necrophiliac gets the better of him or he has to see if the Sleeping Beauty thing will work or whatever, and so he breaks through the glass to see if she can be revived. When the air hits her body for the first time in over a century, she decomposes pretty much instantly. (As I mentioned, it was a knockoff of pulp periodicals, so we’re not talking high quality writing.)
So, watching a documentary about a sealed lead/wax/wood/glass coffin on NAT’L GEO tonight I remembered that short story. I know of course that the body isn’t going to go from perfectly preserved to mummy instantly as in the story, but-
Suppose two bodies are preserved in two separate coffins, both of them completely pumped of air and stored in a very temperate climate and darkness- there is no exposure to air or elements or light of any kind. There is going to be some decomposition of course due to anaerobic bacteria and other factors, but generally the bodies are about as perfectly protected as you can get without actually freezing them in liquid nitrogen or what-not. Suppose one body is embalmed as well as can be in the 19th century (which was actually pretty good I understand- Lincoln’s body was in excellent repair and recognizable from the river of embalming fluid pumped through it during his very long bout of funerals), the other one is not.
Suddenly, both coffins are opened. Would there be any immediate (or, let’s say, within an hour or so) effect after the seal was broken, or would just gradual decomposition resume? Would there be a significant difference between the embalmed and the unembalmed bodies?
I would think it’d be just like taking meat out of the freezer and putting it on the counter. Decomposition is a process, and vacuum sealing/cold halts that process.
Thank you. My memory had somehow stored away some of those phrases verbatim and it was driving me nuts wondering where I’d heard them so I could provide a cite.
A few years ago-1990s- when the body of (murdered civil rights leader) Medgar Evers was exhumed for an autopsy, the body was in a near miraculous state of preservation; he looked like he’d been buried for a few days instead of 30 years. It was attributed to vapor lock. Any idea what would cause this?
A morbid thing I’ve wondered about my own family is my about my father’s remains. He died during a very heavy snowstorm (almost unheard of in Alabama) and the weather never once got above freezing the entire time his corpse was above ground (though of course the mortuary and church had heat). There was snow on the ground when he was buried and then it snowed again. I’ve wondered if this sped up/slowed down/or had no effect on his decomposition.
ETA: I’ve no intention of ever finding out, mind, but one does wonder.
This book talks about digging up 3 bodies that were buried in the far north of Canada for over 100 years. The bodies were in much better shape then people expected.
One of my favorite David Letterman jokes was a few years ago when an 18th century coffin was discovered that, due to unintentional circumstances, had been essentially had developed something like a vacuum seal around the time it was buried. Scientists actually opened it under controlled circumstances to study the air trapped inside, something to do with wondering about the air of the 18th century. Letterman: “They said the air of the 18th century had nowhere near as much methane or carbon dioxide, but that it absolutely reeked of rotting flesh”.
It didn’t involve a vacuum, but in the mid-1990s I visited the Catacombs of Palermo, where you can see a two-year-old girl embalmed and buried in 1920. She is amazingly well preserved.
Not sure what you mean - water boiling in a vacuum looks pretty much like water boiling on a stove. It’s not hot, but it looks very much the same - here’s a Youtube video of it:
Okay… let’s put the corpse in a sealed, airtight container, and fill the container with an inert gas (nitrogen?). Then irradiate the corpse to kill off any aerobic bacteria.
Dunno - some of the decomposition processes are caused by enzymes, aren’t they? Those wouldn’t necessarily be stopped by irradiation and/or anaerobic conditions.
