Rosalia Lombardo
Birth: 1918
Palermo
Sicilia, Italy
Death: Dec. 6, 1920
Palermo
Sicilia, Italy
Rosalia Lombardo was an Italian child born in 1918 in Palermo, Sicily. She died of pneumonia on December 6, 1920.It is thought that she died from a bronchial infection .Rosalia's father, General Lombardo, was sorely grieved upon her death, so he approached Alfredo Salafia, a noted embalmer, to preserve her. Her body was one of the last corpses to be admitted to the Capuchin catacombs of Palermo in Sicily.
The child appears as if she were only sleeping, hence receiving the name "Sleeping Beauty" . Rosalia Lombardo's body is kept in a small chapel at the end of the catacomb's tour and is encased in a glass covered coffin, placed on a marble pedestal.
X-rays of the body show that even the organs are remarkably intact.
Recently, the mummification techniques used by Salafia were discovered in a handwritten memoir of Salafia's. Salafia replaced the girl's blood with a liquid made of formalin to kill bacteria, alcohol to dry the body, glycerin to keep her from overdrying, salicylic acid to kill fungi, and zinc salts to give her body rigidity. Accordingly, the formula's composition is "one part glycerin, one part formalin saturated with both zinc sulfate and chloride, and one part of an alcohol solution saturated with salicylic acid.
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