End of the mystery, the mummy of an Austrian priest of the 19th century was embalmed by the anus – Liberation

All this time, the answer was: by the anus. Twenty-five years after the first exams and after years to be observed and scanned from every angle, the mummy of an Austrian man known as « Air-Dried Chaplain »-« the dried priest in the open air »-delivered his secrets. And in particular the one who agitated everyone: but how could he devil his body be embalmed and filled with various materials, wood chips, twigs, fabrics, zinc chloride, when it had not been opened?

In the absence of other possible entry routes, scientists had to face the facts, these materials which made it possible to absorb the body fluids of man were introduced by his rectum. Published this Friday, May 2 in the newspaper Frontiers in Medicinethe conclusions of this multidisciplinary study carried out between Germany, Austria and Poland are final: « Although this hypothesis is speculative », This is « In the only way to insert the equipment ».

The investigation also made it possible to be a little safer of the identity of this very dry and particularly well -preserved body: it would be indeed Franz Xaver Sidler Von Rosenegg, the vicar of the parish of Sankt Thomas Am Blasenstein, in the crypt of which he was discovered. The cause of his death at 37 in 1746 would be a hemorrhage with lungs caused by tuberculosis.

This hypothesis sticks in any case in any case with the study of the body, that of a young man easy with beautiful teeth damaged only by the mark of his pipe, well nourished and who does not seem to have worked much during his life. And since nothing of the intimacy of this poor man was spared, even his hallux Valgus was one of the determining indices: « Wearing sharp shoes and smoking the pipe were very typical for a priest of this time », told the Guardian The first author of the study, Dr. Andreas Nerlich, of Louis-et-Maximilien University in Munich.

The researchers noted that the anus of the mummy was « A little widened », but not « excessively » neither. The first speculations had rather imagined that this dilation was due to the establishment of a sort of cap of the anal canal after death to avoid leaks. « If (our) hypothesis is correct, conclude the authors, Access by the anal canal would have required an incision of the intestinal wall of the upper rectum or the sigmoid colon (the last portion of the colonist, editor’s note) To push the foreign body into the pelvic and abdominal cavity. « 

If it took so much time and doubts to arrive at this conclusion, it is that this specific embalming method was not known or documented. This does not mean that the « Air-Dried Chaplain » is the only one to have been preserved as well. As the authors of the study note, at the time of the first scans, in the early 2000s, the radiographs had not revealed the presence in the body of materials, it is therefore not impossible that other bodies embalmed in this way have already been manipulated by scientists without being given to what they contained. After which, they write, « Future investigations on burials in crypts should now take into account this unusual form of embalming when tackling their analyzes of human remains ».