TURNING FLESH INTO METAL.

Evening Post, Volume XXXVI, Issue 102, 27 October 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

TURNING FLESH INTO METAL.

A writer in an Italian newspaper describes a Visit to the atelier of an old Turin ohemiat, ADg«lo Motta, recently deceased, who is said to have devoted 30 years of his life to the discovery and perfecting of a process for effecting the metallisation of corpses, an artificial process corresponding to petrifaotion. " Having informed him of the objeot of onr visit," he writes, " I said to the professor : ' Snob wonderful things have been related of you that it is hard for mo to believe them. I was told that you motallißO human bodies. Evidently what waa meant was that you cover them with a coating of metal by galvanoplaaty.' ' Oh, no ! ' replied Motta, '. Not at all. Ido not apply a covering ; I substitute metal for the organic matter— in a word, I metallise in the fullest sense of the term. You mar convince yourself personally of the truth of my assertion. May 1 request the gentleman to walk into my atelier?' The soientist led us into the adjoining room; and showed us his preparations. On a pedestal stood a magnificent bust of a woman, made of a copper-coloured metal. The finest wrinkles and veins on the neck and hands were reproduced with wonderful minuteness. Motta informed us that the bust was made from a corpse which he had secured with indescribable difficulty. Aa we examined this bust, which looked as though it had just left the workshop of a great artist, the professor delivered a long leetureonthedisadvantagesofgalvanoplasty, which effaces the minute details, and does not give a faithful reproduction. 'My process is different,' ho added. ' I destroy the organic substanoe, and replace it by a similarly shaped mass of metal. Hero, for example, I have the arm of a child, which I am just now preparing.' The aoiontist produaed from a closet the arm of a child which had been oat off at the Bhoulder. Through the whole length of it passed fine copper wires, which protruded at the finger tips. 'A portion of the organic matter has already been destroyed,' he continued. 'By means of a chemical pVeparation, which is my secret, I solidify the arm, without in any way altering its shape. Then I place the objeot in a metal bath, and pass a strong electric current through the copper wires. Skin, bones, flesh, fibres gradually disappear, and are replaced by exaotly similar metallic deposits. When the process is completed, I have a metal arm, which in its cross and longitudinal aootions presents identically the same configuration as an arm of flesh and bone.' " Professor Motta then showed the writer a number of similarly metaliscd heads of men and ohil- ' dron, one of which had been sawed across, so that he could oonvinoe himself that the whole head had been metalissd. Motta lived and died m poverty, and carried the seoret of his discovery into his grave.