[HN Gopher] A 1903 Proposal to Preserve the Dead in Glass Cubes
___________________________________________________________________
A 1903 Proposal to Preserve the Dead in Glass Cubes
Author : ohjeez
Score : 33 points
Date : 2025-05-02 22:28 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (hyperallergic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hyperallergic.com)
| HPsquared wrote:
| I wonder if there was a rush to patent anything and everything
| back then. Perhaps like the dotcom rush for domain names,
| patenting hundreds of random ideas in a similar way to domain
| squatting.
| yummypaint wrote:
| This is still a common practice, the difference is ordinary
| people have mostly been cut out between the switch to first-to-
| file and routine abuse of the patent and trademark system. This
| is how apple got Samsung's phones forcibly pulled from markets
| for rounding the corners using the same curves highway
| engineers had been using for half a century before. Whether or
| not one believes the patent system is fully corrupted yet, it's
| undeniably coin operated.
| Retric wrote:
| Plenty of phones had rounded corners without being pulled
| from the shelves so obviously something else was going on.
|
| Samsung deliberately aimed for imitation and it bit them.
| Retric wrote:
| What nobody talks about is the phones Samsung was allowed
| to put back on the shelves _also had rounded corners._
|
| But don't let the truth get in the way of a rant.
| adzm wrote:
| Highly recommend everyone check out the Corning museum of glass,
| it is so incredibly interesting and there is a real depth to the
| deeper parts of the museum.
| xattt wrote:
| The success of this initiative... remains to be seen.
| y-curious wrote:
| Brilliant.
| dcminter wrote:
| If we were suddenly taken with the urge to do this now I wonder
| how good a job we could do? Maybe a high gamma sterilization to
| kill off any bacteria in or around the body, then cast it in
| resin; presumably there would still be mere chemical decay paths
| for the corpses' components though. I suppose embalming would
| still be the best way...?
| cess11 wrote:
| One person has been somewhat successful in this area, Gunther von
| Hagens.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunther_von_Hagens
|
| He has a method of plastination that he has used for decades to
| preserve corpses, notably as the exhibition Body Worlds.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_Worlds
|
| https://bodyworlds.com/
| cookiengineer wrote:
| Oof, I never expected Koerperwelten to appear here on HN.
|
| Growing up in that area, I never understood how unique this
| exhibition was. We've been there multiple times with school
| classes, and it weirdly scared the shit out of me and
| stunningly fascinated me at the same time.
|
| I didn't know that he reopened the Koerperwelten exhibition in
| 2017 again. Can fully recommend going there. It's not for the
| light stomach, and your head will be busy processing what you
| saw for weeks afterwards.
|
| The best analogy I can give someone else about this exhibition:
| It's something in between geniusness and madness, and it will
| question your authority on learned morality and ethical
| standards. But it's so much accessible biological/medical
| science in one place, it's hard to find anything else that
| comes close to the impressions it leaves behind.
| cess11 wrote:
| It's great. I'm not a fan of immaterial rights but I think
| Hagens having a patent on his technique is a good thing,
| since even he hasn't been able to steer clear of accusations
| of unethically sourced cadavers.
|
| Seems like the books based on the exhibition are still
| available through Bezos' webshop and second hand, the one
| I've got is quite nice, really good colour print.
|
| They didn't stop at human cadavers, they've also done at
| least one horse and at some point a giraffe, apparently a
| massive undertaking. His and his teams' work is in a really
| interesting space, somewhere between science, ethics and art.
| miniatureape wrote:
| Reminds me of the account of the macrobians by Herodotus:
|
| > and after this [the Persian spies] saw last of all their
| receptacles of dead bodies, which are said to be made of crystal
| in the following manner:--when they have dried the corpse,
| whether it be after the Egyptian fashion or in some other way,
| they cover it over completely with plaster 21 and then adorn it
| with painting, making the figure as far as possible like the
| living man. After this they put about it a block of crystal
| hollowed out; for this they dig up in great quantity and it is
| very easy to work: and the dead body being in the middle of the
| block is visible through it, but produces no unpleasant smell nor
| any other effect which is unseemly, and it has all its parts
| visible like the dead body itself.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrobians
| jihadjihad wrote:
| OT wrt. TFA, but per your comment--for anyone who hasn't read
| Herodotus's _Histories_ , do yourself a favor and pick it up.
| Great storytelling and thought provoking throughout.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Two words:
|
| Epoxy resin.
| threeseed wrote:
| There is a hamburger that has lasted at least 50 years in
| resin:
|
| https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/alberta-legislature-bu...
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| There's a Golden Age science fiction short story by Henry
| Kuttner -- "Home is the Hunter," anthologized and reprinted a
| dozen times -- where an aristocratic caste of duelists entomb
| the bodies of their vanquished foes in transparent resin and
| keep them on display. When they are inevitably defeated in
| turn, all of their corpse-trophies are surrendered to the
| victor. It's a pretty important plot point in a very
| influential 1940s story.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > it's hard to imagine that, even if perfectly sealed, the
| clothed body would look at all natural after being coated in the
| wet sodium silicate and then dried out, much less after being
| exposed to the elevated temperatures required to cast glass
| around it.
|
| This is the kind of stuff that indie horror movies are made
| about.
|
| Case in point: Body Worlds art exhibit by Dr. Gunther von Hagens,
| and the film Anatomy:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy_(film)
| dracovolans wrote:
| "Russian born" - i don't think so. Surename is 100% Polish and is
| written using Polish lettering - not a transliteration from
| Russian.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Depends. The borders were different back then. There are people
| in my family who are ethnically Polish but from White Russia,
| which is now known as Belarus.
| msm_ wrote:
| >White Russia
|
| Careful. The literal meaning would be "White Ruthenia"
| (Ruthenia != Russia). In general this etymology is complex,
| and politically charged[1], but deriving it from "Russia" is
| most certainly wrong.
|
| But I agree with your main point - ethnicity and nationality
| gets more confusing the further back past we go.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Likely I misremembered something. This was all told to me
| long ago by people long gone...
|
| > and politically charged[1]
|
| I wanted to read the link but looks like it was
| accidentally left out.
| msm_ wrote:
| Sorry. I just wanted to link
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_Belarus.
|
| But it's pretty obviously politically charged, as in
| "White Russia" strongly suggests a Russian heritage and
| maybe even implies they're rightfully a part of Russia.
| This narrative is very beneficial for some, of course.
|
| On the other hand, "Ruthenia" is a historical region,
| with no clear connection to any existing country. Thus
| "White Ruthenia" sounds much more like an independent
| country. English doesn't make it clear, but in many
| slavic languages it's just "Rus". Historically there was
| also, for example, Black Ruthenia[1]. Similar
| controversies were related to Macedonia for example, and
| Greeks objecting to that name.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Ruthenia
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I wonder how Lenin's Tomb was done.
|
| There's a bunch of "hush-hush" stuff about it, but it appears to
| just be very well-done standard mortuary stuff.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin%27s_Mausoleum#Preserving...
| gwern wrote:
| OP fails to link the patent, which is at
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US748284A/en
| https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/8f/2f/9b/bc599b6...
|
| (The patent is only 2 pages, and the 1pg text description doesn't
| address the question of anaerobic bacterial decay or the removal
| of water to solve decay that way, but it also only claims
| 'indefinite' preservation, so it's not necessarily claiming
| perpetual preservation. It could just be intended for a few
| months or years, and who knows how well it'd work?)
|
| > All these methods of sealing the body into airtight
| contraptions ignores the fact that decomposition comes from
| within. When the heart stops, the autolysis, or self-digestion,
| of the flesh begins, through its enzymes consuming cell
| membranes. Trapping a body in with its own bacteria means it is
| producing gas that has nowhere to go.
|
| One thing worth noting here is that this was the era of germ
| theory and vitamin-ization and initial success in blood/organ
| transplants (eg. https://www.amazon.com/Immortalists-Charles-
| Lindbergh-Alexis... ). There had been such huge gains in health
| that some of the projections and assumptions are hard to
| recognize (and are part of why science fiction from before the
| 1950s can be so strange to read). For example, given how
| pervasive germs turned out to be, and how deadly, but also how
| beneficial things like vaccination or pasteurization were, there
| was something of a vogue for imagining a future germ-free world:
| https://gwern.net/doc/genetics/microbiome/germ-free/2012-kir...
| This would help lead to greatly reduced sickness and mortality,
| and help extend lifespans to centuries. (After all, the
| contemporary fad of 'microbiome'-everything aside, mammals like
| mice or humans get along pretty well without any microbes, as we
| now know from the later germ-free animal research and bubble
| boys.)
|
| You might ask how they imagined this working in practice, as
| sterilizing the entire world seems infeasible? Well, one idea
| was... Perfectly-sealed glass cubes, using similar techniques as
| germ-free animal or bubble boy environments. For example, the
| 1927 "The Machine Man of Ardathia"
| https://freeread.com.au/@RGLibrary/FrancisFlagg/Ardathia/The...
| imagines a far future germ-free man traveling back in time in
| _his glass cube_ to inspect us short-lived disease-plagued
| primitives who wander around naked. So it 's not a big step to
| imagine sealing them into a block for indefinite preservation
| post-mortem.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-05-05 23:02 UTC)