Russian collects mummifed bodies

I wonder if my character Sidney Cole comes from a Russian background?  If so, I think this article must be about a long lost cousin.

A specialist from Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod was arrested for exhuming bodies from graves on the territory of the region. Police officers found 29 mummified bodies in his apartment.

via Man collects 29 mummified bodies in his apartment – English pravda.ru.

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Lyophilization

The fundamental principle in freeze-drying (also known as lyophilization), is sublimation, the shift from a solid directly into a gas. Just like evaporation, sublimation occurs when a molecule gains enough energy to break free from the molecules around it. Water will sublime from a solid (ice) to a gas (vapor) when the molecules have enough energy to break free but the conditions aren’t right for a liquid to form.

via transtopia — Plastination, Freeze Drying and Pet Preservation.

 

In the Yellow Pages

Sloan and Whiteside’s House of Bereavement, it read.  More than a funeral home, more like a home. Preserve your memories forever.  Ask about our new sublimation process.

from Painted Black, the novel

The ad slug for the funeral home where Lexie disappears.

Modern Mummies

Wonder where my inspiration came from for such a gruesome idea as freeze dried human bodies?  Click the link below to read a reference to one of the articles that first caught my attention.

Modern Mummies: The Preservation of the Human Body in the Twentieth Century

 By Christine Quigley

Pets vs People

http://books.google.com/books?id=LNgDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA78&dq=freeze%20dry%20human&pg=PA78#v=onepage&q=freeze%20dry%20human&f=false

See page two and three of this Google Book article if you want to see real life lypholization chambers like the ones Sidney Cole uses in Painted Black.