Professor alfredo salafia biography

Alfredo Salafia (November 7, 1869 – January 31, 1933) was a Sicilian embalmer and taxidermist of the 1900s.
Alfredo Salafia (1869-1933) was a famous embalmer from Palermo, Sicily.
Alfredo Salafia was a professor of chemistry and gained recognition for his expertise in embalming in the early 1900's.

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The Salafia method rediscovered

Virchows Arch (2009) 454:355–357 DOI 10.1007/s00428-009-0738-6 LETTER TO THE EDITOR The Salafia method rediscovered Dario Piombino-Mascali & Arthur C. Aufderheide & Melissa Johnson-Williams & Albert R. Zink Received: 10 November 2008 / Revised: 31 December 2008 / Accepted: 19 January 2009 / Published online: 10 February 2009 # Springer-Verlag 2009 Keywords Embalming . Formaldehyde . History . Italy . 19th century . 20th century Sir, Embalming has played an essential role in human culture for much of history. While religious and cultural beliefs were the main motivators throughout antiquity, Modern Age advances in anatomy, pathology, and chemistry have caused body preservation to become an important tool for funerary purposes and educational and scientific practice [1]. In recent years, the authors have investigated the life and preparation techniques of Professor Alfredo Salafia (1869–1933), a Sicilian embalmer who devised a method of permanent preservation of soft tissue for dissection and funeral preparation (Fig. 1a). Having started

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The discovery of the Salafia handwritten manuscript and formula. Chronological and biological considerations

Francesco Maria Galassi
FAPAB Research Center, Avola (SR), Sicily

Tiziana Lanza
Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Rome

Grazia Mattutino
Legal Medicine Section, Department of Public and Pediatric Sciences, University of Turin

Luca Sineo
Dipartimento di Scienze e tecnologie biologiche, chimiche e farmaceutiche (STEBICEF); LabHomo, Laboratorio di Antropologia. Università degli Studi di Palermo

Andreas G. Nerlich
Institute of Pathology, Academic Clinic Munich-Bogenhausen, Munich

Simon T. Donell
Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia, Norwich

Raffaella Bianucci
Legal Medicine Section, Department of Public and Pediatric Sciences, University of Turin / Warwick Medical School, Biomedical Sciences, The University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK / UMR 7268, Laboratoire d’Anthropologie bio-culturelle, Droit, Etique & Santé (Adés), Faculté de Médecine de Marseille

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Alfredo Salafia

Italian embalmer (1869–1933)

Alfredo Salafia
Salafia in c. 1910
Born	November 7, 1869 Palermo, Italy
Died	January 31, 1933 (aged 63) Palermo
Nationality	Italian
Occupation(s)	Embalmer and taxidermist

Alfredo Salafia (November 7, 1869 – January 31, 1933) was a Sicilian embalmer and taxidermist of the 1900s.

In December 1920, he embalmed a little girl, Rosalia Lombardo, in Palermo, Sicily at her father's request. She currently lies in a glass topped, sealed coffin in Palermo's Capuchin friary catacombs (Catacombe dei Cappuccini), and is available for public viewing as one of the best preserved bodies there. The formula Salafia used to embalm her, found in his handwritten memoirs, involved injecting the body with a solution of formalin, zinc salts, alcohol, salicylic acid, and glycerin.^[1]

Technique

The mummification techniques used by Salafia were discovered in 2007 in his handwritten memoir. He injected the cadaver with a fluid made of formalin to kill bacteria, alcohol to dry the body, glycerin to keep