Soap Woman

Want to see a soap mummy The Miitter Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has one. She is called the "Soap Woman." A man who was buried next to her and who also turned into a soap mummy is sometimes displayed in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., too. Not surprisingly, he is called the "Soap Man."... 

In the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., one can find a great many wonders of the natural world. None is quite as macabre as the corpse made of soap. The man in question died of yellow fever in the eighteenth century and was buried near Boston. Actually, he was buried alongside a woman, perhaps the love of his life, who has been dubbed "Soap Woman." She, too, died of yellow fever. However, the couple has been separated for quite some time, because Soap Woman has been on display at the Mutter Museum at the College of Physicians in Philadelphia since 1874. 

Recently Soap Woman became a television celebrity when a CT Scan done to examine the body was filmed for "The Mummy Road Show," a presentation of the National Geographic Channel. One reason for the examination was to try to understand the conditions that caused this chemical conversion. At the present time, no one is precisely sure how these two people turned to soap. One clue resides in the environment of the burial site. Apparently the groundwater running through the graves was very basic. Another clue to the mystery is that our soap couple was overweight. Certainly these two factors... 

Although I didn t know what was happening to me at the time I was hit with this illness, I wasn t totally clueless about MCS. I had friends with environmental illness, but I had no idea of the gravity or the breadth of the whole thing. One woman couldn t come into my home because of mold in it. Another one mentioned problems she d had at work when the parking lot was resurfaced, and when coworkers wore perfume. But no one had told me that my laundry soap, or bleach, or body soaps could make me ill. The people I knew with MCS could still function in the world. I had it about as bad as it gets. 

The primary purpose of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 is to assure, so far as possible, safe and healthful working conditions for every working man and woman. The interim final occupational health standard for lead in construction is designed to protect workers exposed to inorganic lead including metallic lead, all inorganic lead compounds and organic lead soaps. 

---