Shocking! – Story of the Hungarian mummified boy

Lajos Arányi – physician, professor and author – is considered to be the „father” of Hungarian pathology. He was the one who embalmed Franz Josef’s eldest daughter, Zsófia; and the body of the „greatest Hungarian” Count István Széchenyi. Few may know that the pathologist also mummified his own son – who was given the nickname „Zolika” by anthropologists. The embalming was so successful that the body has been preserved in an exceptional state.

However, according to the researchers of Semmelweis Museum, it would be unethical to display the body as part of an exhibition – said Krisztina Scheffer, the museum’s curator at the conference of „Mummies in focus”.

Arányi’s diary reveals that the physician was really looking forward to the birth of Zolika; he truly loved his son. At the age of one, the infant had an accident; his head was injured; as a consequence of which, he was suffering from epileptic seizures. Previously it was not known what caused the death of the young boy; however, recently, it has been revealed that the boy died due to an epileptic seizure.

In his diary, Arányi described in details how he embalmed the body of his son and lived together with the mummy.

As Krisztina Scheffer said – in the past, people were thinking differently about death and body preservation, which means that in the 1800s this process (and the body’s storage) was not as shocking as it would be now. The father removed the boy’s brain during the embalming process and later used it as a demonstration tool during his lectures. The brain was lost during the world wars and was never found.