There are genealogy records of the 350 people who were buried near the church where they were entombed, and theoretically anyway, it could be YOUR great great great great great grandma that they're scanning!
EXCERPTS from article by ANTONIE BOESSENKOOL
Johannes Orlovits and a mother named Veronica Skripetz,are on loan from the Hungarian Natural History Museum, underwent CT scans at OC Global Medical Center in Santa Ana Monday. Ildiko Szikossy, left, from the Hungarian Natural History Museum places the baby after the scan. They are part of the Mummies of the World exhibit at Bowers Museum and date from the 1800s. Researchers are hoping to discover more about how these two people lived and died from the CT scan. ...
“We never really know what we’re going to find. We’re kind of unwrapping a surprise package,” Sutherland said. Skripetz appeared to have died from tuberculosis, but Sutherland said the CT findings may be able to confirm that.
In a CT, or computerized tomography, scan, a computer combines multiple X-ray images into cross-section views to create 3D images of a body. Along with other tools such as written records and standard X-rays, mummy experts use CT scans to learn about diseases, injuries, causes of death and lifestyles without having to cut open or damage mummified bodies.
“It’s also a surprise for us, what we can find out,” said Ildiko Szikossy, director of anthropology at the Hungarian Natural History Museum and an expert on the Vác mummies. “Using these scientific techniques, we can press them to tell us their life, their history.”
The bodies of Skripetz and her baby, with their dried, papery skin and old-fashioned clothes, made for a stark contrast with the modern machine at Orange County Global Medical Center. Szikossy and Katy Hess, associate registrar at the Bowers Museum, together carefully lifted Skripetz’s body onto the CT scan table. As the body moved slowly through the scanner’s aperture, cross-section images began to appear on the computer screen in an adjoining viewing room, as Dr. Maurice Yu, director of radiology for the hospital; Michelle McLaughlin, CT supervisor for the hospital; and Sutherland looked on.
What’s already known is that Skripetz had a life touched with death. Her son Johannes died at less than 1 year old, and he was the last of her three children, none of whom lived to age 3. After her husband, Michael Orlovits, a miller, died at 41 years old, Skripetz was a widow at 36. She remarried, but died shortly after, at age 38, in 1807 or ’08.
“The child mortality was very high ...” Szikossy said. “We can tell that yes, it’s very sad.”
