Adipocire
As Adipocere ( Latin adeps, adipis - fat and French cire - Wax) or corpse lipid (even cadaver wax, grease wax) refers to a mixture containing 4 to 6 weeks after the occurrence of death in bodies can occur which are larger in wet or humid conditions . It is caused by changes in the subcutaneous fatty tissue in particular . The saponification (saponification) of body fat ( neutral fats ) produces free fatty acids , the alkali salts of fatty acids and glycerine . Airtightness is necessary for the formation of corpse lipid, so that Adipocire mainly occurs in water corpses, but also in corpses ( wax corpses ) that lie in very moist graves.
The colloquial terms fat or corpse wax are wrong because it contains little fat and no wax at all, but rather a mixture of fatty acids, alkali salts of fatty acids and a little glycerine.
The formation of Adipocire is based on a type of fat hardening , which is due to the fact that bacteria can only oxidatively break down the long-chain fatty acids, which are produced in large quantities during the decomposition ( hydrolysis ) of storage fat , to a limited extent in the event of a lack of oxygen (chain shortening by only 2 C Atoms). Subsequently, only the enzymatic hydrogenation of unsaturated fatty acids with energy gain is possible. So z. B. from the unsaturated oleic acid (FP 17 ° C) the saturated palmitic acid , which has a much higher melting point (FP ~ 60 ° C). The relatively hard, unsaturated fatty acids form a kind of air- and water-impermeable protective layer in the subcutaneous tissue with a wax-like to mortar-like consistency, which greatly slows down or even prevents the decomposition of the corpse. In this way, after 30 to 35 years, bodies that were almost completely intact have been removed from graves with layers of clay that are impermeable to water. Even the organs are often still preserved. Adipocire is stable over centuries.
Thomas Browne (1605–1682), an English philosopher, is credited with the first mention of Adipocire in 1658:
“In a water-soaked corpse that had been buried in a churchyard for ten years, we encountered a deposit of fat, where the saltpeter of the soil and the salt and the caustic liquid of the corpse had coagulated large pieces of body fat to the consistency of soap of the hardest kind : a part of which remains with us. "