Rini's riveting mummy heads

This photo by Dario Piombino-Mascali, EURAC, and Clinical Anatomy/Wiley is one of several featured in James Owen's National Geographic article "Mummy Pictures: Secrets of Stunning 19th-Century Heads Revealed":

Owen explains: "Working in the town of Salò, anatomist Giovan Battista Rini (1795-1856) "petrified" the corpses and body parts by bathing them in a cocktail of mercury and other heavy metals, according to new chemical analyses and CT scans, to be described in a future issue of the journal Clinical Anatomy."

(HT Erwin Kompanjie)

BONUS: A recent, different Giovan Battista Rini, this one a Professor of Internal Medicine: