TURNING CORPSES INTO GOLD STATUES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 275, 14 November 1908, Page 3

TURNING CORPSES INTO GOLD STATUES.

Among tho many queer things at the ; Patent Olliee at Washington perhaps the very (jueerest is the process lately _ patented for turning corpses into gold statues, or incidentally into silver or "ijltl if money is an object. No more "dust to dust ' lor the human bod v. Curia! itself may be done aivav with, and our dear departed may stand around our homes for ail time. The inline of the patentee i* Davul .J, Block, a lettcr-caricr of Chicago. He savs he has been eight years experimenting. ami now he van turn tile body of a man weighing lMlh. into pure gold for -ll.l.OlMhWils.. and into pure silver f„r ;i»i>.nondols. lie also makes a bronze >lat lie, permeating the ilesh to the ilenlli of '/ s iu., which can lie done lor i.lHHKlols., and lie guarantees that to preserve a corpse intact for one hundred years. Possibly lie will go on and invent some crockery process for even less money—but thai might be dangerous, because so breakable, -and one does not want to see one's loved one blukeii up about the house. ,\lr. lilock lias, in fact, sprung on the Patent UHice a very startling idea. Jle has tsonie samples of his work that tire amazing, to say the lea>l. Among thcni is a bunch of American lieauty roses metallized live years ago. They are hard as rock, but perfectly natural ji colouring, and when he opens the box. to | lake tlieni out the scent, appears to be ■is stroll"- as ia a fresh-cut lose. Ills wife wears hat pins made by him of other roses—'one all American Beauty, ■mother a pink tea rose, ami a third a while rose. These he metallized two years ago. She has worn the... co.i----i stautlv, winter ami -uminer, m all soils of weather. The odour of them is exactlv like that of freshly-picked roses. Of course Mr. llhiek naturally rcluscs to divulge the process by which he has coni|Uercd the forces of disintegration. He has arranged with one ol the largest casket companies in the country lo handle the process. He says lie can never turn undertaker himself but lir can show anybody else how to do it SO that there could lie no possibility <■! mistakes.