The state of preservation of the cadaver of the Marquise of Tai found in the Han Tomb No. 1 in Mawangtui near Changsha as revealed by the fine structure of the muscle and other tissues.

The cadaver in the Han Tomb No. 1 at Mawangtui near Changsha, Human Province, excavated during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the movement to criticize Lin Piao and Confucius, is the remains of the wife of Litsang, the Marquis of Tai, the Chancellor of the principality of Changsha in the early Western Han Dynasty. The cadaver, buried underground for more than 2,100 years, is very well-preserved. The results presented in this paper are a part of the multidisciplinary investigations of the state of preservation of the cadaver, which, together with the studies of the pathological changes and the cause of death, and the attempts at unveiling the secret of preservation, constituted the main objectives of the coordinated research activities for the Han cadaver. This paper describes the fine structure of the muscle and other tissues of the cadaver. By an extensive analysis of the electron micrographs of the psoas muscle, by fractionation of various fragments of the same, and by simulation experiments with fresh human muscle incubated with cathepsins, it is possible to show that the muscle fibril assumes the shape of a bamboo shoot and is made up of a stack of alternate layers of two "half A disks" (one wing of the A cylinder minus the H zone) to one Z disk, held together by remnants of the microfilaments and wrapped up in the sarcoplasmic reticulum. The H zone of the A band and the I filaments have preferentially autolyzed. The best preserved portions of the Han muscle still retain antigenicity to a certain extent. The best-preserved of all proteins is collagen, retaining much of the macromolecular, chemical and biochemical characteristics, whereas pancreatic enzymes, cytochrome C and other stable proteins could no longer be detected. The separation of degradative processes into endogenous autolysis and exogenous putrefaction, the synthesis of the factor of macromolecular stability and the factor of autolytic environment, and the disentanglement of the changes occurring soon after death and the long-term gradual changes, have been discussed in an attempt to understand how the corpse changed in the course of time and why it was so well-preserved. The well-preservedness of the cadaver of the Marquise of Tai once again testifies to the creative wisdom of the labouring class of our ancestors.