Sci Sin. 1976 Jul-Aug;19(4):557-72, plate I-X.
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.
在无产阶级文化大革命和批林批孔运动期间发掘的湖南省长沙市郊马王堆一号汉墓中的女尸，是西汉初期长沙国丞相轪侯利苍的妻子的遗体。这具女尸深埋地下两千一百多年，保存十分完好。本文所介绍的结果是对女尸保存状况进行多学科研究的一部分，这些研究与病理变化及死因的研究以及揭示保存奥秘的尝试一起，构成了汉墓女尸协作研究活动的主要目标。本文描述了女尸肌肉及其他组织的精细结构。通过对腰大肌电子显微照片的广泛分析、对其不同片段的分级分离以及用组织蛋白酶孵育新鲜人体肌肉的模拟实验，可以表明肌原纤维呈竹笋状，由两个“半A盘”（A圆柱体的一翼减去H区）与一个Z盘交替排列的层堆叠而成，由微丝残余物维系在一起，并包裹在肌浆网中。A带的H区和I细丝已优先自溶。汉代肌肉保存最好的部分在一定程度上仍保留抗原性。保存最好的蛋白质是胶原蛋白，它保留了许多大分子、化学和生化特性，而胰酶、细胞色素C和其他稳定蛋白质则再也检测不到了。本文讨论了将降解过程分为内源性自溶和外源性腐败、大分子稳定性因子和自溶环境因子的合成，以及死后不久发生的变化和长期逐渐变化的解析，试图了解尸体随时间如何变化以及为何保存得如此完好。轪侯夫人尸体的完好保存再次证明了我们祖先劳动阶级的创造性智慧。
