The 2,000-Year-Old Woman

From the time that the body was first discovered last year, doctors in the People's Republic of China have been trying to find out what caused the death of the wife of a minor official named Li Tsang. Last week they released the results of their autopsy: Lady Li died of an apparent heart attack. Although there was nothing unusual about the cause of her death, the post-mortem examination at Hunan Medical College was somewhat out of the ordinary; Lady Li, whose body was unearthed from a tomb outside the central Chinese city of Changsha, died at the age of 50 some 2,100 years ago.

Modern medical techniques have been used many times to examine the remains of long-buried people. Studies of mummies have revealed that many ancient Egyptians had dental problems, arthritis, pneumonia and plague. Egypt's legendary Merneptah, the Pharaoh of the Hebrew Exodus, suffered from arteriosclerosis. But Lady Li's body is unquestionably the best preserved ever to be subjected to a full-fledged autopsy.

Lady Li's tomb was uncovered by Chinese archaeologists, who determined by the pottery, clothing and other artifacts found inside that it had been built during the early Western Han Dynasty, which ruled China from 206 B.C. to A.D. 24. The tomb was immediately recognized as a major historical and artistic find. But it was not until archaeologists began to exhume the body of Lady Li, whose husband was the Marquis of Tai, that they realized that they had made a significant scientific discovery as well.

Lady Li's silk-wrapped body had been placed inside an airtight coffin that was the innermost of six boxes packed in five tons of charcoal, completely surrounded by a layer of white clay and, finally, buried under more than 60 ft. of earth. Furthermore, inside the inner coffin scientists found a reddish, mildly acid fluid containing mercurial compounds that preserved body moisture and helped retard decomposition.

Perfect Preservation. As a result of the conscientious efforts of the Han Dynasty embalmers, Lady Li's body was in a remarkable state of preservation. Doctors who examined it discovered that the flesh was not dried like that of a mummy, but still moist. They also found the hair well anchored in the scalp and the joints still flexible. Although Lady Li's brain had collapsed into a shapeless mass, her other internal organs were in excellent condition.

Specialists called in from Peking, Shanghai and Canton discovered from chemical analysis of Lady Li's hair and tissues from her stomach, liver, muscles and bone that she had type A blood. Gynecological examination revealed that she had borne children.

X-ray examination showed that she had broken her right forearm; the discovery of spots in her left lung confirmed that she had had tuberculosis; and an examination of her gall bladder disclosed several gallstones. Her digestive tract showed that she had eaten melon shortly before her death; 138 melon seeds were found, all undigested.

It took further study--and a little deductive reasoning--to determine why Lady Li died. The autopsy revealed that one of her coronary arteries was almost completely occluded by atherosclerosis.

This alone, the doctors felt, was enough to kill Lady Li and, they speculate, her death was probably sudden. If she had been ill for a long time before her death, doctors reasoned, she probably would have developed bedsores. The postmortem examination showed none.

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