Electroplating is an electrical process that plates an object in dissolved metals. In the 19th century, some inventors thought that it would be an excellent way to preserve a dead body. Why rot away? Inside a thin but solid metal skin, your corpse could slowly mummify. Its proponents argued that it was an inexpensive and sanitary process. And since it preserved a body from decay, you could keep your relatives around the house as memorial statues. Dr. Varlot, a surgeon in a major hospital in Paris, developed a method of covering the body of a deceased person with a layer of metal in order to preserve it for eternity. The drawing illustrates how this is done with the cadaver of a child. The body is first made electrically conductive by atomizing nitrate of silver on to it. To free the silver in this solution, the object is placed under a glass dome from which the air is evacuated and exposed to the vapors of white phosphorous dissolved in carbon disulphide. Having been made conductive, the body is immersed in a galvanic bath of sulphate of copper, thus causing a thin layer of metallic copper to be deposited on the skin. The result is a brilliant red copper finish of exceptional strength and durability.