On September 9, 1976, Chairman Mao, a great man of a generation, passed away at the age of 83.
The bad news came, like a bolt from the blue, and the whole country suddenly fell into great sorrow.
On the same day, Hua Guofeng held a meeting at his residence in Zhongnanhai to urgently discuss funerals.
focused on three issues: : First, the Chairman’s funeral; second, how to deal with the Chairman’s body; third, whether foreign delegations are invited to Beijing to pay their respects.
At the meeting, everyone agreed that the first thing to do was to protect the Chairman's body and let people from all walks of life pay their respects.
However, under the conditions at that time, how to preserve Chairman Mao’s body was a big problem.
In the end, this important task was handed over to the shoulders of Deputy Dr. Xu Jing, Secretary of the Party Branch of Basic Medicine of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and First Deputy Director of the Teaching and Research Department of Morphology, .
Xu Jing took the lead in charge of this matter, and Zhang Bingchang, deputy director of the Anatomy Teaching and Research Department, and Chen Kequan, deputy director of the Shaping Teaching and Research Department, participated.
Hua Guofeng said to them: "Protecting Chairman Mao's body for a long time and allowing the people to admire it for generations is a glorious and arduous political task. If you complete this task, the Party and the people will not forget you..." After
, at the meeting, Hua Guofeng agreed to Xu Jing and the others' plan.
The three-person team immediately began to work. They first thoroughly cleaned and disinfected the Chairman's bathroom as the construction site.
The three of them didn't bother to eat or rest, and stepped up the anti-corrosion treatment of Chairman Mao's body.
Finally, with the close cooperation of the three, after more than two hours of intense work, the whole process was finally completed.
But soon, they discovered a problem, that is, if the body of needs to be preserved for a long time, a large amount of preservative liquid must be injected. However, the swelling problem caused by injecting a large amount of preservatives does not easily subside.
When will the swelling subside, Xu Jing was puzzled for a moment.
But Zhang Bingchang is very experienced in this area. He said with certainty: it can subside in twenty-four hours.
Sure enough, after 24 hours, the swelling problem of the body subsided significantly. When the body was transferred from Zhongnanhai to Great Hall of the People in the morning of the 11th, satisfactory results were achieved.
. The facts also prove that the decision to inject preservatives at large doses is correct, otherwise the consequences will be difficult to predict.
After the anti-corrosion, the three of them stayed next to the body, carefully observed the changes in the body, and made original records for long-term preservation.
10 On the afternoon of the 10th, they prepared a new set of Zhongshan outfits for the chairman to wear . The barber also recombed the chairman's hair. A technician from the pathology department of Beijing Hospital gave the chairman a detailed makeup.
From September 11 to 17, 1976, Chairman Mao's body was transferred to the Great Hall of the People, where condolences and worship activities were held.
Due to the hot weather and many people coming to pay their respects, the heat is even more intense. Therefore, in order to better protect the Chairman's body, all the air-cooling equipment in the hall was started, and the temperature dropped very low, so that some people still felt cold in their coats.
However, although the indoor temperature is already very low, this temperature is still relatively high for body protection.
Therefore, leaders and experts agreed that they should speed up the production of an plexiglass coffin cover to isolate the body from the external environment and cool down locally in the coffin.
In addition, after research, the experts made several decisions: remove the band's live performance and play the sorrow music instead; control the total amount of light, etc.
condolences continued until November 17, during which more than 300,000 people came to the Great Hall of the People to mourn the great leader Chairman Mao, pay tribute to his remaining face, and express his condolences. After the condolence activity ended, we faced another important problem: it took more than a year to complete the mourning activity to the completion of Chairman Mao’s Memorial Hall. During this period, where should Chairman Mao’s body be placed? So how to protect it?
After discussion and research by the central leaders, it was finally decided to transfer Chairman Mao’s body to the “769” protection room.
The day after the body was transferred to the 769 protection room, it was soaked in the medicine liquid. The formula of
is based on the successful experience of dissection, tissue, pathology experts in daily processing and preservation of corpses and specimens in scientific experiments, as well as the processing and preservation experience of Mawangdui ancient corpses after they are unearthed.
In order to better protect the Chairman's body, the expert group finally proposed the most reliable and scientific method after several thoughts and research, which is to adopt the "combining gas and liquid" method.
The exposed part is in the gas state, and the hidden part is in the liquid state; the time to look at is in the gas state, and the time to look at is in the gas state; the time to look at is in the liquid state during the annual protection period.
In addition, experts have also taken comprehensive protection measures in physics and chemistry.
It is with the unremitting efforts of experts that the Chairman's body has been fully protected for decades, and the parameters required for body protection have been in a normal state.
