Embalming Fluid

Embalming Fluid (Closeup)

Lara looks for some Embalming Fluid

The Embalming Fluid is found in Tomb Raider III in the London levels. At Lud's Gate, Lara meets The Leader, who is the leader of the tribe - The Damned. The Leader was working at Sophia Leigh cosmetics company as a lab assistant. There was an experiment to find the secret of eternal beauty, but it terribly failed. Assistants turned into faceless beasts and were cast aside as "presumably dead". The Leader is angry with Sophia and makes a deal with Lara. She must get them the Embalming Fluid, and then he and his friends will help Lara get to Sophia.

Miscellaneous Facts

• The ancient Egyptians embalmed bodies in the mummy making process, but they didn't use a modern embalming fluid. Initially bodies were mummified by dessication in the sand, and then a powder called "natron" was developed. Historical natron was harvested directly as a salt mixture from dry lake beds and is a naturally occurring mixture of sodium carbonate decahydrate, sodium bicarbonate, sodium chloride and sodium sulfate[1].

• Embalming chemicals are a variety of preservatives, sanitising and disinfectant agents and additives used in modern embalming to temporarily prevent decomposition and restore a natural appearance for viewing a body after death. A mixture of these chemicals is known as embalming fluid and is used to preserve deceased individuals, sometimes only until the funeral, other times indefinitely. Typically embalming fluid contains a mixture of formaldehyde, methanol, ethanol and other solvents. The formaldehyde content generally ranges from 5 to 29 percent and the ethanol content may range from 9 to 56 percent. In the United States alone, enough embalming fluid is buried every year to fill eight Olympic-size pools[2]. It is not clear what use a small vial of embalming fluid would be to The Leader but maybe the cosmetic experiments attacked his pre-frontal cortex as well as his face, and clouded his judgement.

• Embalming has provided a good deal of black comedy in literature and horror movies. Famous examples include the novel The Loved One by Evelym Waugh, the movies The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) and The Mummy (1932) and the television series Six Feet Under[3].