Today’s Mummified Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Yvette Vickers, an early Playboy playmate whose credits as a B-movie actress included such cult films as “Attack of the 50-Foot Woman” and “Attack of the Giant Leeches,” was found dead in April, 2011 at her Benedict Canyon home. Her body appeared to have gone undiscovered for months.
Vickers, 82, had not been seen for a long time. A neighbor discovered her body in an upstairs room of her Westwanda Drive home on April 27, 2011. Its mummified state suggests she could have been dead for close to a year. The official cause of death was heart failure due to coronary artery disease.
Vickers had lived in the 1920s-era stone and wood home for decades, and it served as the background for some of her famous modeling pictures. But over time it had become dilapidated, exposed in some places to the elements.
Susan Savage, an actress, went to check on Vickers after noticing old letters and cobwebs in her elderly neighbor’s mailbox.
“The letters seemed untouched and were starting to yellow,” Savage said. “I just had a bad feeling.”
After pushing open a barricaded front gate and scaling a hillside, Savage peered through a broken window with another piece of glass taped over the hole. She decided to enter the house after seeing a shock of blond hair, which turned out to be a wig.The inside of the home was in disrepair and it was hard to move through the rooms because boxes containing what appeared to be clothes, junk mail and letters formed barriers, Savage said. Eventually, she made her way upstairs and found a room with a small space heater still on.
She was looking at a cordless phone that appeared to have been knocked off its cradle when she first saw the body on the floor, she said. Savage had known Vickers but the remains were unrecognizable, she said.
She remembered her neighbor as an elegant women in a broad straw hat, dressed in white, with flowing blond hair and “a warm smile.”
“She kept to herself, had friends and seemed like a very independent spirit,” Savage said. “To the end she still got cards and letter from all over the world requesting photos and still wanting to be her friend.”
Savage said the neighbors felt terrible.
“We’ve all been crying about this,” she said. “Nobody should be left alone like that.”
Culled from: The Los Angeles Times
Generously submitted by: Mike Marano
Malady Du Jour!
Here’s another wax model image from the 1910 medical textbook Dermochromes – III.
Xeroderma Pigmentosum
Xeroderma pigmentosum is a very rare disease, which generally runs in families and shows itself in early childhood. Under the influence of sunlight an erythematous or eczematous dermatitis appears on the face, arms and legs, upon which, as a basis, numerous pigment-spots of the most variable size develop, along with telangiectases and warty growths; and these finally leave white, atrophic, pitted spots. The atrophy may attain considerable dimensions and the pigmentary spots become very numerous and extensive. The special point of importance about the disease is the fact that even in early youth, or often later, malignant growths (carcinoma and sarcoma) develop from the pigment spots and lead to secondary growths in other organs.
The Diagnosis is difficult at first, but is subsequently easy. [I need that on a shirt. – DeSpair]
The Prognosis is absolutely unfavourable, but the malady may last for years. [No, wait – I need THIS on a shirt! – DeSpair]
Treatment consists, in the first instance, of attempting to hinder the progress of the disease by preventing exposure to the active chemical rays of light – e.g., by yellow veils, colored pastes, etc. The tumours must be removed by surgical means, but relapses and metastases seldom fail to occur.