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FYI: How did Fight Club's Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt) turn stolen liposuction fat into those attractive bars of pink soap?

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The earliest evidence of soap use exists in the form of Babylonian clay cylinders containing a soap-like substance dating from 2800BC. A formula for soap, consisting of water, alkali and cassia oil, was etched onto a Babylonian clay tablet around 2200BC. Ancient Egyptians - a hygienic lot who bathed often - are believed to have combined animal and vegetable oils with alkaline salts to create a soap-like substance.

Roman legend has it that 'soap' was first created on Mount Sapo, the supposed site of animal sacrifices. When the pyre ashes (which were alkaline) mixed with melted animal fats and rain water, the resulting concoction underwent a chemical reaction we now call saponification, resulting in a crude kind of soap.

Soap made from human fat would largely follow this principle. Soap-maker Kathy Miller (www.millersoap.com) has speculated that human fat 'would be similar to lard [which is a common choice of fat in soap-making], since humans and pigs are both omnivores.'

At Philadelphia's Mutter Museum - a scientific treasure trove turned tourist attraction - a fine

specimen of a saponified human is on view. Known popularly as the Soap Lady, this unidentified corpse was discovered and donated to the museum

in 1874 by American palaeontologist Joseph Leidy. Grave diggers exhumed her body during the relocation of a cemetery and found that this woman - who had carried a fair amount of fat in life - had been partially mummified into a waxy, soap-like substance called adipocere.

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