Embalming01

 

WAUPACA POST

September 3, 1885

 

THE ART OF EMBALMING

The Modern Process Inferior to That Used in Ancient Egypt,

But Gaining Favor

(From the New York Sun.)

 

            Two men sat silent in a handsomely furnished store on a leading New York thoroughfare.  A small portion of the furniture and ornaments pertained to the living, the remainder to the dead.  It was an undertaker’s establishment, and the younger and more solemn person was a professional embalmer.  In answer to the reporter’s questions, he said:

            “Gen. Grant’s embalming was work of the finest kind – something to be proud of.  It was done by the leader of our profession, and with the best materials in the market.  There are many mortuary directors who profess to be embalmers, and who know a smattering of the art; but they are unworthy of the name.  Real embalmers are few in number, there not being more than ten in the entire country.  To be one, an undertaker must have a sufficient knowledge of surgery, medicine and chemistry, and must also have considerable artistic sense.  This makes a rare combination.

            “The chief element in embalming consists in removing a large portion of blood from the body and substituting therefore some powerful antiseptic fluid.  Many experiments have been made in respect to these liquids.  I can hardly recall how many preparations have been tried.  Brine, salicylic acid, diluted creosote, solutions of sulphate of zinc, and the iodide and chloride of that metal.  You see, the fluid used must be nearly colorless, or else verging on blood color, and must not cause discoloration.  This precludes the use of salts of copper, iron, manganese, and chromium, and also compounds of sulphur.

            “A solution of chloride if zinc was at one time in vogue, but in several instances it produced a ghastly bluish tinge, and so went entirely out of fashion.  The so-called Egyptian fluid was a standard preparation for years.  It was so named by its manufacturer, who claimed that it was the same liquid as was used in preparing the mummies of Egypt.  It was improved upon, however, by some American chemists, who now have a practical monopoly in supplying embalmers with the fluid.  Their manufacture is styled the Oriental fluid, and is made in Boston.

            “In embalming, a large vein and large artery are opened and a small force pump connected with a vessel containing the antiseptic fluid, is applied.  The process requires from two to four hours.  The natural movement of the circulation is followed.  As the fluid enters the vessels the blood is forced out.  The longer the time the better the result.  A short time enables the operator to remove the blood from only the larger vessels.  In a longer period the fluid passes from the larger to the smaller vessels and into the capillaries.  This distends the skin and produces a life-like appearance.

            “The cost of the process is from $15 upward.  Embalming grows more common every year.  In the past thirty months our establishment has embalmed about 200 subjects.  We are still behind the ancients in our work. In the main, a subject well treated lasts three years.  This is a fair average.  It would be larger if it were not for occasional cases in which the antiseptic liquids seem to lose their efficiency.  There is, however, a distinguished chemist in Italy who claims to petrify a subject by using some silicate preparation.  Though I have not seen the process employed, yet I have been shown specimens which resembled petrifactions.

            “A second duty of the embalmer is the same as that of an undertaker, to make the subject as life-like and natural as possible.  There is a division in the profession at this point.  Some endeavor by art to restore almost all the characteristics of life; others merely endeavor to remove the disagreeable insignia of death.  As for myself, I think it proper to conceal the marks of wounds, accidents or disease.  No art can take away the horror of death.  Its excess makes death the more terrible by contrast.

            “The embalmer runs the risk of disease and blood poisoning.  A subject once preserved and treated in innocuous; but in the process the germs of the disease from which he died are expelled in vast numbers in the blood.  The operator in such cases always runs the risk of contagion and infection.  Blood poisoning is as apt to occur to the embalmer as to the surgeon.  The danger in all these cases, however, can be guarded against.  Those who are attacked are nine times out of ten ignorant funeral directors, who call themselves embalmers when they are not.”