History of Embalming. Gannal Jean-Nicolas
to the nature of the subject to be preserved. The following rules on this head must be observed:
“The embalming of an embryon of six months, may be accomplished in about the same length of time.
“The skeleton of the same embryon requires only about two months.
“The membranes of the heart, three months.
“The vessels of the liver, and of the placenta, cleared of their flesh, one month.
“The vessels of the spleen, ten days.
“The intestines, one month.
“A certain time is thus assigned for other vessels, which would not be difficult to discover or determine by experiments.
“It is always necessary to pay attention, that during this operation, the parts be a little contracted and compressed in an equable and convenient proportion; the coction of the body prevents the skin forming wrinkles, whether it be made before the deposition in the oil, or after it has soaked there for two months. In order that the subject may retain all its beauty and whiteness, it must be macerated for several days in alum before embalming it. In order that the members may retain a convenient form and position, they ought to be plunged into the balm on the commencement of winter, about the month of November, to expose them afterwards to the cold, not to freeze, but to harden them lightly.
“In following this process, with care, we destroy entirely all the germs of putrefaction concealed in the body, to such a degree, that the entrails even are profoundly penetrated with this balm, and are able to resist the constant attacks of the air.
“If it is desired to preserve a part, without the process above mentioned, the blood must first be extracted by a brine, and the salt subsequently withdrawn by rain water, and, after having placed it in the shade to prevent its putrefying, endue it with a mixture composed of three quarts of oil of turpentine, and one quart of mastic, which will communicate a brilliant appearance to it, and even a sort of light crust, particularly if a greater quantity of mastic is used in the preparation.
“As regards the preparation of the members and their appendages, a particular process must be observed. The vessels must be well dried, of whatever matter they may consist, and afterwards place the rods in them well fitted to the cavity; and previously endued with suet, which is to be carefully withdrawn in a few days; thus the members, large and small, ought to be placed in cotton, well soaked in suet, to be stretched in the direction of their length, as, for example, we stretch the meshes of capillary vessels on sticks rubbed with suet, from whence they are readily detached by means of a little fire placed beneath, which causes the suet to melt.
“But sufficient has been said for the present; perhaps, hereafter I shall have a more favourable opportunity to relate other similar facts, or even more admirable; for I have seen with Swammerdam, of whom I have spoken above, various pieces embalmed with so much talent, that, besides all their natural properties, they possessed also that of being always soft and flexible; I must forbear transmitting for the present this process, in order not to lessen the èclat of the fine work I have just described, and in introducing a still more beautiful one on the scene, etc.”
After so precise a description, I hoped to make something out of this process; but nevertheless, I must confess, that after having repeated these experiments with the greatest care, I was no more successful in my trials than Mr. Geoffroy was in 1731; only I have proved that, when bodies are prepared according to my process, and afterwards plunged into turpentine, they preserve a remarkable freshness and suppleness. After much reflection upon this subject, I have come to the conclusion, that Ruysh and Swammerdam have never made known but a part of their system of preservations, and that, previously to immersing the body in either of the two liquids of which we have spoken, they subjected them to some preparation. In fine, those very authors who boast of the admirable perfection of their processes, have not left a single preparation to show as an example to justify their praises; and, as a proof of their exaggeration, we have the testimony of an author (Penicher) profoundly versed in this matter. “Those authors,” says he, “who boast of having embalmed without emptying the great cavities, and by confining themselves to injections by the mouth, by the anus, or by holes made in the armpits, would be embarrassed to show satisfactory results from such superficial embalming; for, sooner or later, these nuisances will overcome all the embalmer’s industry, and all the expense he may have been at to conquer a bad impression. Could there exist a more singular proof of this, than what happened a few years ago in the church of R. R. P. P., respecting the body of a lady of first quality? The corpse had been placed in a leaden coffin, and enclosed in another of wood, and placed within a marble mausoleum well cemented; after which, in order to fulfil the will, it was embalmed, and enveloped in two hundred pounds of aromatics and perfumes; two kegs of aromatic spirits of wine were introduced through an opening, so that the body was completely submerged in it. Nevertheless, at the end of twelve years or thereabout, it produced so dangerous and malignant a stench through the cracks which occurred in the coffin, by the expansion of the drugs, that one of the priests, who chanced at the time to be saying mass in his chapel, fell extremely ill from this cause, and the assistants were obliged to withdraw, being unable to support the effluvia.
“The priests were under the necessity of exhuming the body, with the consent of the archbishop, and family of the deceased; they removed it to the garden, placed it in a ditch, and covered it with quick-lime, which not destroying the flesh, composed of oily, sulphurous, and resinous parts, it was found necessary to remove the flesh from the body, in order to replace the skeleton in the mausoleum; to such a degree did the bad qualities of the entrails and viscera, corrupted by disease, surpass the good qualities of the balms.”
The imperfections of these methods grow out of their very nature. Along side of these embalmings, practised in an empyrical manner, without any reference to the qualities more or less efficacious, of the aromatic and balsamic substances, I can place infants several months old, subjects most susceptible of dissolution, and which, after a simple injection, have remained exposed to the air in a moist room. At the end of two years of this exposure, they displayed a great suppleness of the tissues, without the least trace of decomposition. Those which I enclosed in cases, in the midst of an atmosphere of my own discovery,8 have preserved exactly the expression and colour of the face, that they had at the moment of death.
CHAPTER II.
NATURAL MUMMIES
Whilst man agitates and torments himself in employing all his activity to produce a feeble result, nature, all-powerful, by means of simple causes, produces wonderful effects. Man disputes with the rivers, the ocean’s waves, some few acres of land, which he protects with great labour from their overwhelming influences. At the voice of nature, elements, until now foreign to each other, approximate, combine, and unite in the bosom of the earth, and suddenly throw up from the middle of the ocean vast isles and new continents. He has need of all his industry to make the sap circulate in a few etiolated plants; she, on the contrary, confers life and motion to all beings, or strikes them with torpor or death, according as she elevates or depresses the sun a few degrees in the horizon.
In order to preserve the bodies of his own image, man, stimulated by sentiments of religion, respect, or of love, mutilates in vain their inanimate spoils; in vain he penetrates with aromatics and preservative juices, remains, which putrefaction reclaims and seizes. Nature covers with a little snow the traveller who scales the mountain, then, after centuries, returns the body unaltered. She commands the winds to blow: the sands of the desert are agitated, and the soldiers of Cambyses, and the soldiers of Alexander, are dried in the dust; penetrating with some unknown bodies the entrails of the earth, she there preserves the generations which have preceded us.
Here is the art of embalming in its highest degree of perfection; here are mummies which we ought to desire to imitate. It must be acknowledged, that when the Egyptians and the Guanches transmitted to us their bodies in a state of preservation, which has been the admiration and astonishment of ages, they owed as much, at least, to the aid of nature, as to the perfection of their art, and the development of their industry. If, then, we wish to preserve the bodies of those who excited our admiration or our love, in place of despising the mummies9
This atmosphere, we have reason to believe, consists of the vapour of oil of turpentine. We examined some of these specimens, which, after a simple injection with the solution of the acetate of alumine, were exposed to a current of air, and found them as hard as horn and somewhat distorted. —
The reverend Father Kircher in his chapter on mummies, thinks that these bodies do not merit the name; here is what he says in his chapter iii, §. 2. “But these bodies, dried and preserved in the sands of Lybia, should not receive the name of