Anatomy and Embalming: A Treatise on the Science and Art of Embalming, the Latest and Most Successful Methods of Treatment and the General Anatomy Relating to this SubjectNunnamaker, Albert John
Science
Anatomy and Embalming: A Treatise on the Science and Art of Embalming, the Latest and Most Successful Methods of Treatment and the General Anatomy Relating to this Subject
Nunnamaker, Albert John
Embalming
=Later European Embalming.=—After the previous discussion of the care
of the dead affecting prehistoric as well as the earliest historic
usages, we are brought forward to the seventeenth century. All
embalming processes of the earlier days having been forgotten during
the dark ages. The slow but sure development of the medical profession
having manifested a dire necessity for the preservation of anatomical
material, this necessity was first met by Dr. Frederick Ruysch,
who occupied the chair of anatomy at Amsterdam, Holland, during the
close of the seventeenth and early years of the eighteenth century
(1665-1717).
Dr. Ruysch was probably the first to practice a successful system of
arterial injection, in order that his anatomical specimens might resist
the processes of decay. The reader should understand that embalming
as a convenient process for preserving human dead bodies for funeral
purposes had not been thought of at this time, and the principal
interest in embalming was for its successful preservation of anatomical
specimens. The method followed by Dr. Ruysch, was first an arterial
injection, then allowing the diffusion of the fluid for some hours,
after which, he proceeded to open the body as in making a postmortem
examination, removing the viscera, cleaning them and replacing them
surrounded with a preservative solution. Dr. Ruysch died, leaving his
secrets buried with him, and they were lost to science.
Dr. William Hunter, an eminent Scottish physician, anatomist and
physiologist of the eighteenth century (1718-1783) is given credit
by many as being the original inventor of the injection system, for
he published his plan of injection in minute detail, so that science
might benefit thereby. The artery usually selected by Dr. Hunter was
the femoral and his solution was composed of oil of turpentine five
pints; Venice turpentine, one pint; oil of lavender, two fluid ounces;
oil of rosemary, two fluid ounces; and vermillion. This was forced
into the vessel until it reached over the whole body, giving the skin
a general reddish appearance. As in Dr. Ruysch's method, the body
was left untouched for a time, and was then opened, the viscera being
treated and placed back again. After treating the exterior of the body
in some cases, a coffin was prepared and the body was placed on a bed
of dry plaster of paris in order that desiccation might set in. The
body was then left for four years and if dryness had not set in by that
time, was placed upon another bed of plaster of paris. Some of Hunter's
specimens are to be seen today in the museum of the Royal College of
Surgeons, London.
Dr. John Hunter, a younger brother of William, was also very active
in experimentation along these lines, and his work was little less
renowned along the same lines. The Hunterian method was used for years
by English anatomists with little if any alteration.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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