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 — John Shaqi
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
After Holmes, the man who cared for the dead began to feel that his
was a professional work worthy of the name. The average undertaker,
at the time just after the civil war, was a cabinet maker, whose chief
function was to make the coffin or casket for the body, take the casket
to the house and place the body in it. Then the larger undertakers in
the larger cities found that they were compelled to preserve some of
the bodies in some way so that distant relatives could reach the scene
before the funeral. This probably was the result of betterments in
transportation facilities which led people to travel more. Along with
this, travelers frequently died away from home and had to be shipped.
The baggage men rightfully objected to remaining in the same enclosed
space with an unembalmed body and, altogether, a condition arose in
which it was necessary to have some way to preserve the body.
As evolution is always a slow process, we cannot as we would like to
do, chronicle the introduction of chemical embalming at this time,
for refrigeration was the first thing thought of. The ice box, was
the means by which bodies were kept for several days; the body being
covered and left that way until a few hours before the funeral. This
became so unsatisfactory specially when the sensibilities of the
undertaker became sharpened, that they immediately looked about for a
more convenient way to handle the situation. Spurred on by this demand,
several concerns came into the market with preservative solutions
with an arsenical base, and which were used principally for external
application and cavity injection. All kinds of instruments were used
with which to introduce the fluid into the body cavities until Captain
George Billow, of Akron, Ohio, a civil war veteran, and at present a
member of the Ohio State Board of Embalming examiners, contrived the
pen point trocar, which is still in use among the profession.
With the introduction of the trocar, and the campaigns of the fluid
manufacturers, trade periodicals and traveling men, cavity embalming
became the means of preservation, until its limitations were learned.
Joseph Henry Clarke, who first traveled for fluid houses, and who was
interested in the anatomy of the human body, since his connection with
the U. S. hospital service in the Civil war, determined to introduce
the arterial injection as the means of placing the fluid through the
body. In collaboration with Dr. C. M. Lukens, the occupant of the chair
of Anatomy at the Pulte Medical College of Cincinnati, Prof. J. H.
Clarke opened a school of embalming naming it the Cincinnati School of
Embalming. This took place during the year 1882. Prof. Auguste Renouard
of Denver, Colorado, came into the field about the same time. Thus we
have the beginning of the greatest revolution of all times in the care
of the dead human bodies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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