Nevertheless, I conceived that my endeavour should not be restricted to the simple exposition of my researches, and that it was a duty I owed, to place at the disposition of my fellow citizens the means of continuing some relations with the remains of persons whom they had held dear. The sentiments of love, friendship, respect, and veneration, which preserves in our hearts as a sacred depôt, the memory of friends and relations, give, even to an indifferent portrait, which recalls their features to us, an inappreciable value. The heart warms and vivifies this faint image, and recalls to us the words and actions of those who have departed. These same sentiments cause us painfully to experience the full rigour of that law of nature which condemns to the decomposition of the grave, remains so sacred to us. I have desired to offer to persons groaning under an afflicting loss, the means of preserving all that death has left them; with this intention I have founded an Embalming Society, and I have placed the price for this operation within the reach of the majority of persons. For men destitute of resources, who have rendered themselves worthy, by their talents or virtues, of the remembrance of their species, the public authorities may reclaim of us a gratuitous embalming. We shall be happy to preserve to society the mortal spoils of those who honour and are useful to it. HISTORY OF EMBALMING. CHAPTER I. OF EMBALMING IN GENERAL. As soon as life ceases in animal matter, disorganization commences; the constituent elements separate, to be variously recombined, and to give birth to new compounds. The elevation of atmospheric temperature in certain determined hygrometric limits, and the action of oxygen, are those circumstances which lead necessarily to this decomposition. But, at a given temperature, the progress of putrid fermentation is not the same for all animals; this varies among different species, and different individuals of similar species, according to laws not well determined. But so important, however, are these laws, to the art of embalming, that processes which are sufficient for the preservation of one body, may fail in their application to others. The ancients had well observed, it is true, that the diversity of climates contributed much to the difference in mummies, and to the success of embalming; for, according to _Camerarius_, great difference exists between the bodies of Europeans and Orientals; the latter, of a dryer temperament, are not exposed to so rapid a decomposition. The example related by _Ammian Marcellini_ is a convincing proof. Four days, says he, after a combat between the Persians and Romans, the countenance of the latter could scarcely be recognised; the bodies of the Persians, on the contrary, were dry, without humidity, without sanies, and without any alteration.