For embalming, _Plutarch_, _Herodotus_, _Diodorus Sicculus_, _Stacy_, _Pliny_, _Cicero_, _Porphyrus_, _Prosper Alpin_, _Cassien_, _Clauderus_, _Penicher_, _Baricel_, _Rodiginus_, _Corippus_, _Gryphius_, _Crollius_, _the Reverend Fathers Kircher and Ménestrier_, _De Maillet_, _Volney_, _Rouelle_, _the Count de Caylus_, _MM. Pariset_, _Rouyer_, _Bory de Saint Vincent_, and numerous other authors, have furnished me with descriptions and materials, which I was obliged to put in order and bring before the eye of the reader, in order to present to him a useful lecture, and in some sort preparatory to my own ideas. As my point of departure was scientific data, opinions and facts have come in place as the recital needed them; and thanks to this idea, which has never abandoned me, the numerous materials from which, in the commencement, I feared disorder and confusion, have come, as if by consent to dispose themselves in order; so great is the influence of a general idea in the arrangement of facts. I believe that I have reduced to exact proportions the art of embalming among different nations. My predecessors had referred too little to _nature_, too much to _man_, in the appreciation of Egyptian embalming; they had not sufficiently estimated the difficulties of the same practice among nations less favoured by climate. Facts reconsidered and interrogated with the aid of lights afforded by the recent progress of physics and chemistry, have furnished us with consequences naturally resulting from their attentive examination. When the history of an art is followed step by step, as we have done for that of embalming, one is astonished at a psychological fact, equally applicable to every case--we see how idle and common place the human mind is, and how little prone it is to spontaneous activity. The gross and inconsiderate imitation of the Egyptian processes during a long series of ages, is one of the most remarkable examples of this disposition. Trials directed by a spirit of analysis and critical examination have enabled me to substitute for complex operations, for long difficult and expensive operations, most frequently inefficacious, a simple means, of a determined action, and submitted for several years to the examination of committees appointed by the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medicine.