5. A subject injected with alcoholic sublimate, then opened, emptied, and macerated, afterwards exposed to the air, dries easily;[7] but it assumes a deep gray colour, and the tissues become hardened to such a degree, that it hardly preserves a human form. These are the rigorous results of experience. In the preservation by the aid of deuto-chloride, one portion of the subject is sacrificed to preserve a few remains; the most noble of all the organs, the brain, the throne of thought, cedes its importance to a few bones clothed with dried muscles, and a skin transformed, and not easily known again. [7] The deuto-chloride of mercury, like the salts of copper, arsenic, iron, &c., are decomposed by gelatine, forming a new imputrescible compound. The preservation is much more sure if a large quantity of alcohol is used in drying the corpse. These are but feeble advantages, and paid for much too dearly; for the inconveniences and dangers of this mode of preparation, appears to us sufficient to cause them to be abandoned. It is very expensive, dangerous for the operators; it alters the instruments, and the bodies which receive the influence of its emanations. Recently, during the embalming of some great personage, all the gildings of a vast saloon, where the operation was performed, were destroyed by the action of the deuto-chloride. Nevertheless, the embalmings made with this substance, and of which the three first observations cited in this chapter are the most remarkable examples in our knowledge, afford the most decided expressions of the advanced state of the art. What are the ameliorations resulting from our discoveries? They are as follows: 1. A substance easy to manage without danger to the operator, without any inconvenience to the instruments and other metals, is substituted for the sublimate; 2. The operation can be entirely finished in half an hour; 3. The numerous incisions, the mutilations, the subtraction of the viscera, &c., the prolonged maceration, are replaced by an injection through an opening of some lines in extent; 4. In place of a substance discoloured, leathery, and dried, reserving more or less the human form, my process preserves the subject, such as it is, at the moment of death, with the colour and suppleness proper to each tissue;[K] 5. Finally, the expense which, by the preceding method, amounts to from four hundred to two thousand dollars, need not now exceed sixty dollars. Thus a body may be indefinitely preserved for a sum less than the price of a leaden coffin furnished by the undertakers, _a coffin which accelerates the putrid decomposition, in place of preventing it_. [K] When we visited and gave an accurate examination of the numerous embalmed objects in M. Gannal’s museum, we did not observe any specimens that had been finished long enough to dry, displaying such perfection as that here stated.--_Tr._