It is a well known fact that the arterial system must be intact and without lesions, if the injecting fluid is to be carried in a thorough manner, and by the natural channels through the body—therefore any rupture in the arteries may cause the fluid to escape at that point, and fill the neighboring cavities. The result would certainly not in that case be satisfactory to the operator; for as the fluid would thus be arrested in its course, and fail to permeate the tissues through the arteries, veins and smaller vessels, the corpse would soon putrefy in consequence. Destructive inflammation of the surrounding tissues may invade and destroy the walls of an artery. Thus, ulceration of the brachia, bronchial glands, and œsophagus, may perforate the aorta; gangrene of the lungs, the pulmonary arteries, ulcer of the stomach, the gastric arteries, etc. Let us suppose that the operator chooses the femoral artery as a point of injection. The injecting fluid will fill the arteries of the abdomen and the thorax until it reaches a point where the walls of the arteries are ruptured, and then will lose itself into the surrounding cavities, thereby failing to reach the upper portion of the body. It will of course, in an instance of this kind, be found necessary to inject again at some other point situate in a higher part of the body, as for instance, the axillary artery. It is, therefore, easily understood that— 1st. The cause of death may so affect the arterial system that the point selected for injecting may not be the proper one. 2d. That it may be necessary to inject the body at different points. 3d. That, in many cases, the cause of failure does not lay in the lack of antiseptic properties of the chemicals used, but in the need of discrimination on the part of the embalmer, in choosing the proper place for injecting, and also in his ignorance of where that place should be. It is, therefore, patent, that should the course of the arteries and veins be not readily understood by the operator, it will be a rather hard matter for him to discover the cause of his failure. This want, we will try to supply in the following chapters, by giving in detail the course of the blood vessels, also of the different positions of the several parts of the viscera, which it is necessary for the embalmer to be acquainted with, and which it is absolutely indispensable to know, so as to fully comprehend the instructions given further on in this book. DEATH FROM POISONING. _By Sulphuric Acid._—There does not seem to be any lesions of the arteries after death, as the stomach is the only part which might be perforated, as also the adjoining viscera might be blackened and softened by the action of the acid. The blood is thickened, sirupy acid, and the body may be partially preserved from decomposition.