GENERAL REGULATIONS OF THE STORE.
1st.—Business hours will include the time between breakfast and six o’clock, P. M., except when special duty may require it otherwise.
2d.—During business hours, all hands must be employed at some regular store duty.
3d.—As waiting on customers is a duty which requires most knowledge and experience, the first assistant must always serve when there is one customer; the other assistants may help if need be.
4th.—The first assistant must always take that part of the duty which requires most knowledge and skill. This order of duty must never be deviated from, if circumstances will admit of it.
5th.—All other duty must give way to that of waiting on customers.
6th.—Every person entering the store, whether pauper or president, infant or adult, white or colored, must be treated with courtesy and kindness.
7th.—Boisterous mirth and a sullen temper are to be equally avoided, as productive of neither business nor business character. The acquisition of a uniformly cheerful temperament is an attainment worth far beyond the price it usually costs.
8th.—There are to be no masters and no servants. Each one is to feel conscious of the fact that the performance of the duties assigned to him is just as necessary and as important as what pertains to any other hand in the store. All useful employment is honorable; indolence is a disgrace.
9th.—An afternoon of every week will be devoted to the cleaning of the store, in which all must share as occasion offers.
10th.—As neatness, order and cleanliness are necessary, and not mere accomplishments, in an undertaking establishment, all are required to practice them constantly.
11th.—Assistants should be rather select in the choice of their acquaintances; while the occasional visit of a well behaved friend will be countenanced, lounging in the store will not be tolerated.
12th.—Each assistant shall have, if business permits, one afternoon and evening every week, and every other Sunday; the afternoon will comprise the time between twelve o’clock at noon and six o’clock P. M.; the evening, between six o’clock P. M. and the closing of the store. These privileges must not be interfered with unnecessarily.
13th.—No assistant residing in the house will be allowed to be absent at night after the closing of the store, without special permission.
14th.—A vacation of two weeks every year will be allowed each assistant.
15th.—It is not the wish of the proprietor that any of his employes should extol the goods beyond their merits to advance his pecuniary interests, or to say or do aught in the performance of his duties that he would not be willing that others should say or do to him under the same circumstances.
A cheerful compliance with the foregoing rules is confidently expected, and the repeated infraction of a regulation of the store will be cause for dismissal.
In certain establishments, where a driver is kept for the purpose of taking care of horses and driving the hearse or other vehicles, this employe shall be under the immediate supervision of the proprietor.
MODIFICATIONS IN THE MODE
OF EMBALMING BODIES.
There are modifications in the processes used for the preservation of bodies, which are governed by circumstances affecting the different conditions of the body at the time of death. Although we may lay general rules for the quantity and variety of antiseptics used in embalming, there are certain cases where the quantity of the chemicals which enter into the composition of the injecting fluid must be either increased or curtailed, as well as the amount of the injection.
It would require the scope of a cyclopedia to give in detail the proportions of each constituent in the number of different cases which may come under the notice of the embalmer.
The mode of operation in all cases may be the same, but the nature and quantity of the injection will vary, first, with the climatic circumstances of the atmosphere; second, with the cause of death; third, with the age of the deceased; fourth, with the state of the body after death; fifth, with the length of time which has elapsed since death took place.
It has been demonstrated in a previous chapter that a high temperature is conducive to rapid decomposition of organic matter, also that a warm, moist atmosphere will operate in the same manner; it is therefore incumbent upon the operator to guard against these two agents of putrefaction by keeping the body in a moderately cool and well ventilated place until the work of preserving is accomplished; also to give the antiseptics employed time to successfully destroy and render harmless the dangerous effects of the heat.
It must not be understood by the preceding caution that a body cannot be embalmed in an ordinary room during the heat of the summer, but the suggestion herein given is solely for the purpose of facilitating the operation and rendering the success certain; besides, as it has been illustrated in some of the processes precedingly given, the strength as well as the quantity of the injection have been increased when used during the warm season.
As to the modifications to be observed in the treatment of bodies, when the cause of death is taken into consideration. It has formed the subject of some chapters to show that, in cases where death is the result of a certain class of diseases, the body is more prone to putrefy than in others; whilst in other cases, again, the body is to a certain extent preserved from corruption by the agents which have proved fatal to the organism; as, for instance, when death has been the result of poisoning, either by alcohol or arsenic.
The age of the person deceased, and the condition of the body after death, as also the length of time elapsed since death took place, as affecting the mode of treatment, have all been discussed in a former part of this work, and it would hardly be necessary to have a new elucidation upon the same subject.
The important point we wish to impress now upon the minds of our professionals is, that circumstances in this case are to be strictly investigated; also, that a uniform treatment of all cases, however different the circumstances and conditions, will not prove successful; and that a thorough knowledge and experience are necessary to achieve satisfactory results.
Discrimination and judgment are to be used in every case. Some are too ready to condemn a certain process, or to question the properties of some antiseptics, because their first trial of either has proved an ignominious failure; whereas the real cause of all the trouble lies in their ignorance of the laws which govern the mode of proceeding, and the use of the chemicals placed at their disposition.
Others, again, are prone to extol the merits of some preparation, the component parts of which they do not know, but it may have done them good service in several instances; and when, contrary to their expectations, it fails to answer the purpose, they lose faith in it, discard it altogether as worthless, and never entertain the idea that an alteration in the quantity used, or in the combination and strength of the constituents, is the real source of mischief.
Hence, it is a fact not to be denied that a diagnosis (if it may be called so) is necessary before the work of embalming be entered into. And he who would endeavor to preserve the body of a stout, fleshy person by the same means employed in the preserving of a body emaciated by long sufferings, and under different conditions of temperature, might not meet with a success equal to his expectations.
CHLORINE:
ITS PROPERTIES AND USES.
Chlorinated Lime.—In consequence of its powers as a disinfectant, chlorinated lime is a very important compound in its application to medical police; it possesses the property of arresting or preventing animal or vegetable putrefaction, and perhaps of destroying pestilential and infectious miasma. It is used with advantage in preventing bodies from exhaling an unpleasant odor before interment in the summer season. In juridical exhumations its use is indispensable, as it effectually removes the disgusting and insupportable fetor of the corpse.
The mode in which it is applied in these cases is, to envelope the body in a sheet completely wet with a solution made by adding about one pound of the chloride to a bucketful of water. It is employed also for disinfecting dissecting rooms, vaults, cemeteries and other places, which exhale offensive effluvia.
In destroying contagion and infection it appears to be highly useful. In short, all places deemed infectious from having been the receptacle of virulent disease may be more or less disinfected by its use, after having undergone the ordinary process of cleansing.
Chlorinated lime acts exclusively by its chlorine, which, being loosely combined, is disengaged by the slightest affinities. All acids, even the carbonic, disengage it; and as this acid is a product of animal and vegetable decomposition, noxious effluvia furnish the means, to a certain extent, of their own disinfection. But the stronger acids disengage it more freely, and amongst these sulphuric acid is the most convenient. Accordingly, the powder may be dissolved in a very dilute solution of this acid; or a small quantity of the acid may be added to an aqueous solution already formed, if a more copious evolution of chlorine be desired than that which takes place from the mere action of the carbonic acid of the atmosphere.
The great and only objection, so far, against the use of chlorinated lime by the profession, has been the strong smell of the chlorine evolved; but taking into consideration the great antiseptic properties, and also the strong bleaching and disinfecting qualities of the chlorine, we find that it cannot be overlooked as an agent of major importance in the preservation of bodies.
There are certain modes of using the chlorinated lime whereby the offensive odor can be to a great extent diminished, if not altogether done away with. When used in its crude state, it will be found difficult to handle; besides, it could not be used for the purpose of an injection; it needs, then, a certain amount of preparation before it be used in a liquid form. The following has been given as the simplest manner of preparing it for injecting:
Take, of chlorinated lime, one pound, carbonate of soda, two pounds, water, one gallon; dissolve the carbonate of soda in three pints of water by the aid of heat; to the remainder of the water add, by small portions at a time, the chlorinated lime, previously well triturated, stirring the mixture after each addition. Set the mixture by for several hours, that the dregs may subside; then decant the clear liquor, and mix it with the solution of carbonate of soda. Lastly, decant the clear liquor from the precipitated carbonate of lime, pass it through a linen cloth, and keep it in bottles secluded from the light.
The London Pharmacopœia gives a still better process for preparing it, for reasons which will be given hereafter:
Take, of carbonate of soda, one pound, water, forty-eight fluid ounces, chloride of sodium (common salt), four ounces, black oxide of manganese, three ounces, sulphuric acid, two fluid ounces and a half; dissolve the carbonate of soda in two pints of water; then put the chloride of sodium and the binoxide or black oxide of manganese, rubbed to powder, in a retort, and add to them the acid, previously mixed with three fluid ounces of water, and cooled. Heat the mixture, and pass the chlorine first through five fluid ounces of water, and afterwards into the solution of the carbonate above directed. Upon the addition of muriatic acid, both these solutions emit carbonic acid and chlorine together.
The foregoing given preparation will be found to answer the purpose for disinfecting, injecting and preserving corpses. For injecting purposes, the solution should be used fresh, and the muriatic acid only added to it, for a more copious liberation of both carbonic acid and chlorine, when ready to inject the liquid, as the antiseptic properties of the solution depend altogether on its gaseous evolutions.
To inject the solution, it will be found that the axillary artery on the left side is a good point; also, the right jugular vein should be punctured, so as to facilitate the flow of blood from the head. But to make the operation complete, and to be sure of a perfect and thorough injection, the ascending aorta should be injected, and the inferior vena cava severed at a corresponding point. This mode of injecting has been described in a former chapter.
It is not possible to specify here the amount of liquid to be injected; but as a general rule there should be enough of the solution injected to fill the circulatory system, and the injection be continued until after the blood has ceased to flow from the wound in the vena cava and the injecting fluid appears in its place.
When injected with this solution, a corpse may present for a few hours afterwards a bloated and swollen appearance, and the face and body may be marbled over with white spots; but these symptoms will soon disappear, the body will collapse again to its normal size, and the color become of a uniform shade.
To preserve bodies during the summer season for a few days and without ice; also to prevent the swelling up of the abdomen and the purging at the mouth and nostrils, open the stomach, as explained in a previous chapter, empty out the contents, and inject into it some of the above solution; the bowels must be treated in the same manner, and also inject the lungs through the nostrils, by producing artificial respiration. If the liquid cannot be injected in this manner, cut into the trachea an incision large enough to admit of the nozzle of the injector being inserted, and pour in the necessary quantity.
If any fetor is exhaled from the corpse after being placed in the coffin, a sponge well saturated with the solution and being placed at the feet of the corpse will remove all foul effluvia; or better still, a china or porcelain bowl filled with the solution may be placed inside the case until a few minutes before the funeral and the screwing down of the lid.
The air of the room may also be purified by saturating some cloths with the solution and hanging them in different parts of the apartment. The vessels containing excretions should not be neglected, and some of the solution poured into them.
In fact, undertakers will find the above solution to be adapted to all purposes of disinfecting, deodorizing and preserving corpses.