Next your business equipment and investment, the care of the case on which you are called, its peculiar requirements and how it taxes your skill in doing the work, the risk from infection, the distance you must travel and the expense of the trip. All of these considerations enter into the cost and should be the basis on which to formulate a charge for the work.
Just as the well equipped surgeon of wide experience and training skillfully performs operations relieving suffering, saving and prolonging life, naturally allows the difficulties of the case and the distinctive personal service rendered to govern him in the amount of the fee, so in a very similar sense the services of the embalmer should hold a certain ratio of value to the conditions under which he works and the ability he employs in its performance. Therefore let me again urge that you make it a specific charge showing it a distinctive personal service.
In the matter of the value of personal services the question is often raised: “Which is the more important part of the work in our profession, directing and managing the funeral or the embalming and care of the body.” In answer to this let me say that the care and the embalming of the body is first importance because the law says so, because the education of the embalmer is paramount to other considerations and so regarded by the national association, because sanitary science demands it, because without a body properly embalmed and prepared for burial the funeral is a failure from whatever standpoint you wish to judge it.
A director may bungle the arrangements and at the most it is but a matter of annoyance to the family. However, let him fail to properly fit and prepare the body so that the relatives can see restored to them the face of their beloved one, beautified in the last long sleep of death, and they will never forgive him. They secured his services first as an embalmer and incidentally as a director of the funeral, naturally, therefore, the greater importance of his work centers around his services to the family in that capacity. Now in all candor, why should he not make a specific charge for his work? He is rendering the greater service in caring for the body, it should be the first item charged for on the funeral bill.
CHAPTER XVI. THE ANATOMICAL AND LINEAR GUIDES FOR SPECIAL ARTERIES.
How to Locate and Inject the Carotid Artery.
—The carotid artery, is not used much, by the average embalmer for several reasons. It is usually a hard artery to raise, partly because the average embalmer does not know the anatomy of the neck. In subjects having short and very fleshy necks it is not advisable to use the carotid, however in subjects where the neck is long and not fat it is with some a favorite. It is always essential to know how to raise and inject the carotid for in accident cases, where the arteries of the lower part of the neck and thorax are ruptured it becomes necessary to raise and inject the carotids to get the fluid into the tissues of the face and brain. In cases of suicide where the arteries of the neck have been cut it is necessary to know where the arteries and veins lie so that they may be tied off. Often the body is so badly mutilated that it is impossible to raise any other artery excepting the carotid. Every practitioner should know how to raise and inject this artery, even though some other artery is the one generally used.
Fig. 46—The arteries of the neck. (Gray)