Anatomy and Embalming / A Treatise on the Science and Art of Embalming, the Latest and Most Successful Methods of Treatment and the General Anatomy Relating to this Subject

by Albert John Nunnamaker; Charles Otto Dhonau

CHAPTER XVII. CAVITY EMBALMING.

Cavity Embalming.

—In shipping a body, cavity embalming must always be resorted to and consists of introducing a trocar into the abdominal and thoracic cavities and injecting sufficient fluid over the contents of these cavities to thoroughly preserve them.

The scientific work in the embalming of to-day is being done on the arteries, but cavity embalming should still hold an important place with those embalmers who desire to get the best results. Although the arteries have been injected, yet we find that sometimes the fluid does not reach the cavities. Any cavity may contain gas or material for decomposition, such as blood, pus, lymph, or as in perforation of the intestines, feces in the abdominal cavity. Besides these we always have the bacteria of decomposition, called saprophytes, which have thoroughly invaded the organs and tissues of the body as soon as sixteen hours after death. Then, if for any reason the fluid has not reached a certain part, fermentation, and putrefaction will immediately set in.

The Cerebral Cavity.

—Gases may be generated in the cerebral cavity soon after death, especially in drowned cases, where the gas forming bacteria, the aerogenes capsulati, are distributed all over the body. These bacteria work much more rapidly in fresh or shallow water, or in the summer when the water is warm, than in the winter when the water is cold, or the body is in salt water. The gases may penetrate every tissue in the body, particularly the tissues about the eyes, which gives the eyes their bulged appearance. The gases that are formed in the brain and forced out into the tissues surrounding the eye do not enter the eye ball. In these cases the eye ball may or may not be pushed out of its socket, depending, of course, upon the amount of gases that have been produced.

These gases may be removed by inserting a trocar inside the head at the inner angle of the eye or in the nose through the turbinated process of the ethmoid bone.

After the gases have been removed from the inside of the skull, about one-half pint of strong formaldehyde fluid should be injected.

Another method of inserting the trocar into the brain would be to pass it through the foramen magnum. This can be done by inserting the trocar in the neck a little below and behind the lobe of the ear, directing the needle upward and inward toward the opposite eyebrow, when the needle will enter the subarachnoid space (Barnes Method).

In cases of hydrocephalus (water on the brain) where there may be from one to two quarts of water inside the cranium, the water may be removed by any of the above processes.