The operator should use extreme caution whilst performing this operation, as the jagged and sharp edges of the ribs might cut through the skin and inflict a wound, should the hand be suddenly brought in contact with them. It is also necessary to enjoin again forcibly, the recommendation made before, of keeping the body well saturated with the lotion while the work is progressing.
The bowels must then be carefully displaced, and all fluid or serum found between or under the intestines be completely sponged out; the intestines must also be emptied of their contents by the process which has already been given in the first method of embalming; also the stomach, the gall bladder, all the organs, in fact, which contain foreign elements prone to putrefy. The bladder can be emptied of the urine by means of a catheter, introduced into the urinary canal.
All the organs which shall have been emptied of their contents, as also the intestines, the bladder, and the others, must be injected with the following solution, or embalming liquid:
| Corrosive Sublimate, | 2 ounces. |
| Chloride of Zinc, | 3 ounces. |
| Alcohol, | ½ gallon. |
Dissolve the corrosive sublimate and the chloride of zinc into the alcohol; then after the salts are completely dissolved, add
| Pyroligneous Acid, | ½ gallon. |
| Creasote, | 4 ounces. |
Stir briskly with either a glass or wooden rod and the liquid is ready for use. The above solution, which ought always to be prepared in advance and kept on hand, must be enclosed in green glass bottles, well stoppered, and kept in a dark and cool place. Metallic vessels should never be used to hold the embalming liquid; neither the solution employed to bathe the body. A glass or china vessel must be used in either case.
As to puncturing the different organs for the purpose of emptying their contents, the manner for doing so has clearly been given in the first process for embalming bodies, but great care must always be used so as not to perforate any of the vessels of the circulatory system.
The next step is to inject the arterial system. For this purpose a different point for injecting the system is selected from the one pointed out in the former process. By removing the small intestines out, and on the right side of the body the descending branch of the aorta is exposed to view. In its course downwards, the aorta lies on the vertebral column to the left of the middle line, and terminates on the fourth lumbar vertebra, by dividing into the two common iliac arteries. The descending branch of the aorta is then punctured so as to admit the nozzle of the injector; this is introduced into the opening in an upward direction, and the walls of the artery are then tied firmly, but not so as to cut through, around the nozzle. After the artery has been thus prepared, and before injecting, the vena cava must be perforated at a point corresponding with the incision practiced in the descending portion of the aorta where the nozzle of the injector is inserted.
The inferior vena cava ascends along the front of the vertebral column, and to the right of the abdominal aorta. The object of severing this vein is to give the blood in the upper portions of the body a means of escape, as the fluid is forced through and up the arteries of that part and returning through the veins forces the blood through the opening.