It is not excusable, indeed, to be ignorant that the chloride of lime, (chloride of the oxide of calcium,) mixed with the deuto-chloride of mercury, produces, with the disengagement of chlorine, two new products, first, the chloride of calcium, (muriate of lime,) and the deutoxide of mercury, (red precipitate,) an insoluble substance, to which no one has ever attributed conservative properties. Upon what principle, further, upon what positive knowledge are we authorized to make so frequent use of the chloride of lime in embalming? No scientific data justifies this practice. Is it because it possesses disinfecting properties? But this is the very reason why it should be rejected, for in what manner does it act upon putrid miasmata? Is it not by decomposing them? No one doubts this, excepting always the embalmers; who are probably also ignorant that it possesses in the highest degree the property of decomposing animal and vegetable matter. I have proved in the course of my researches, that a fresh corpse, injected with one of the chlorides of the oxide of sodium, calcium, potassium, is in a complete state of dissolution, at the end of forty-eight hours.
These researches, which I have pushed in various directions, have weighed hardest upon the substance which has been extolled as excellent, and as very superior to any thing used by the ancients in embalming: I applied myself to establish, as far as practicable, the precise degree of confidence that the deuto-chloride of mercury merited under these circumstances. It is very true that it preserves animal matter plunged into a solution of it; but to what degree, and under what rules? The following is a brief exposition:
1. Coarse anatomical pieces, (a preparation of the muscles of the arm, for example,) plunged into and maintained in a saturated solution of the deuto-chloride of mercury, and then dried, are protected from corruption, but they become brown, stiff, and so deformed as scarcely to be recognized.
2. The injection of this liquid is not sufficient to arrest the progress of decomposition—this salt not being sufficiently soluble.
3. The simple immersion of a corpse in it hardens the skin, but the muscles and all the viscera are decomposed.
4. The injection of it, followed by immersion, preserves the object well enough for the space of two or three months, but putrid decomposition attacks the thoracic and abdominal viscera, as well as the brain and thick muscles, at the end of this time.
5. A subject injected with alcoholic sublimate, then opened, emptied, and macerated, afterwards exposed to the air, dries easily;[7] but it assumes a deep gray colour, and the tissues become hardened to such a degree, that it hardly preserves a human form. These are the rigorous results of experience. In the preservation by the aid of deuto-chloride, one portion of the subject is sacrificed to preserve a few remains; the most noble of all the organs, the brain, the throne of thought, cedes its importance to a few bones clothed with dried muscles, and a skin transformed, and not easily known again.
These are but feeble advantages, and paid for much too dearly; for the inconveniences and dangers of this mode of preparation, appears to us sufficient to cause them to be abandoned.
It is very expensive, dangerous for the operators; it alters the instruments, and the bodies which receive the influence of its emanations. Recently, during the embalming of some great personage, all the gildings of a vast saloon, where the operation was performed, were destroyed by the action of the deuto-chloride.
Nevertheless, the embalmings made with this substance, and of which the three first observations cited in this chapter are the most remarkable examples in our knowledge, afford the most decided expressions of the advanced state of the art.