History of Embalming / and of Preparations in Anatomy, Pathology, and Natural History; Including an Account of a New Process for Embalming

by J.-N. Gannal

On the twelfth of November, 1834, the administration of Hospitals presented two subjects to me, which M. Orfila authorized me to place in one of the grand pavilions of the practical school of the faculty of medicine. These two subjects were bathed in a liquid of ten degrees. The second of December the commission of the Academy of Sciences came to examine these two subjects, which were consigned to dissection. On the same day another subject was given to me. This was injected with eight quarts of the saline solution at ten degrees. At the end of December, these three subjects were in a good state of preservation; it was remarked, however, that the skin as well as the flesh, had slightly assumed a decayed consistence and colour; the deep organs, which had not been in immediate contact with the liquid, remained almost natural. From this period until the end of April, the commission frequently assembled and confirmed these results.

A commission constituted by the Academy of Medicine early in March, examined these same subjects, and demanded new experiments. The first subject was injected with coloured fat, and then bathed. The corpse injected on the second of December, was also injected with coloured fat.

Here it may be remarked that it required double the quantity of fatty matter for this, than for a fresh subject, and that the most delicate arterial net-work had been prepared by the injection.

These experiments, which lasted for half the month of May, satisfied me that an injection of ten or twelve degrees of density, and immersion of the body in a bath of the same liquid, will suffice for a preparation destined for ordinary anatomical purposes, and will allow of dissection after several months.

At the end of July, 1835, M. Orfila, placed at my disposition in one of the grand pavilions of the practical school, all the utensils and instruments that I might stand in need of; on the 7th of August, I injected a subject with the liquid at 12 degrees, and afterwards bathed it in the same liquid. The body, at the end of two days, began to swell. Eight days after, it disengaged so large a portion of gas, that I was obliged to withdraw it from the trough, at the bottom of which it was no longer possible to retain it. Placed upon a table, its decomposition appeared to be arrested, no more gas being disengaged, but there escaped a great quantity of liquor coloured by the blood; the subject, which had assumed a deep brown colour, became completely dried. During all this time, no putrid odour was remarked; it was that of smoked ham.

A second subject was injected with the same liquid and abandoned on a table; it was decomposed at the end of five days; but it must be remarked that the atmospherical temperature varied from twenty to thirty degrees.

On the 8th of August, a subject was injected with the liquid at thirty degrees of density, which was made necessary by the elevation of the temperature up to fifty degrees . This corpse was well preserved and was dissected about the end of December.

These various experiments convinced me that the saline solutions employed with success during the winter, were insufficient for the operations during summer; that is to say, at a temperature above fifteen degrees.

The success which I obtained by the injection of a more concentrated liquid, indicated the route I was to follow.

I have already stated that the alum was decomposed, that the animal matter, the geline, combined with the alumine, and that the liberated sulphuric acid produced the alteration of the tissues. It was then indispensable to seek an aluminous salt, containing more of the base and a less powerful acid.