Report of a Commission appointed by the Academy of Medicine, and composed of MM. Sanson, Roux, Dizè, Guèneau de Mussy, Breschet, reporter, to examine a process for the preservation of dead bodies, discovered and proposed by M. J. N. Gannal, chemist.
Messieurs,—If anatomy is the basis of all sound medical study, if almost all those who have most contributed to the progress of medicine and surgery have been skilful anatomists, it is rendering a great service to those same sciences and to humanity, to discover a method of facilitating the study of anatomy, and obviating its insalubrity. Well, gentlemen, it is a discovery of this kind that M. Gannal presumes he has made.
By a letter dated on the 10th of March, 1835, addressed to the Academy of Medicine, by M. the Minister of Commerce, this learned body is charged to make known to superior authority its opinion of the real merit of the process of M. Gannal, for the preservation of dead bodies.
In consequence, the Academy has appointed a commission composed of MM. Sanson, Roux, Dizè, Guèneau de Mussy, and Breschet; it is in the name of this commission that I now present myself to make known to you the result of our labours.
Already two commissions from the Academy of Sciences have been occupied in the examination of this discovery of M. Gannal; the one, considering the process as useful to the study of the sciences which concerns the composition of organized beings; the other, considering it as a means of rendering less insalubrious an art or a profession, a prize having been founded for this purpose by M. de Monthyon, whose name will remain eternally dear to science and to philanthropy.
The reasons which have hindered the ancients from carrying to any great length a knowledge of the structure of man and animals, was not only the idea of filthiness attached to the sight and dissection of dead bodies, or the difficulty of procuring the means of dissection; but rather the almost absolute impossibility of preserving dead bodies in part or entire, which has retarded the progress of anatomy. Aristotle, to whom Philip of Macedon had given every facility for the dissection of animals, and who must have made collections, does not say, in any of his known works, how he preserved the animals which he did not immediately examine, and Galien, in his anatomical administrations, says very few words of the means of preservation in liquors.
Cuvier, in giving the history of the progress of the natural sciences, teaches us that one of the circumstances which has the most contributed to the advancement of these sciences was the discovery of alcohol.
We are, however, astonished at the novelty of our means for the preservation of animals, for zoological and anatomical collections, when we reflect that during the time of Rèaumur the art of preserving animal bodies with their natural forms and colours, was not known. Thus, in the cabinet of this celebrated naturalist, are seen birds skinned and suspended by the beak with a thread.
The taxidermic processes have almost all originated among us, for the formation of zoological collections; but we still are in want of less expensive methods, of easy transport, and in small space in order to preserve animals destined to serve for the researches of comparative anatomy, or for the study of the anatomy of man.
Peron, in the relation of his voyage to Terra Australis, in the commencement of the present century, laments the embarrassment of zoologists in long voyages, in preserving animals, without altering any of their zoological characters, and in a manner that they may serve finally for anatomical researches. He says, that it would be rendering great service to natural history and zoology, if the following problem could be resolved: