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

The tub was placed in one of the pavilions of the Practical School; and in the same room there were a great number of tables covered with dead bodies for the study of practical anatomy. At the end of two months, the two bodies were withdrawn from the bath, and dissected; no change had taken place in their exterior aspect; the tissues and internal organs were ascertained to be well preserved, and capable of serving for anatomical demonstrations.

Other subjects have been examined by the commission of the Academy of Sciences; they had remained in the same liquor since the 2d of December, 1834, and were still sound at the end of April, 1835.

We thought it our duty to exact of M. Gannal some other experiments; thus, we desired to see injections with this preservative liquor, of the arterial system; we caused another subject to be injected with ordinary fatty matter; and at a later period we had injected into the vessels of the subject which had received the preservative liquor, a matter composed of suet, and of resin, in equal parts, and coloured with cinabar, (sulphate of mercury.) This last injection was successful. The first injection of saline liquid exacted eight quarts of the liquid, which was introduced through the left ventricle of the heart.

The subject examined at the end of two months, was well preserved, did not exhale any fetid odour, and might serve for the common dissection of students.

The commission were desirous to know whether a body would rapidly putrefy, if it were withdrawn from the tub and left upon the table of the amphitheatre, exposed to the air, and to the influence of the putrid emanations from the other bodies. A subject was accordingly withdrawn from the preservative saline liquor, and remained fifteen days exposed to the air; no sensible putrefaction took place during this time; this was during the last fifteen days of April. The muscles of the corpse were seen to dry, and, so to speak, to mummify, whilst the tissues which had not come in contact with the saline liquid, or which had not been uncovered and exposed to the air, remained still in a state which permitted an anatomical analysis.

We ought to remark, that the tissues which are bathed by the liquid lose their natural colours; but the more deeply disposed organs did not experience the same change; there was no emphysema in the cellular tissue, although we thought we remarked that there was less resistance in the fibres of the organs, than in a subject dead for twenty-four or forty-eight hours.

We may remark, that under no circumstances were long and deep scarifications made on the trunk or members, in order to allow the liquid to penetrate the thickness of the tissues. The cranium itself was not opened, nor was there any application of the trephine, in order to permit a more ready entrance of the liquor to the meninges, or to the brain itself. Nevertheless, after more than two months immersion in the liquor, the brain, extracted from the cranium, if it could no longer serve for new researches on its structure, might have been employed for demonstrations.

But, for how much longer time could this preservation be continued? What temperature is it capable of resisting? And what expense does it require? In fine, can the discovery be extensively applied? That is to say, is it possible, by this process, to preserve a great number of subjects during summer, to deliver them later to the students during the season of dissection? And if these subjects, thus preserved, exhale no odour, become in no manner a cause of insalubrity, or of danger to the students, for the anatomists themselves, or for the persons who inhabit the houses adjoining the anatomical amphitheatre, might not the dissections be indefinitely prolonged, in place of permitting them only during the rigors of winter?

In fine, has this saline liquor of M. Gannal preservative properties sufficiently pronounced to be employed during long voyages, and in hot climates, for the purpose of bringing home numerous animals of large size, to serve for the study of comparative anatomy?

The small volume which saline substances occupy, and the sea water, which might serve to make the solution of the salts in any quantity as soon as needed, would be circumstances favourable to the use of this process.