2. That it is preferable to employ the acetate of alumine, because it preserves better; as the skin experiences no alteration, and as the central organs remain natural, excepting the colour of the muscles which become bleached.
3. That the chloride of aluminium offers the same advantages.
4. That, in order to preserve parts of bodies which have not been injected, it is necessary to immerse them in a mixture of water, and of the acetate or chloride, marking five or six degrees.
But this part of the operation is transferred to the experiments which are to be undertaken on the preservation of objects of pathological anatomy.
Gentlemen, such are the series of experiments made by M. Gannal, since the first provisionary report was presented to you.
The commission has attentively followed the new experiments; the results obtained, demonstrate that by M. Gannal’s process bodies for dissection may be preserved, and the preservation prolonged beyond the term exacted by the most minute investigations.
As we have already stated, the soluble salts with an aluminous base, offer this preservative method without any danger in their use, and they can also be procured at a low price.
Their antiseptic properties are founded on their chemical action, which modifies animal substances either by depriving them of their water of composition, which determines their putrefaction, or in opposing themselves to its immediate action.
It is, then, only an act of justice rendered to M. Gannal, in considering his labour as an important service rendered to science and to humanity, and which may prove of great utility in anatomical explorations, and in legal medicine.
Consequently, your commission has the honour to propose to you the transmission of the present report—