This process is of an easy and economical execution; it consists in the employment of matters which have nothing poisonous in them. In fine, after many trials, the author has fixed upon the following method; he injects an aluminous salt dissolved in water, by one of the carotids; a few quarts of the liquid is sufficient, and the body abandoned to the open air is preserved for a long time from putrefaction; sometimes it even ends in becoming dry or mummified.
The author made use of the acetate of alumine, prepared by the acetate of lead and the sulphate of alumine and potash. This acetate of alumine at 18° of the areometer of Baumè, and in the quantity of five or six quarts, is sufficient to preserve a body for five or six months.
He has also used the simple sulphate of alumine in order to procure the acetate of this base. With one killogram of the simple sulphate of alumine in mass, two hundred and ten grains of acetate of lead, and two quarts of water, may be obtained, the necessary quantity of the mixture to preserve a body for two months.
By the employment of these processes, the preservation of bodies without odour may be calculated upon, for twenty days, a month, six weeks, more or less, according to the circumstances of temperature, state of the body, and quantity of the liquor actually injected into the vessels.
Your commissioners have assured themselves of this by the examination of bodies prepared by M. Gannal, but not wishing to report on their own judgment, and in order to obtain a full conviction of the practical utility of the process, it determined to consult those persons who were continually occupied in dissection. Their opinion was unanimous.
Among the experiments or applications of which the process of M. Gannal, has been the object, we shall place in the first rank the series of facts observed by our honourable associate M. Serres. The following are the details which he has transmitted to use on this subject.
“In the month of June, 1836, in the amphitheatre of the hospital, the body of a man twenty-two years of age was injected. Abandoned to the open air, in a cabinet exposed to the south, and upon a wooden table, it was preserved until the month of September, and it ended in becoming mummified.
“In the month of July, eight bodies were injected for dissection, each during fifteen days.
“During the months of August and September, sixty subjects were injected; these were preserved for twenty days.