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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. PARIS, 1838. TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, WITH NOTES AND ADDITIONS. BY R. HARLAN, M. D. PHILADELPHIA:
PUBLISHED BY JUDAH DOBSON,
No. 106 Chestnut Street.
·········
1840. MERRIHEW & THOMPSON, PRINTERS,
7 Carter’s alley.
NOTE OF THE TRANSLATOR.
It will be reasonably anticipated from the title of the present volume, that it embraces subjects of equal interest to the general and professional reader, as well as indispensable material for the researches of the practical anatomist and student of natural history.
The latter class will find in it all the requisite details for a successful prosecution of its arduous, intricate, but favorite pursuits; whilst those of its patrons of the former class, cannot fail to be interested in the various and important facts and discussions embraced in a general history of embalming from the earliest ages to the present period, so inseparably connected with the moral and physical history of our own species.
An additional subject of interest to all classes will be acknowledged in the facts and observations elicited by the arduous and industrious researches of the author, whilst investigating the new process of embalming, which has led to such happy results to the students of anatomy and natural history. The great importance, in all respects, of M. Gannal’s discovery, has been fully and adequately acknowledged by the different commissions appointed by the Institute of France, and the Royal Academy of Medicine, who have awarded to its author both honour and profit, as a real benefactor to science, to the progress of which he has so substantially added. The current of the text, together with the notes and illustrations of the translator, embraces all the discoveries of the age, of this nature, of value to the practical anatomist and naturalist, consisting both of original observations, and of highly important information contained in the standard works of De Bils, Ruysch, Swammerdam, Clauderus, De Rasière, Dumèril, Hunter, Breschet, Pole, Margolin, Bell, Cloquet, Swan, Parsons, Horner, &c.
Concerning the nature, extent, and merits of the new discovery of M. Gannal, the translator, has spoken in the appendix, from a personal acquaintance with the author and a minute examination of the collection of embalmed objects contained in his cabinet at Paris.
Philadelphia, September, 1840.
ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Preface, p. [5].
Introduction, p. [9]—Embalming among the Egyptians—Cause and origin of this custom—Opinion of authors: Cassien, Herodotus, Diodorus Sicculus, Maillet, Bory de Saint Vincent, Volney, Pariset, etc.—First idea of embalming offered to the Egyptians by the mummy of the sands—Opinion of Count de Caylus de Rouelle—Plan of this work—Natural mummies—Mummies of the Guanches—Of the Egyptians—Of the Jews—Of the Greeks and Romans—Of modern nations—Mummies the object of superstitious dread—History of the Pole, Razevil—Mummy employed as a remedy in disease—Its marvellous properties—Officinal mummy of Crollius—In what embalming consisted among the Egyptians and Guanches—What it has been among the moderns—What my discoveries have made of it—Motives which have induced me to publish this work.
CHAPTER I.
Of embalming in general, p. [21]—Tendency of bodies to decomposition—Variable, according to countries, species, and individuals—Fact reported by Ammien Marcellin—Consequences deducible from it, for the natives of hot countries—for temperate and cold countries—Facts observed by Maillet—Astonishing analogy observed in the caverns of Saint Michel, at Bordeaux—Various processes of embalming—With gum—With honey—With wax—The embalming of Alexander—Of Agesilas—Brine unknown—Fact of Tulliola, reported by Coelius Rodiginus—Another by Valateron—Embalming with aromatic and astringent substances—With resinous and bituminous substances—Empyricism of the moderns—Process of Ruysch, of Swammerdam—Note of Strader—Appreciation of these methods—Useful deductions to be drawn from them—Penicher thinks it impossible to embalm without emptying the large cavities—Fact in support of his opinion—My experiments to this effect on infants.
CHAPTER II.
Natural Mummies, p. [35].—Power of nature—Importance of seeking her ways in the study of her phenomena; to follow her lessons—Division of natural mummies—Mummies due to the particular qualities of the soil—Note communicated by Drs. Boucherie, Bermont, and Gaubert, concerning the mummies of Saint Michel, at Bordeaux; thermometrical and hygrometrical observations; chemical analysis; results—Similar facts observed at Palermo—At Toulouse—History of M. de la Visée—Mummies due to the general qualities of the air and soil—Mummy of the avalanches—Time of its duration—Mummification by a cold and dry wind—Morgue of the Great Saint Bernard—Note communicated by Dr. Lenoir—Mummy of the Sands—Testimony of Herodotus—Description of Father Kircher—In Egypt—In Mexico—These facts establish a simple connexion between the productions of nature and those of human industry.
CHAPTER III.
Embalming of the Guanches, p. [48].—Resemblance between the embalmings of the Guanches, and those of the Egyptians—Consequences deducible from this resemblance—Description of the processes drawn from the Essay of M. Bory de Saint Vincent—Duration of embalming—State in which are found these mummies at the present day—Probable duration of their preservation—Catacombs at Fer, the Canaries, &c.—Construction of mausoleums—Fact observed by M. Jouannet of two Guanch mummies.
CHAPTER IV.
Embalming among the ancient Egyptians, p. [54].—What comprises the labour of embalming—Disposition—Thermometrical and hygrometrical state of the caverns in which the bodies were deposited; what advantages for preservation resulted from these—Recital of Herodotus—Of Diodorus Sicculus—Orpheus transposes these usages into Grecian mythology—Judgment of the dead—The place where they are deposited—Models of embalmings presented to relatives—Three kinds of embalmings; description of each by Herodotus—Horror existing for those charged with making the incisions—Invocation to the sun, previous to casting away the intestines—Precautions taken for the preservation of the bodies of young females, or those of high rank—Commentaries on the narratives of the ancients—Succession of means discussed—Opinion of Rouelle concerning natrum—Examination of the linen bandages in which the mummies are enveloped—Analysis of the embalming material by Rouelle; explanation of several passages—Exhibition of models—Price—New details furnished by Diodorus—Quantity of bandages found around a single mummy—Embalming of bodies without sepulture—drowned persons for example—Mummy of a prince of Memphis—Examination of this mummy by Rouelle, and the Count de Caylus—Extracts from the work of M. Rouyer, (great work upon Egypt;) the details which he furnishes complete our knowledge of Egyptian embalming; how many kinds of mummies he acknowledges—Mummies having an incision on the left side—Mummies without any incision—Exploration and description of the plain of Saggârah, by De Maillet—Visit to the subterranean chambers—Mummy, near which was found a symbolical statue—Description of an antique found in a tomb—Mummies preserved upon beds of carbon—Conclusion drawn from facts contained in this chapter.
CHAPTER V.
Of embalming, from the time of the Egyptians down to our days, p. [89].—Honours of embalming, conferred by other nations on distinguished men only—Doubts on the efficacy of this operation—Example of Alexander, and of Ptolemy—Embalming among the Jews—Embalming of Jesus Christ—Employment of wax among the Persians—Methods of De Bils, of Ruysch, of Swammerdam, of Clauderus—Description of the cabinet of Sieur Desenclosses—Silence regarding the processes of preservation employed by these authors—Composition of the balsam given by Penicher—Salt of Clauderus—Brine of Charles de Maétz—Preservation of the body of Saint Thomas—Formulæ: balsamic wines, compound brandy, vinegar, cere-cloth—Mixtures for soaking the linens: liniment, balsamic powders—Various methods of embalming, to the number of four—Embalming of the heart—Preservation of the heart of an Abbe—Embalming of Madame the Dauphine—Reflections.
CHAPTER VI.
Art of embalming in our day, previous to my discoveries, p. [118].—Opinion of M. Pelletan upon the imperfect state of this art—Dispute among the physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries, upon the question of precedence—Embalming the senators of the empire—Improvements proposed by M. Pelletan—Application of the discoveries of Chaussier upon the preservative properties of the deuto-chloride of mercury to the art of embalming—Embalming, as practised by Béclard—Preservation of the body of Colonel Morland, by M. Larrey—Remarks—Preservation of the body of a young girl of ten years, by M. Boudet—Reflections on these facts—Embalming of Louis XVIII., King of France—Fifteenth observation—Criticism—Empyricism in this art—Exact appreciation of the preservative properties of the deuto-chloride of mercury—Superiority of the means which I propose.
CHAPTER VII.
Means for the preparation and preservation of parts of normal anatomy, of pathological anatomy, and of natural history, anterior to the Gannal process, p. [141].—Importance of such preparations to the physician and naturalist—Plan of a museum—Engravings: pieces in wax, artificial pieces in carton, in white wood—The methods of preparing recent organs and tissues—Process of Swan, of Chaussier—1. Generalities concerning the operations which precede preservation—Choice of subjects—Dissection—Maceration and corrosion—Injections; evacuants; repletives; conservatives; washings; ligature of vessels—Separation and distention of parts—2. Methods of preservation of naturalists—Preservation by desiccation—Methods divided into four series; rectified spirits of wine; deuto-chloride of mercury, and other metallic substances—Earthy salts—Process of tanning—Desiccation—Preservation in liquids, acids, alkalies, salts, alum, volatile oils, alcoholic liquors—Means of preservation practised by naturalists: soap of Bécoeur, soapy pomatum—tanning liquor—antiseptic powder—gummy paste—preservative powder—German powder—powder of Naumann, and of Hoffman—Preservatives in liquors: bath, naturalist preparors in Paris, tanning liquor, bath of the Abbe Manesse—Liquors as washes; essence of serpolet, of turpentine—Liquor of Sir S. Smith—Bitter spirituous liquors—Varnish—Liquors employed as injections—Liquors in which objects are preserved which do not admit of drying—Spirit of wine—Liquor of Nicholas—Of George Graves—Of the Abbe Manesse—Critical reflections—Appreciation of each of the proposed means—(1.) For desiccation—New methods which I propose for the preparation of dry parts—Example of an injection by my method—The subject submitted to the examination of a scientific commission—Application of my process to the preservation of mammiferous animals—Of birds—State of the tissues—(2.) For preservation in liquids—Nitric Acid—Alcohol—Weakened alcohol—Alum: chemical demonstration of its insufficiency for preservation—(3.) Means of preservation applied to each tissue—Fibrous tissue—Articulations—Aponeuroses, tendons and ligaments—Process of M. J. Cloquet—Osseous tissue—Maceration—Ebullition—Bleaching—Cutaneous tissue—Cellular tissue—Synovial and serous tissues—Brain—Spinal marrow—Nerves—Blood-vessels—Muscular tissue—Heart—Lungs—Eye—Fœtus—Envelopes.
CHAPTER VIII.
Gannal’s process for the preservation of normal anatomy, pathological anatomy, and natural history, p. [197].—Difference between the processes of preservation offered to anatomists, and those practised for embalming: 1. Preservation of bodies for dissection—Table of my experiments in 1828—In 1831—Kindness of M. Professor Orfila—What formerly existed upon this matter—My point of departure proceeding from the practice of artists—Action of Acids—Salts—Aluminous salts—These possess in the highest degree the preservative property—Selection to be made among these salts—My first experiments—Satisfying results—Proved by commissions appointed by the Academy of Sciences, and the Academy of Medicine—Series of researches—Misreckoning—New experiments—Superiority of the acetate of alum—Facts—Chloride of alumine, its defects—Arsenic, and bad results—First report of the Academy of Sciences—First report of the Academy of Medicine—Definitive report of the Academy of Medicine—Reflections—Some good results obtained at first from a mixture of alum, nitrate of potash, and chloride of sodium—Not sustained above the 10° of centigrade—Bath—Light furnished by it—Data for new researches—Acetate of alumine excellent—Reason for renouncing its use for amphitheatres—Simple sulphate, its analysis—Demonstration of its superiority over acid sulphate—Various liquors of which it is the base—Black colour of the skin—Its cause—Report of the commission of the Institute—Experiments of MM. Serres, Dubreuil, Bourgery, Azoux, Velpeau, Amussat—My process applied to the dissecting rooms of Clamart: 2. Anatomical preparations—Those of pathology, and Natural history—Facts, proving a perfect preservation during many years—Composition of various preservative liquids—Usage—Example of the preservation of dry pieces by the simple sulphate—All my experiments first attempted on the fœtus—Circumstances the most unfavourable: 3. Embalming—There remains for me a series of experiments to perform, to enable me to practise embalming—Data to which I must confine myself—Have I attained my end?—Answer to this question by facts—Exhumation—First observation—Second observation.
Appendix, p. [253].
To Messrs. Members of the Academy of Sciences.
Gentlemen,—From the commencement of my researches upon the preservation of animal matters, you have encouraged me by extending your support to efforts which my own resources would not perhaps have enabled me to continue; in this path strewn with so many difficulties, and disgusts, I have endeavoured to show myself worthy of your high protection.
At a later period, when I was able to offer to physicians and naturalists methods of preservation superior to those previously known, you conferred upon me the prize founded by Monthyon. I have pursued my researches with the view of adapting my process to the art of embalming; the happy results which I have obtained have inspired me with the idea of comparing my mummies with those obtained by processes different from my own.
Finally, I have extended this parallel between my processes and those formerly applied, to preparations of healthy anatomy, to pathological anatomy, and to natural history.
My labour terminated, I have thought it my duty to dedicate to you a work the publication of which is due to the decision which your wisdom and justice have dictated.
Allow me, gentlemen, to consider this dedication as a new encouragement which you are willing to confer upon me, and trust in the respectful sentiments with which I have the honour to be, your very humble and very grateful servant,
Gannal.
PREFACE.
I had terminated my first researches upon the preservation of animal matters, and proposed to publish them; my notes were collated and my work prepared, when the idea struck me that in place of confining myself to the exposition of the results which I had obtained, I might, with advantage to science, present a history of the art of embalming from the highest antiquity to our time, and compare my processes, with those in use for the preservation of objects of normal anatomy, pathological anatomy, and natural history.
This determination has decided me to publish a volume, in place of a pamphlet of fifty pages.
I had no model to follow, for no author had re-united in the same book, the elements of which I wished this might be composed. I found myself, therefore, necessitated to collect together in the following pages the materials scattered throughout numerous works.
For embalming, Plutarch, Herodotus, Diodorus Sicculus, Stacy, Pliny, Cicero, Porphyrus, Prosper Alpin, Cassien, Clauderus, Penicher, Baricel, Rodiginus, Corippus, Gryphius, Crollius, the Reverend Fathers Kircher and Ménestrier, De Maillet, Volney, Rouelle, the Count de Caylus, MM. Pariset, Rouyer, Bory de Saint Vincent, and numerous other authors, have furnished me with descriptions and materials, which I was obliged to put in order and bring before the eye of the reader, in order to present to him a useful lecture, and in some sort preparatory to my own ideas. As my point of departure was scientific data, opinions and facts have come in place as the recital needed them; and thanks to this idea, which has never abandoned me, the numerous materials from which, in the commencement, I feared disorder and confusion, have come, as if by consent to dispose themselves in order; so great is the influence of a general idea in the arrangement of facts. I believe that I have reduced to exact proportions the art of embalming among different nations. My predecessors had referred too little to nature, too much to man, in the appreciation of Egyptian embalming; they had not sufficiently estimated the difficulties of the same practice among nations less favoured by climate. Facts reconsidered and interrogated with the aid of lights afforded by the recent progress of physics and chemistry, have furnished us with consequences naturally resulting from their attentive examination.
When the history of an art is followed step by step, as we have done for that of embalming, one is astonished at a psychological fact, equally applicable to every case—we see how idle and common place the human mind is, and how little prone it is to spontaneous activity. The gross and inconsiderate imitation of the Egyptian processes during a long series of ages, is one of the most remarkable examples of this disposition.
Trials directed by a spirit of analysis and critical examination have enabled me to substitute for complex operations, for long difficult and expensive operations, most frequently inefficacious, a simple means, of a determined action, and submitted for several years to the examination of committees appointed by the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medicine.
In order to trace the history of the preservation of objects of anatomy and natural history I have had no occasion to go back to an epoch distant from our own; for this science is altogether new. Beyond the discoveries of Chaussier, on the preservative properties of the deuto-chloride of mercury, the labours of MM. Dumèril, Cloquet and Breschet, there is very little existing on this subject. So that I have concluded, after a complete exposition of the preservative means given by these authors, it only remained for me to propose the preservative substances which, after numerous experiments, have appeared to me preferable to those which they have recommended. They possess a peculiar merit for the formation of cabinets of natural history, that of reducing the expense to at least one-nineteenth.
I have considered it my duty to give here the details of the composition of the liquids employed, either as baths or injections, by the physician and naturalist; the interest of science imposing on me this obligation. But, as regards embalming, the same motive does not exist; I have consequently abstained from giving in totality the means employed in this operation, reserving to myself the care of this process on the request of families or physicians.[A]
It was not until after many unsuccessful efforts that I succeeded in discovering a method capable of insuring the indefinite preservation of bodies deposited in the earth. A thousand unexpected difficulties arose in my path; and to cite only one, at the end of eight or nine months of preservation, a vegetable production, known to botanists under the name of byssus, for a long time embarrassed me; I tried numerous means, before discovering one capable of suppressing this formation.
The perfection to which I have brought the art of embalming, leaves little to desire. So convinced am I at length of the efficacy of the processes which I employ, that I shall be always ready, at the request of the authorities or of families, to exhume those bodies which I have already embalmed in great numbers, at any expressed period of time.
INTRODUCTION.
The Egyptians embalmed their dead, and the processes which they employed were sufficiently perfect to secure them an indefinite preservation. This is a fact of which the pyramids, the caverns, and all the sepultures of Egypt offer us irrefragible proofs. But what were the causes and the origin of this custom? We have in answer to this question only hypothesis and conjecture. In the absence of valid documents, each one explains according to the bias of his mind, or the nature of his studies, a usage, the origin of which is lost in the night of time. One of the ancients informs us that the Egyptians took so much pains for the preservation of the body, believing that the soul inhabited it so long as it subsisted. Cassien, on the other hand, assures us that they invented this method because they were unable to bury their dead during the period of inundation. Herodotus, in his third book, observes, that embalming had for its object the securing of bodies from the voracity of animals; they did not bury them, says he, for fear they would be eaten by worms, and they did not burn them, because they considered fire like a wild beast that devours everything it can seize upon. Filial piety and respect for the dead, according to Diodorus Sicculus, were the sentiments which inspired the Egyptians with the idea of embalming the dead bodies. De Maillet, in his tenth letter upon Egypt, refers only to a religious motive the origin of embalming: “The priests and sages of Egypt taught their fellow citizens that, after a certain number of ages, which they made to amount to thirty or forty thousand years, and at which they fixed the epoch of the great revolution when the earth would return to the point at which it commenced its existence, their souls would return to the same bodies which they formerly inhabited. But, in order to arrive, after death, to this wished for resurrection, two things were absolutely necessary; first, that the bodies should be absolutely carefully preserved from corruption, in order that the souls might re-inhabit them; secondly, that the penance submitted to during this long period of years, that the numerous sacrifices founded by the dead, or those offered to their manes by their relations or their friends, should expiate the crimes they had committed during the time of their first habitation on earth. With these conditions exactly observed, these souls, separated from their bodies, should be permitted to re-enter at the arrival of this grand revolution which they anticipated—remember all that had passed during their first sojourn, and become immortal like themselves. They had further the privilege of communicating this same happiness to the animals which they had cherished, provided that their bodies inclosed in the same tomb with themselves, were equally well preserved. It is in virtue of this belief that so many birds, cats, and other animals are found embalmed with almost the same care as the human bodies with which they have been deposited. Such was the idea of perfect happiness which they hoped to enjoy in this new life. In expectation of this resurrection, the souls inhabited the airs nearest the dwellings where reposed the bodies they had animated. But superstition alone, it could scarcely be believed, would induce men to save from destruction the mortal spoils of individuals whom they had loved whilst living. I much prefer looking for the source of this usage in the sentiment which survives a cherished object snatched from affection by the hand of death. Since death levels all distinctions—respecting neither love nor friendship,—since the dearest and most sacred ties are relentlessly broken asunder, it is the natural attribute of affection, to seek to avoid in some degree, a painful separation, by preserving the remains of those they love and by whom they were beloved. Love, tenderness, and friendship, do not terminate with the objects which gave them birth—they survive and follow them even beyond the tomb.”—(Bory de Saint Vincent, Essay on the Fortunate Islands.—Embalming of the Guanches.) The same author adds: “The custom of preserving their dead, which was only national among the Egyptians and Guanches, that is to say, with men the least instructed, and a nation the most learned, is, as we have said above, proof of a profound sensibility among nations with whom it is general. Without doubt, an enlightened policy would contribute much to introduce, extend, and confirm the practice. It proves an intelligent government, one full of solicitude for the happiness of its subjects.”
The opinion of Volney, revived and adopted by Pariset, in his memoir on the causes of the plague, is closely allied to the preceding. “In a numerous population, under a burning climate, and a soil profoundly drenched during many months of the year, the rapid putrefaction of bodies is a leaven for plague and disease. Stricken by these murderous pests, Egypt, at an early day, struggled to obviate them; hence have arisen, on the one hand, the custom of burying their dead at a distance from their habitations; and on the other, an art so ingenious and simple, to prevent putrefaction by embalming: a secondary precaution, more important and more efficacious, with which the primary could not dispense, and which, exacting attempts, trials, and experiments, could only be obtained as a last result—an art by no means expensive, of a simplicity and facility of execution, which rendered its immediate application popular, general, and, perhaps, uniform for all dead bodies. Research and luxury followed at a later period.” The sentiments to which the authors above cited attribute the origin of embalming among the Egyptians exist in every man, viewed either as a social or isolated being. One individual may be induced to embalm the bodies of his relatives or friends by motives of superstition; another from egotism or personal interest; a third from motives of salubrity or common interest; another, in fine, is impelled by an instinctive affection to perform the sacred duty of preserving the remains of those who were dear to him. But none of these motives possess a character of generality and perpetuity, which consecrates a usage and renders it popular; it was therefore left to government to interfere and give it the force of law.
The noble sentiments of affection, of respect, and of veneration, had then, without doubt, the priority; and everything proves to us that these inspired the admirable art of embalming, and that they were above all invoked by legislators.
Nature, besides, upon this torrid soil, gave the first idea of this mode of preserving the remains of men and animals: the mummy[1] of the sands, a natural phenomenon, was a revelation to a people so wise and industrious. The course of our work will demonstrate, we hope, the simple connection of these facts; it had already arrested M. le Comte de Caylus, who, in a memoir read to the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, in 1749, thus expresses himself: “The Egyptians, according to appearances, owe the idea of their mummies, to the dead bodies which they found buried in the burning sands which prevail in some parts of Egypt, and which, carried away by the winds, bury travellers and preserve their bodies, by consuming the fat and flesh without altering the skin.”
The same opinion is advanced by Rouelle. In our general history of the preservation of the human body, the mummy of the sand, and those induced by other local circumstances, will have the first place; and the art of embalming among the Egyptians and the Guanches will occupy the second. This art, we have already said, presents among these people, a general character, which does not appear in any other country. No where, indeed, are the processes of preservation so efficacious, and these two nations alone, have been able to endow their mummies with the power of resisting destruction.
We shall see in the sequel this custom establish itself among the Jews, the Greeks, the Romans and moderns—but it no longer displays a general character; it is no longer a law, a social institution; religious belief, superstition, personal interest, salubrity, no longer obliged them to recur to it. Sentiments of veneration, respect, and attachment, to which we have given the priority to all others, sufficed to perpetuate this custom, and have preserved it for a long series of ages, from the epoch of the Jews, down to our day.
Joseph commanded the physicians in his service to embalm the body of his father, which they executed according to order, in the space of forty days.—(Genesis.)
Saint John informs us, that Nicodemus took a hundred pounds of a mixture of myrrh and aloes, with which to embalm the body of Jesus Christ, which they enveloped in sheets with aromatics, according to the usual mode of burying the dead among the Jews.
Testimony of a similar nature, transmitted to us by historians, show us this usage in vigor among the Persians, the Arabians, the Ethiopians, &c.: for kings, princes, and persons of distinction, to whom they would not consider that they had rendered the respect due to their memories if they had failed to preserve preciously what remained of them.
Corippus, in his funeral oration on the Emperor Justinien, thus expresses himself on the embalming of this emperor:
“Thura sabæa cremant, fragrantia mille
Infundunt pateris, et odoro balsama succo, locatis
Centum aliæ species; unguentaque mira feruntur
Tempus in æternum sacrum servantia corpus.”[2]
The Romans, nevertheless, often contented themselves, in washing and rubbing the body with certain perfumes.
“Tarquinii corpus bona femina lavit et unxit.”[3]
The Egyptian mummies, which are distinguished from those of other nations by the admirable state of preservation in which we find them at the present time, have been for the philosopher a subject of interesting study and research,—for the ignorant, a cause of astonishment and superstitious fear; for physicians, an empyrical remedy for a long time in vogue. The history of Razevil, the Pole, proves the evil influence attributed to mummies. He had purchased at Alexandria, two Egyptian mummies, one of a man, the other of a woman, in order to take them to Europe; he divided them into six pieces, which he separately enclosed in as many boxes, made of the bark of dried trees, and in a seventh box he placed idols discovered with the two bodies. But, as the Turks forbid the sale and transport of these mummies, fearing lest Christians might compose some sorcery of them to the injury of their nation, the Polonaise concluded to bribe the Jew commissioned to examine the bales and merchandise. The plan succeeded, the Jew shipped all the cases as shells, to be transported to Europe. Previous to setting sail, I found, says he, a priest returning from Jerusalem, and who could not accomplish his voyage without the aid which I gave him on this occasion, in inviting him to take passage in our ship. One day, whilst this good man was occupied in counting his breviary, there arose a furious tempest, and he warned us, that besides the danger, he perceived two great obstacles to our voyage in two spectres, which continually haunted him: the tempest over, I taunted him as a visionary, because I never imagined that my mummies could have been the cause of it. But I was obliged in the sequel to change my opinion, when there happened another storm, more violent and dangerous than the first, and when the spectres again appeared to our priest whilst he was saying his prayers, under the figures of a man and woman dressed as my mummies were.
When the tempest was partially appeased, I privately threw overboard the seven boxes, which was not so adroitly executed, however, but that the captain got notice of it, when, with great delight, he promised us that we should have no more storms; which effectively happened, and the good priest was troubled with no more visions. I had a severe reprimand from the captain for having embarked these mummies in his vessel, against which the sea had so great antipathy. The theologians of the isle of Crete, where we anchored, justified my conduct, acknowledging that it was lawful to Christians to transport these mummies for the assistance of the infirm, and that the church did not forbid the usage.
The judgment of the theologians of the isle of Crete, proves that the employment of the mummy as a medicine was universally admitted. According to Dioscorides, it is heating and drying in the second degree—it relieves the headach, cures megraim, palsy, and epilepsy—wonderful in relieving vertigo and drowsiness—an antidote against poisons of all kinds—the bite of venomous beasts—useful, according to Rhasis, in the spitting of blood, rupture of blood-vessels, wounds, &c.;—in one word, no remedy was esteemed more efficacious for the human body, than the human body taken as a medicine. One dram of the oil of mummy of Paracelsus, rendered all poisons innocuous for twenty-four hours; the formulæ of Crollius, of Fernel, of Clauderus, produced effects equally miraculous. The divine water of Scroder, was the touch-stone by whose aid the issue of a disorder could be known in advance: a dram of this liquor was mixed with nine drops of the blood of the patient, or with a double proportion of his urine; if these fluids did not mix, it was an infallible sign of approaching death; on the other hand, if they mixed readily, you might anticipate the health or cure of the patient in twenty-four hours. The great king, Francis 1st, wore around his neck a piece of mummy as a preservative against all evils. Powerless preservative!
I have designedly placed, after an example of superstition, facts which prove the stupidity, or charlatanism of the profession, it appearing to me instructive to preserve the progressive ascendency; the march from the little to the great, in ridicule, as in everything else, is absurd. The difficulty of obtaining mummies enough to satisfy the demand, gave rise to an abominable traffic, against which many physicians remonstrated. “The base avidity of gain increased daily, and they commenced embalming with salt and alum the bodies of those who had died of leprosy, of plague, or small pox, in order to obtain, in the course of a few months, the cadaverous rottenness which flowed from them, and to sell this for true and legitimate mummy; and even at the present time, they make no scruples to give the name of mummy to the dead bodies found in the Deserts of Arabia, and make patients take it internally.”—(Durenou.) The characters of a mummy of good quality, had, nevertheless, been well determined. “Those bodies are not mummies,” says Penicher, “dried by the sands of Lybia, nor those buried and preserved beneath the snow; nor those bodies submerged by the sea, thrown up and dried on the coast, even to the last degree of blackness; nor of criminals, hung and dried in the sun—for these are of no use.”—(Ant. Santorel.) The Pissasphaltum, which is the mummy of the Arabians and the ancients, according to Serapion and Avicenna, is not what we desire; because the odour is disagreeable, and it can possess no other virtue than a mixture of pitch and asphaltum. Neither is mummy a certain fluid which flows from the coffins of embalmed bodies, mentioned by Dioscorides and Mathioles, and which is only, properly speaking, a mixture of humours, mixed, soaked, and penetrated by aromatics, of which the embalming consists.
Andrew Gryphius teaches us, that a good mummy ought to be reddish, light, greasy, and with some odour, but as the embalming materials vary much, as well as their quality, the bodies being more or less well preserved, and it is even possible they may be poisonous, it has appeared expedient to compose a mummy methodically digested. Among the numerous formulæ for officinal mummies, we shall content ourselves with citing here that of Crollius.
Mummy of Crollius. “Choose the body of a hanged person, preferring one with red hair, because in this sort of temperament the blood is thinner; the flesh impregnated with aromatics is better, being filled with sulphur and balsamic salt; it ought to be about twenty-four years of age, healthy, whole, and of good constitution; you will take pieces of the flesh of this corpse, they would be still better if taken from the body of a living man; notably, from the thighs, buttocks, &c.; strip them of their arteries, nerves, veins, and fat, and then wash them well with spirits of wine; then expose them to the sun and moon for two days, during mild and dry weather, to the end that the action of the rays of light of these two planets, particularly of the sun, may exalt and liberate the principles concentered in the flesh; powder it with myrrh, styrax, aloes, saffron, which constitute the basis of the elixir proprietatis of Paracelsus; having previously rubbed the flesh with true balm, macerate it for twelve or fifteen days in a well corked vessel with first quality spirits of wine and salt, which form of themselves a species of balm: at the end of this time withdraw the flesh, let it drain, and dry in the sun; let them again, for the same space of time, and in the same manner, macerate in a similar fluid, and expose it afterwards to the sun and fire, in the same manner they do hams; flesh thus prepared will be found to be an excellent mummy.”
Conceding that the use of the mummy in medicine is one of the strangest and most extravagant abuses of empyricism, the officinal mummy of Crollius must be considered as an improvement, inasmuch as it is divested of the dangers attached to other mummies; it was even a benefit, for this remedy divested of the marvellous, reduced to the level of a common drug, was justly appreciated and soon forgotten. The art of embalming among the Egyptians and Guanches, was carried to a degree of perfection attained by no other nation who followed their example. And, nevertheless, what are the mummies of these countries? They are, according to the definition of R. P. Kircher, bodies stuffed and filled with odoriferant, aromatic, and balsamic drugs, capable of arresting the progress of putrid decomposition. Numerous incisions enabled the preservative matter to enter the cavities and deep tissues: agreeably to the relations of Herodotus, of Diodorus Sicculus, and of Porphyrus, the cranium was emptied either through the nostrils, or by an opening made in one of the orbits: the contents of the thorax and abdomen were withdrawn and placed in a trunk. “The Egyptians,” says Plutarch, “drew the intestines from the dead bodies, and, after having exposed them to the sun, cast them away as the cause of all the sins committed by man.”
The moderns have adopted an analogous mode of preparation, and in our days, previous to my researches on the preservation of animal matters, the processes of embalming were long and complicated.
In the Dictionary of Medicine, of twenty-five volumes, (Paris, 1835,) M. Murat traces in these terms the rules for embalming:
“Before commencing this operation, it is necessary to procure the following objects: alcohol saturated with camphor, camphorated vinegar, a varnish composed of the balsams of Perou and copaiba, fluid styrax, the oils of Muscat, of lavender, and of thyme, &c., alcohol saturated with proto-chloride of mercury, a powder composed of tan, of decrepitated salt, of quinquina, of cascarilla, of mint, of benzoin, of castor, of Jew’s pitch, &c.—all these substances mixed and reduced to a fine powder, are sprinkled with essential oils. The powdered tan ought to form nearly half the weight, and the salt one-fourth; there ought also be placed, at the disposition of the embalmer, a certain number of bandages, linen, sponges, and waxed threads, also several basins filled with pure water, &c.
“The breast and belly must be opened by large incisions, and their contents extracted; the brain is removed after the necessary incisions of the scalp, and sawing circularly the bones of the cranium; deep and repeated incisions are to be made in the viscera. If we wish to preserve the intestinal tube, we must open it throughout its whole length, wash it well in water and compress it; wash it a second time in camphorated vinegar, and finally with camphorated alcohol. Large incisions must be multiplied on the interior surfaces of the great cavities, and along the extremities.”
I stop at these details, because they suffice to prove that the art of embalming, down to the present, has had for its object, not the preservation of the whole subject intact, but the preparation of animal matters padded, stuffed with aromatics and salts: a preparation always incomplete, tedious, and expensive. This is the point from which I start in the preservation of animal matter, and the art of embalming. Have I the happiness of adding a step to science? my readers shall be the judges.
The Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Academy of Medicine, have proved that, by one of my processes, subjects destined for dissection can be preserved. Bodies kept for several months, and afterwards carried to the amphitheatre, have been found as fresh and as fit for dissection, as individuals dead only two days.[B]
These early successes, and the honourable encouragements which they have received, gave me the idea of bringing the art of embalming to perfection; and I have attained to the power of preserving bodies, with all their parts, both internal and external, without any mutilation or extraction, and so as to admit of the contemplation of the person embalmed, with the countenance of one asleep.
This discovery has been confirmed by a commission of the Academy of Sciences, who, in its public sitting in the month of August, 1837, conferred upon me the grand prize.
Having decided to publish the result of my researches, I thought it best to precede it by a general history of embalming, and it appeared to me that a book which would reunite so many interesting documents up to the present time scattered throughout so many works, would not be without interest. If my readers join with me in this opinion, I shall not have laboured in vain, and my work shall have received that recompense of which I am most ambitious.
Nevertheless, I conceived that my endeavour should not be restricted to the simple exposition of my researches, and that it was a duty I owed, to place at the disposition of my fellow citizens the means of continuing some relations with the remains of persons whom they had held dear. The sentiments of love, friendship, respect, and veneration, which preserves in our hearts as a sacred depôt, the memory of friends and relations, give, even to an indifferent portrait, which recalls their features to us, an inappreciable value. The heart warms and vivifies this faint image, and recalls to us the words and actions of those who have departed.
These same sentiments cause us painfully to experience the full rigour of that law of nature which condemns to the decomposition of the grave, remains so sacred to us. I have desired to offer to persons groaning under an afflicting loss, the means of preserving all that death has left them; with this intention I have founded an Embalming Society, and I have placed the price for this operation within the reach of the majority of persons. For men destitute of resources, who have rendered themselves worthy, by their talents or virtues, of the remembrance of their species, the public authorities may reclaim of us a gratuitous embalming. We shall be happy to preserve to society the mortal spoils of those who honour and are useful to it.
HISTORY OF EMBALMING.
CHAPTER I.
OF EMBALMING IN GENERAL.
As soon as life ceases in animal matter, disorganization commences; the constituent elements separate, to be variously recombined, and to give birth to new compounds.
The elevation of atmospheric temperature in certain determined hygrometric limits, and the action of oxygen, are those circumstances which lead necessarily to this decomposition. But, at a given temperature, the progress of putrid fermentation is not the same for all animals; this varies among different species, and different individuals of similar species, according to laws not well determined. But so important, however, are these laws, to the art of embalming, that processes which are sufficient for the preservation of one body, may fail in their application to others.
The ancients had well observed, it is true, that the diversity of climates contributed much to the difference in mummies, and to the success of embalming; for, according to Camerarius, great difference exists between the bodies of Europeans and Orientals; the latter, of a dryer temperament, are not exposed to so rapid a decomposition. The example related by Ammian Marcellini is a convincing proof. Four days, says he, after a combat between the Persians and Romans, the countenance of the latter could scarcely be recognised; the bodies of the Persians, on the contrary, were dry, without humidity, without sanies, and without any alteration.
If sufficient attention is given to this fact, and we consider further, that the thermometrical and hygrometrical conditions of the atmosphere were such in Egypt, that the bodies abandoned to themselves, become dried and formed natural mummies, we shall perceive how vain and unreasonable have been the attempts of those who, for a long series of ages, expected in the middle and northern portions of Europe to embalm human bodies by processes which are only an imperfect imitation of those of Egypt, even in what is defective. Finally, we shall understand how it happens that the sepulchres of the Guanches and Egyptians, yield bodies in such a perfect state of preservation, whilst those of our country offer only bones and dust.
Whilst according to the Egyptians the just tribute of admiration which their profound wisdom and extensive acquirements merit, we ought, in a scientific question, to defend ourselves from the infatuation of our predecessors, which led them into error, and appreciate at their just value facts badly observed.
We read in the letters of M. de Maillet, “the dry and nitrous earth of Egypt has the property of naturally preserving entire bodies without the aid of any art, especially in those countries at a distance from the Nile. This is a fact which experience does not permit us to doubt. Not long since, there were buried some Frenchmen, in a Coptic church which is in old Cairo, and those who descended the cavern found the bodies of others who had been previously deposited for some time, as perfect as they were the very day that they were inhumed: The clothes even of a Venetian consul, whose corpse had been here interred, were perfectly preserved. I have likewise visited several ancient Mosques, formerly celebrated, but now in ruins, which are situated on the road from Cairo to Suez; these edifices have served as tombs to some Mahommedan kings, whose bodies were here deposited, during the period when Egypt was subject to the Arabs. I investigated some of these caverns, and can assert that I observed bodies so light from desiccation that they could be raised with one hand as easily as if they were a walking stick. Among these bodies, was one which weighed less than four pounds; I saw also a thigh, which, although it appeared entire and full of flesh, with the leg and foot attached, did not weigh one pound. Finally, the same thing is daily observed by the caravans which go to Mecca. There are none of these wanderers who have made this voyage, who could not testify that the bodies of those who die on the route, are dried to such a degree as to become as light as straw.”
If, then, we would wish to judge a priori of the relative value of the processes of embalming, followed by the people of Asia and Africa, and of those employed by European nations, we ought to start from this double fact—that among the first, bodies abandoned to themselves have a tendency to dry and mummify, both on account of the small quantity of fluid they contain, and on account of atmospheric influences; whilst those of the second, rot and dissolve under the influence of contrary causes.
We think then, with M. Rouyer, member of the Egyptian commission, that the most efficacious cause of the perfection of the art of embalming of the Egyptians, and of the wonderful preservation of the mummies, was the climate of Egypt, and chiefly that elevated and equal temperature (20° R.) which exists in the interior of sepulchral chambers, and in all subterranean places specially consecrated to sepulchres. A fact which ought to be joined to this last, has been proved by MM. Docts. Boucherie, Bermont, and Gaubert, during a visit to the caves of St. Michel at Bordeaux. These caverns which contain seventy bodies, taken from the neighbouring sepulchres forty years ago, and mummified by causes of which we shall speak in the sequel, are of a temperature of eighteen degrees.
In order to terminate this discussion by a fact universally known, the mummies preserved untouched for several thousand years in the caverns of Egypt, become altered and destroyed very rapidly, when transported into Europe, and divested of their bandages, they are exposed to the influence of our atmosphere.[C]
These various observations convince me that a precise knowledge of the art of embalming among the ancients, would not suffice to preserve bodies in our country; and what we do know, decides me to push my researches in another direction.[D]
Besides, the methods for embalming have varied with time, place, and circumstances. The Ethiopians, inhabiting a country which furnishes in itself more gum than all the rest of the world, conceived the idea of enclosing the body in a melted mass of this transparent matter, and thus to preserve them like insects enveloped in fluid amber, and which are found uninjured and very visible in the middle of this substance when solidified. This mode of preservation has led some to suppose, that the Ethiopians preserved their dead bodies in glass. Honey was formerly used for embalming; the body of Alexander the Great was rubbed with honey, as the following verses prove:
“Duc et ad æmathios manes, ubi belliger urbis
Conditor hiblæo perfusus nectare durat.”
This use of honey is further confirmed by J. B. Baricel, André Rivin, and R. P. Mènestrier. Pliny, book xxii. chap. 24, says that honey is of such a nature, that bodies placed in it do not corrupt.
They made use also of wax for embalming, as we read in Emilius Probus, at the end of the life of Agésilas: “Having fallen sick, he died, and that his friends might the more conveniently carry him to Sparta, for want of honey they enveloped his body in wax.” The Persians, on the report of Cicero, employed the same matter: Persæ jam cerà circumlitos condiunt, ut quam maximè permaneant diuturna corpora.
The ancients also made use of a sort of brine, the composition of which is unknown. Cœlius Rodiginus, in his book of antiquities, remarks that, during the pontificat of Sextus IV. they found on the Appien way the body of a girl, retaining still all the beauty of her face, the hair of a golden blond, and tied up with bands, also gilded—it was thus preserved in a brine, which entirely covered it, and it was thought to be the body of Tulliola, the daughter of Cicero. And Valateron assures us that, by a preparation of an unknown salt, the body of another female was also found entire in a mausoleum near Albania, in the time of Alexander VI.; this Pope ordered it to be thrown secretly into the Tiber, fearing the superstition of the people, who run from all parts to see it, because the body still retained its beauty, although thirteen centuries had elapsed since its deposition.
The Jews, after closing the mouth and eyes of the dead, shaved them, washed and rubbed them with perfumes, then enclosed them in a coffin along with myrrh, aloes, and other aromatics, in great profusion.
The Egyptians had a great number of processes for embalming. The valuable work of M. Rouyer places this fact beyond a doubt: natron, cedria, bitumen, asphaltum, pisasphaltum, different aromatic substances to drive off insects, varnishes, more or less costly, were used in their different preparations; finally, bandages multiplied, and endued with gum Arabic, closed all access to air and humidity. The mummies of the Guanches, which so closely resemble some of those of Egypt, were sewn up in skins, after having been stuffed with aromatics and dried in the sun.
The moderns have employed for the preservation of dead bodies, numerous substances both fluid and solid; spirits of wine, oils, tinctures, compound liniments, brines, etc., constitute the first class; powders, composed of all parts of balsamic and aromatic plants, form the second.
We shall examine, hereafter, more in detail these various systems of preservation—nevertheless, what we have mentioned, proves that they were only in a slight degree efficacious. And even the so much boasted methods of Clauderus, Derasieres, &c., and the wonderful secrets of Debils, Ruysh, Swammerdam, appear to us only applicable to retard a little while the progress of decomposition. The following is extracted from the article Anatomical Preparations of the Dictionary of Medical Sciences:
“It is said that Ruysh possessed the means of preserving the flexibility and other vital properties of the different tissues of our bodies. When the Dutch anatomist sold his cabinet to the Czar, Peter I., he gave a manuscript in which he made known the composition of a preservative fluid, expressly stating that this liquor was nothing more than spirits of wine; the spirit of malt, to which was only added, during distillation, a handful of white pepper. But it appeared that Ruysh had not given the true composition of his liquor, or rather, that he had exaggerated the virtues of it, for it is far from possessing the effects which have been attributed to it. After the death of Ruysh, they thought they had discovered his means of preserving. In 1731, Geoffroy was charged to make experiments; but the results did not correspond to the anticipations.”
We find in a note added by Strader, at the end of his edition of the works of Harvey, another version relative to the proceedings of Swammerdam, which is as follows:
“It is with reason,” says he, “that we prefer to the Egyptian method, an art which so hardens dead bodies, that they lose nothing of their substance, and change neither in colour, nor in form; that they leave to the anatomist all desirable leisure for examination, without presenting any effusion of blood, nor that disgusting filth so repugnant to the delicate practitioner, and which frequently prevents the examination of the entrails of subjects.
“I shall publish, as was communicated to me, this admirable process, in which I was formerly liberally initiated by Cl. Dn. Swammerdam, which is beyond all praise. It is necessary, then, to obtain a pewter vessel of sufficient size to contain the body to be embalmed; place at the distance of about two fingers depth of the bottom, a hurdle of wood, pierced with many holes; place the body on this hurdle, and pour on oil of turpentine to the height of three fingers, keep the vessel quiet, tightly, and less and less hermetically covered during a certain space of time; in this manner the oil, of a penetrating nature, will infiltrate by degrees into the body on which it is poured, and will expel the aqueous portions, the principal cause of the fermentation which tends to corruption. This aqueous portion descending by its specific gravity, and distilling through the flesh, will, in time, occupy the space between this and the bottom, and during this time the more subtle part of the balm will exhale, as the vessel is less closely covered; the more it evaporates, the harder the body becomes, and will imbibe the thick lees of the oil, the effect of which may be compared to that of a gummy marrow: it can then, consequently, remain out of the liquor and in open air without corrupting, without any fear of putrefaction, or of the worms. As to the time necessary to allow the body to remain in the balm, this varies according to the nature of the subject to be preserved. The following rules on this head must be observed:
“The embalming of an embryon of six months, may be accomplished in about the same length of time.
“The skeleton of the same embryon requires only about two months.
“The membranes of the heart, three months.
“The vessels of the liver, and of the placenta, cleared of their flesh, one month.
“The vessels of the spleen, ten days.
“The intestines, one month.
“A certain time is thus assigned for other vessels, which would not be difficult to discover or determine by experiments.
“It is always necessary to pay attention, that during this operation, the parts be a little contracted and compressed in an equable and convenient proportion; the coction of the body prevents the skin forming wrinkles, whether it be made before the deposition in the oil, or after it has soaked there for two months. In order that the subject may retain all its beauty and whiteness, it must be macerated for several days in alum before embalming it. In order that the members may retain a convenient form and position, they ought to be plunged into the balm on the commencement of winter, about the month of November, to expose them afterwards to the cold, not to freeze, but to harden them lightly.
“In following this process, with care, we destroy entirely all the germs of putrefaction concealed in the body, to such a degree, that the entrails even are profoundly penetrated with this balm, and are able to resist the constant attacks of the air.
“If it is desired to preserve a part, without the process above mentioned, the blood must first be extracted by a brine, and the salt subsequently withdrawn by rain water, and, after having placed it in the shade to prevent its putrefying, endue it with a mixture composed of three quarts of oil of turpentine, and one quart of mastic, which will communicate a brilliant appearance to it, and even a sort of light crust, particularly if a greater quantity of mastic is used in the preparation.
“As regards the preparation of the members and their appendages, a particular process must be observed. The vessels must be well dried, of whatever matter they may consist, and afterwards place the rods in them well fitted to the cavity; and previously endued with suet, which is to be carefully withdrawn in a few days; thus the members, large and small, ought to be placed in cotton, well soaked in suet, to be stretched in the direction of their length, as, for example, we stretch the meshes of capillary vessels on sticks rubbed with suet, from whence they are readily detached by means of a little fire placed beneath, which causes the suet to melt.
“But sufficient has been said for the present; perhaps, hereafter I shall have a more favourable opportunity to relate other similar facts, or even more admirable; for I have seen with Swammerdam, of whom I have spoken above, various pieces embalmed with so much talent, that, besides all their natural properties, they possessed also that of being always soft and flexible; I must forbear transmitting for the present this process, in order not to lessen the èclat of the fine work I have just described, and in introducing a still more beautiful one on the scene, etc.”
After so precise a description, I hoped to make something out of this process; but nevertheless, I must confess, that after having repeated these experiments with the greatest care, I was no more successful in my trials than Mr. Geoffroy was in 1731; only I have proved that, when bodies are prepared according to my process, and afterwards plunged into turpentine, they preserve a remarkable freshness and suppleness. After much reflection upon this subject, I have come to the conclusion, that Ruysh and Swammerdam have never made known but a part of their system of preservations, and that, previously to immersing the body in either of the two liquids of which we have spoken, they subjected them to some preparation. In fine, those very authors who boast of the admirable perfection of their processes, have not left a single preparation to show as an example to justify their praises; and, as a proof of their exaggeration, we have the testimony of an author (Penicher) profoundly versed in this matter. “Those authors,” says he, “who boast of having embalmed without emptying the great cavities, and by confining themselves to injections by the mouth, by the anus, or by holes made in the armpits, would be embarrassed to show satisfactory results from such superficial embalming; for, sooner or later, these nuisances will overcome all the embalmer’s industry, and all the expense he may have been at to conquer a bad impression. Could there exist a more singular proof of this, than what happened a few years ago in the church of R. R. P. P., respecting the body of a lady of first quality? The corpse had been placed in a leaden coffin, and enclosed in another of wood, and placed within a marble mausoleum well cemented; after which, in order to fulfil the will, it was embalmed, and enveloped in two hundred pounds of aromatics and perfumes; two kegs of aromatic spirits of wine were introduced through an opening, so that the body was completely submerged in it. Nevertheless, at the end of twelve years or thereabout, it produced so dangerous and malignant a stench through the cracks which occurred in the coffin, by the expansion of the drugs, that one of the priests, who chanced at the time to be saying mass in his chapel, fell extremely ill from this cause, and the assistants were obliged to withdraw, being unable to support the effluvia.
“The priests were under the necessity of exhuming the body, with the consent of the archbishop, and family of the deceased; they removed it to the garden, placed it in a ditch, and covered it with quick-lime, which not destroying the flesh, composed of oily, sulphurous, and resinous parts, it was found necessary to remove the flesh from the body, in order to replace the skeleton in the mausoleum; to such a degree did the bad qualities of the entrails and viscera, corrupted by disease, surpass the good qualities of the balms.”
The imperfections of these methods grow out of their very nature. Along side of these embalmings, practised in an empyrical manner, without any reference to the qualities more or less efficacious, of the aromatic and balsamic substances, I can place infants several months old, subjects most susceptible of dissolution, and which, after a simple injection, have remained exposed to the air in a moist room. At the end of two years of this exposure, they displayed a great suppleness of the tissues, without the least trace of decomposition. Those which I enclosed in cases, in the midst of an atmosphere of my own discovery,[E] have preserved exactly the expression and colour of the face, that they had at the moment of death.
CHAPTER II.
NATURAL MUMMIES.
Whilst man agitates and torments himself in employing all his activity to produce a feeble result, nature, all-powerful, by means of simple causes, produces wonderful effects. Man disputes with the rivers, the ocean’s waves, some few acres of land, which he protects with great labour from their overwhelming influences. At the voice of nature, elements, until now foreign to each other, approximate, combine, and unite in the bosom of the earth, and suddenly throw up from the middle of the ocean vast isles and new continents. He has need of all his industry to make the sap circulate in a few etiolated plants; she, on the contrary, confers life and motion to all beings, or strikes them with torpor or death, according as she elevates or depresses the sun a few degrees in the horizon.
In order to preserve the bodies of his own image, man, stimulated by sentiments of religion, respect, or of love, mutilates in vain their inanimate spoils; in vain he penetrates with aromatics and preservative juices, remains, which putrefaction reclaims and seizes. Nature covers with a little snow the traveller who scales the mountain, then, after centuries, returns the body unaltered. She commands the winds to blow: the sands of the desert are agitated, and the soldiers of Cambyses, and the soldiers of Alexander, are dried in the dust; penetrating with some unknown bodies the entrails of the earth, she there preserves the generations which have preceded us.
Here is the art of embalming in its highest degree of perfection; here are mummies which we ought to desire to imitate. It must be acknowledged, that when the Egyptians and the Guanches transmitted to us their bodies in a state of preservation, which has been the admiration and astonishment of ages, they owed as much, at least, to the aid of nature, as to the perfection of their art, and the development of their industry. If, then, we wish to preserve the bodies of those who excited our admiration or our love, in place of despising the mummies[4] which nature presents us with, let us study them, let us seek with care, the cause of their preservation, and, by reasonable analyses, let us endeavour to penetrate the secret of her ways.
If this direction had been followed, convenient processes would doubtless have been discovered a long time ago; and it never would have been supposed possible to preserve a corpse with certainty, by stuffing it with sixty or eighty kinds of powdered aromatics. After such considerations, we, who have substituted an experimental for an empyrical method, and progressed from the known to the unknown, ought, to be consistent, to study natural mummies first.
Some have been formed by the general qualities of the air and earth, others, by purely local influences; in the first series, we include the mummy of the sand, and those of avalanches; in the second, those discovered here and there in certain sepultures; in the convent of the Capuchins, near Palermo; in the caves of St. Michel, at Bordeaux; in the cemetery of the church of Saint Nicholas; the Museum; the cloister of the Carmes; the caves of the Jacobins and the Cordeliers, at Toulouse, &c.
These last named mummies, the preservation of which is probably due to the particular properties of the soil in which they were deposited, have been, up to the present day, objects of vulgar curiosity, rather than of attentive examination.
Drs. Boucherie, Bermont, and Gaubert, have favoured me with some notes taken during a visit to the caves of St. Michel, at Bordeaux, (August, 1837.) I let them speak for themselves:
“The bodies exposed to view at Bordeaux, in the cavern situated beneath the tower of Saint Michel, were deposited there in 1793, nearly in the same state in which they appear at present, they came from the sepulchres of the church and the adjoining cemetery. A great number of bones, and the wreck of soft parts, dried and preserved like the whole bodies, form a layer of seventeen or eighteen feet, upon which are supported the inferior extremities of seventy subjects, arranged in a circle around the wall, and retained in a vertical position by the cords which bind them. Some of these, they say, had remained in the earth many centuries, others from sixty to eighty years or more.
“During our visit, 25th August, 1837, we determined to examine with care the state of these bodies, those of the middle, where they had remained for more than forty years, and above all, we procured strips of skin and muscle, in order to examine them at leisure, and to submit them to some chemical re-agent, which might reveal to us the presence of the preservative element. We could not hope to collect any of the earth that had originally covered them, since they were superposed on remnants thrown into this place at the time they were enclosed here.
“After having furnished ourselves with a thermometer at 24° R., and a hygrometer at 34°, both in the open air, we descended thirty or forty steps, which conducted us to the cave. The coolness did not appear to us very striking, as it commonly is at this depth during the heat of the dog-star. Placing our instruments on the soil, we proceeded to examine the bodies.
“It is an extraordinary aspect, by lamp-light, offered by this circular space, the walls of which are tapistried by dead bodies all standing erect; the eye wanders from one to the other involuntarily, and we view the whole before confining ourselves to details. Although the most of them are in the attitude of the buried dead, some differences in size, in the position and expression of the physiognomy, produce a strange and confused impression. There is one point, however, where our regards were particularly attracted, where the heart is chilled and troubled with deep emotion—here is beheld a miserable creature in a position violently contracted—the mouth open and horribly contracted, the inferior members strongly drawn to the body—the arms, one twisted by convulsions is thrown over the head, the other folded beneath the trunk, and fixed to the thigh by the nails, which are deeply implanted in the flesh; the forced inflexion of the whole body, gives the expression of ineffable pain, all announcing a violent death. Unfortunate wretch! had he died in this state, or rather, had he been buried alive, and assumed this position in the horrible agonies of awakening?
“The skin of all these mummies, of a more or less deep gray colour, dried and rather soft to the touch, gives the sensation of parchment slightly stretched upon the organs, dried, and of the consistence of amadou[F] or spunk; the articulations are stiff and inflexible; the chest, the abdomen, and the cranium, examined carefully, did not show any incision, any regular opening indicative of any trace of embalming, even the most imperfect. The different features of the face, still distinct among some of them, displayed a variety of physiognomy; two or three of them displayed the hair of the beard very well preserved, the teeth were healthy and covered with brilliant enamel. The upper and lower extremities entirely dried, and whole in many of the subjects, are provided with all the phalanges; the last, however, divested of its nail. On the body of the tallest figure is perceived enormous purses, with evident traces of a double scrotal hernia. The skin raised and viewed on its interior surface, is tanned like the exterior; all traces of cellular tissue has disappeared; the muscles, separated from the skin, have the colour and consistence, and almost the internal structure of amadou. On introducing the hand into the chest, some rudiment of lung was found, a net work very similar to that of leaves deprived of their fleshy part; they might be taken for a mass of leaves dissected by the caterpillars, and rendered adherent by the threads and viscous fluid that these insects deposit. The intestines, also dried, are nearly in the same state.
“Such are the principal details which presented themselves in the course of our examination: at first sight, it appeared astonishing that these bodies, removed for more than forty years from the medium in which they were desiccated, should have experienced no sensible alteration in a cavern situated deeply under the earth, and surmounted by a structure like that of the tower of St. Michel. Let us return to our instruments, perhaps they will aid us in the explanation of the fact. After remaining an hour in this atmosphere, the thermometer passed from 24° to 18°, and the hygrometer, from 34° to 42°, which gives a difference for the first, of 6°, for the second of 8°, a very trifling difference, when compared to that of caves and other places in the same apparent position. This thermometrical and hygrometrical state of the air, always invariable, is, without doubt, one of the principal circumstances in maintaining the integrity of these mummies. To what cause, further, can be attributed this double state of the air in the cavern? A slow fermentation, movements of latent decomposition in the enormous mass of animal remains which form the bottom of this receptacle, are they not the probable cause? We think so, and we leave with confidence this idea, to the meditation of philosophers. Our end was attained, we had proved facts, and collected some parcels of the remains to subject them to analysis; after different trials without result, some portions of skin and muscular tissue, placed in weakened hydrochloric acid, and treated by ebullition, were totally dissolved in this liquid, to which they communicated a deep brown colour. This liquor filtered and treated by the yellow cyanate of potash, yielded a very abundant blue precipitate; and the presence of iron was thus indicated, from whence we thought that the preservation of these bodies was owing to the presence of a compound of iron in the earth, where they had been deposited. But the human blood yields iron also; was it a portion of this element of our tissues that our experiments brought into play? A suit of comparative experiments upon the tissues of mummies, on the one hand, and of the same tissues dried in the sun of subjects recently dead, on the other hand, have evidently proved the excess of iron in the first. Analogous circumstances doubtless, have determined the preservation of the bodies found at Toulouse, at Palermo, &c. We regret not to be able to transmit the suit of experiments made by our learned friend, Dr. Boucherie; these will form the subject of ulterior researches.”
The same phenomenon still occurs in different parts of our country, under a moderate temperature: thus, about 1660, M. de La Visèe and his domestic, having been assassinated at Paris, and interred on the place where the crime was committed, their bodies were discovered after the lapse of a year, whole and readily recognisable; a cloak even, lined with plush, had not suffered the least alteration.
The mummy of the avalanches, and all those, the preservation of which is due to a constant low temperature, retain the freshness and plumpness of the tissues for years and for centuries, if the conditions of the medium remain the same; but, under these circumstances, the action of cold exerts no other influence than the suspension of decomposition; for the moment it ceases, the tissues are rapidly exposed to the laws of inorganic chemistry.
In those cases, however, where the bodies exposed to cold are subjected to a dry and lively wind, a real mummification may occur, as in the following example:
There is upon the summit of the Great Saint Bernard, a sort of morgue (dead house) in which have been deposited, from time immemorial, the bodies of those unfortunate persons who have perished upon this mountain by cold, or the fall of avalanches.
The study of the circumstances of locality, and of temperature, in which this establishment is placed, may, to a certain degree, indicate the most favourable conditions for the long preservation of bodies. Here they show to travellers, bodies, which they assert have been sufficiently well preserved to be recognisable after the lapse of two or three years. A physician, whose quality as ancient prosector of the faculty of Medicine of Paris, rendered him curious to visit this part of the hospital in all its details, has verified with his own eyes all that travellers have written, and has transmitted to us the following observation:
The hospital of Saint Bernard, is, as is well known, the most elevated habitation in Europe, being 7,200 feet above the level of the sea. The temperature of this part of the globe is always very low, rarely above zero, even during summer. This extensive establishment is built upon the borders of a little lake, at the bottom of a little gorge; the principal mass of the building represents a long parallelogram placed in the direction of the gorge, so that its two principal faces, pierced with numerous windows, are sheltered from the wind by the rocks; whilst the two extremities, on the contrary, are exposed to all the violence of those which blow from one side of the gorge to the other. About fifty steps beyond this principal building, and a little out of a right line with it, is situated the morgue, a sort of square chamber, the walls of which, three or four feet thick, are constructed of good stone, and the arched roof of which is very solid. Two windows of about four feet square, are pierced in the direction of the breadth of the valley, directly facing each other, so that a perpetual current of cool air traverses the interior of the chamber. There is, further, but a single table in this morgue, upon which they place the bodies when first introduced; after a while they are arranged around the walls in an upright attitude. At the time of my passage of the Great Saint Bernard, (31st August, 1837,) there were several of these mummified bodies along the walls of the chamber, but a greater number were entirely divested of flesh, and lie scattered about the earthy floor of the room. They informed me, that decomposition only took place when the bodies fell by accident to the ground; which was owing to the humidity occasioned by the snow, which occasionally entered with the currents of air through the windows of the morgue.[G] (Note communicated by Dr. Lenoir.)
The existence of the mummies of the sands, is attested by numerous travellers, and all the authors who have written on embalming mention them. They are every where found, where an arid and burning atmosphere deeply penetrates the masses of fine sand, easily agitated by the winds. In Egypt, for example, Herodotus frequently speaks of these bodies dried by the sun. Cambyses, on the authority of this author, suffered horrible effects from these sands, driven before the wind; he lost almost his whole army during his expedition to the temple of Jupiter Ammon.
Pere Kircher gives us an interesting description of these sand storms: “In the countries of Africa situated beyond the Nile, is a vast desert of sand, the immense waves of which appear in the boundless horizon like those of the sea. Agitated by the winds, these sands produce such frightful tempests, that they swallow up under their enormous masses, travellers, beasts of burden, and merchandise. Bodies thus engulfed, become desiccated after a series of years, both by the ardour of the sun’s rays, and by virtue of the burning sand: this is the reason that some have asserted that mummies might be formed by natural causes only, &c.”[H] Penicher, Clauderus, De Maillet, Rouelle Le Comte de Caylus, cite examples of the same nature. A whole caravan, or some travellers, disappear under a mass of sand; years, centuries, pass by, then a new revolution in the disposition of these masses restores to the light of day, those bodies which a previous revolution had engulfed; blackened, dried, and lightened by the loss of all their fluids. In Mexico, Mr. Humboldt met with true mummies. Travellers have visited battlefields, situated on a soil deprived of rain, and in a burning atmosphere. They saw with astonishment, that these fields were covered with the dead bodies of Spaniards and Peruvians, dried and preserved for a long time. At the side of these phenomena which nature offers us, come the mummies of which Maillet speaks in his letters on Egypt.
“There has been discovered,” says he, “recently, in this plain of mummies, a mode of burying hitherto unknown. At the extremity of this vast open country, and towards the mountains, which bound it on the west, have been discovered beds of carbon, on which are laid bodies clothed only with some linen, and covered with a mat, upon which rests the sands seven or eight feet in thickness. Nevertheless, it is to be observed, that these bodies, although they were not embalmed, or at least but slightly so, the same as those that they have neglected to enclose in cases, were none the less beyond the reach of corruption.”
I promised to demonstrate the simple connection which exists between the products of nature, and those of human industry, to show that the first were the origin of the second. The facts which I have just exposed, I think, place this proposition beyond a doubt.
The preservation of bodies among the Guanches, which is already a step advanced in the art, will form the subject of the following chapter.
CHAPTER III.
EMBALMING OF THE GUANCHES.
The Guanches, with the Egyptians, are the only nation among whom embalming had become national, and there exists in the process and mode of preservation of both such striking analogy, that the study of the Guanch mummies is, probably, the surest means of arriving at some positive notions of their origin and relationship. To make ourselves understood in the subject which now occupies us, we ought to remark, that the details known of the mode of embalming among the Guanches, will enlighten and complete the descriptions that ancient authors have transmitted to us of the Egyptian processes: it is thus that it appears to us without a doubt, that their silence on desiccation in the act of mummification, is a simple omission on their part: that this desiccation was continued during the seventy days of preparation; that it constituted the principal part of the processes adopted; and that, because among the Guanches desiccation was placed in the first rank, if we are to credit the relations of authors. We see in this, one of the finest examples of the utility of the comparative study of the manners and usages of different nations: light is thrown on both by the comparison of facts.
The pains taken by the Guanches to evaporate the fluid parts of their dead bodies, is the cause which determines us to place their mummies immediately after those of the deserts of Lybia; because their processes approach nearest to that of nature. The details which we are about to give, are extracted from the excellent work of M. Bory de Saint Vincent on the Fortunate Isles.
“The arts of the Guanches were not numerous, the most singular without doubt is that of embalming.
“The Guanches preserved the remains of their relations in a scrupulous manner, and spared no pains to guarantee them from corruption. As a moral duty, each individual prepared for himself the skins of goats, in which his remains could be enveloped, and which might serve him for sepulture. These skins were often divested of their hair, at other times they permitted it to remain, when they placed indifferently the hairy side within or without. The processes to which they resorted to make perfect mummies, which they named xaxos, are nearly lost. Some writers have, nevertheless, left details on this subject, but perhaps they are not more exact than those which Herodotus has transmitted to us upon the embalming of the Egyptians.
“With the Guanches, the embalmers were abject beings; men and women filled this employment respectively, for their sexes; they were well paid, but their touch was considered contamination; and all who were occupied in preparing the xaxos lived retired, solitary, and out of sight. It is, then, out of place, that Sprats has advanced the idea, that embalming was confined to a tribe of priests, who made a sacred mystery of it, and that the secret died with the priests. There were several kinds of embalming, and several different employments for those who had charge of it. When they had need of the services of the embalmers, they carried the body to them to be preserved, and immediately retired. If the body belonged to persons capable of bearing the expenses, they extended it at first on a stone table; an operator then made an opening in the lower part of the belly with a sharpened flint, wrought into the form of a knife and called tabona; the intestines were withdrawn, which other operators afterwards washed and cleaned; they also washed the rest of the body, and particularly the delicate parts, as the eyes, interior of the mouth, the ears, and the nails, with fresh water saturated with salt. They filled the large cavities with aromatic plants; they then exposed the body to the hottest sun, or placed it in stoves, if the sun was not hot enough. During the exposition, they frequently endued the body with an ointment, composed of goats’ grease, powder of odoriferous plants, pine bark, resin, tar, ponce stone, and other absorbing materials. Feuille thinks that these unctions were also made with a composition of butter, and desiccative and balsamic substances, among which are mentioned the resin of larch, and the leaves of pomegranate, which never possessed the property of preserving bodies.
“On the fifteenth day the embalming should be completely terminated; the mummy should be dry and light; the relatives send for it and establish the most magnificent obsequies in their power. They sew up the body in several folds of the skin, which they had prepared when living, and they bind it with straps, retained by running knots. The kings and the grandees were besides, placed in a case or coffin of a single piece, and hollowed out of the trunk of the juniper tree, the wood of which was held as incorruptible. They then finally, carried the xaxos, thus sown and encased, to inaccessible grottoes consecrated to this purpose.
“Another less expensive mode of preserving the dead, consisted in drying them in the sun, after having introduced into the belly a corrosive liquor: this liquor eats into the interior parts, where the sun does not act sufficiently to prevent their corruption. Like the other xaxos, the relatives sowed them in skins and carried them to the grottoes.
“These mummies, such as they are found at the present day, are dry and light; many have perfectly preserved their hair and beard, the nails are often wanting; the features of the face are distinct, but shrunken; the abdomen is contracted. In some, there exists no mark of incision, in others are observed the trace of a rather large opening on the flank. The xaxos are of a tanned colour, with generally an agreeable odour; exposed to the air, out of the sacks of goat skin, which are admirably preserved, they fall by degrees into dust; they are punctured in many places; surrounded by the chrysalides of flies, proceeding probably from maggots, deposited upon the body during its preparation: these larvæ and chrysalides, which could not be reproduced, are preserved whole and healthy like the mummies.
“The Chevalier Scory says, that these mummies are two thousand years old: it is difficult to determine how long they have been preserved; but we shall see in the sequel that it has been certainly more than two thousand years since the Guanches embalmed. I willingly believe that, in the corrosive composition which they employed in the second kind of embalming, and probably in all cases, the Guanches made use of the juice of the spurge; they doubtless employed the species proper to their climate, which is acrid and milky; I have recognised whole pieces in the chest of a mummy, in which, nevertheless, there existed no traces of an incision. Leaves, also, it is said, have been taken from the body in a good state of preservation, and have been recognised as those of the laurel. During the exposure of the body to the sun, they extend the arms of the men along the side of the trunk, and for the most part crossing those of the women before the lower part of the abdomen. From time to time new catacombs are discovered in the Canary islands. In 1758, they found one at Palma; but the mummies were either very old, or badly embalmed, they soon fell into powder. At Fer, there was found on the tables where the xaxos had laid, the furniture which the deceased had used during life. In this island they wall up these caverns, to prevent them being used as retreats for birds of prey and for crows.
“At the Canaries, they do not limit themselves always to placing the mummies in grottoes; they elevated special tombs to certain distinguished dead. These privileged dead, dressed in their garment, called tamareo, were placed upon elevated planks of pine wood, with the head turned towards the north; they afterwards constructed above, a monument of hard stone, pyramidal in form, and often very high. Many catacombs are known to exist in Teneriffe; the most celebrated is that of Baranco de Herque, between Arico and Guimar, in the Abona country: it was discovered during the time that Clarijo wrote his Noticias. He states that they there met with more than a thousand mummies, whilst in other cases only three or four hundred had been found at a time. From hence they brought the xaxos, which are in the cabinet of the King of Spain, and the two which M. de Chastenet-Puysegur sent in 1776, to the Garden of Plants: one of them unfortunately wants the feet.”
We abstain from all reflection on the recital which precedes. Their analogy to the Egyptian process will occur of itself to the mind of the reader, in the description which follows. Nevertheless, we ought to indicate a fact observed of two Guanch mummies; a fact omitted in the preceding description.
M. Jouannet, a modest and laborious investigator, has proved, that two Guanch mummies that were in his possession, had the eyes, nose, and mouth, filled with bitumen, like some of the Egyptian mummies. The skins which enveloped them were carefully closed, and nothing indicated that the bitumen was an addition posterior to embalming.
CHAPTER IV.
EMBALMING AMONG THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS.
Since the ignorance we are in, relative to the language of this great nation, places it out of our power to know, of ourselves, the causes and processes for the preservation of dead bodies, let us follow the recital of ancient authors, let us endeavour to detect, not by the imagination, but by positive facts, by the study of invariable exterior conditions, the different data of the question of embalming among the Egyptians.
In the first place, if we make allowance for all that the successive perfection of the arts, luxury, or the love of distinction could add to simple preservation, we shall arrive, with Rouelle, to this conclusion, that the work of embalming is reduced to two essential parts: first, the drying of the body, that is to say, removing the fluids and grease which they contain; secondly, to protect the body thus prepared, from external humidity and contact of the air. We have already seen all the aid which they derived from their climate to fulfil the first condition: a detailed description will teach us what their industry enabled them to add to it. As to the second, the nature of their caverns powerfully contributed.
These vast cavities, says Pelletan, sheltered from the inundations of the Nile, have, without doubt, originally furnished the materials for the monuments of Thebes, and the architects of the day thus hollowed out the tombs of families in elevating their palaces. Their whole surface, from the entrance, even to the deepest recesses of these dark excavations, are covered with sepultures and fresco paintings. Each framed subject forms so many little pictures which touch each other, and the figures of which are not more than two or three inches in height, so that the whole extent of these double walls, the development of which is incalculable, has been the object of minute labour. The sculptures are in bas-relief, and covered with equable tints, but lively, and in very good preservation. The points of rock unconnected with the work, have been covered with a composition perfectly solid, and so durable, that, as yet, no other degradation is observable, than that produced by the efforts of some travellers to carry off fragments of it. Perspective is always wanting in these pictures; the bodies are viewed in full, the faces in profile; but the design is pure and the proportions just; we find nothing to indicate ignorance in the artist; which presumes for the Egyptians, if not great perfection in the arts, at least a great popularity in their practice. The subject of these paintings are domestic scenes, and generally followed by a funeral procession; from whence it may be inferred, that they refer to the life of the man enclosed in each of the lateral niches. The temperature of the caverns is 20° R.
It appeared to us convenient thus to give a summary of the conditions of drying, and of the ulterior preservation, before presenting descriptions which have been more or less accurately transmitted to us, of the part that man has had in this operation.
Herodotus, Diodorus Sicculus, and Porphyrus, who have written with the greatest detail on the funerals of the Egyptians, will afford us the first instructions.
Herodotus. “Mourning and funerals are conducted after this manner: when a man of consideration dies, all the women of his house (oiketes) cover the head and even the face with mud; they leave the deceased in the house, girdle the middle of their bodies, bare the bosom, strike the breast, and overrun the city, accompanied by their relations. On the other side, the men also girdle themselves and strike their breasts; after this ceremony, they carry the body to the place where it is to be embalmed.”
The following, after Diodorus Sicculus, (book 1st, vol. i. p. 102, § xcii.) is the ceremony of sepulture among the Egyptians: “The relatives fix the day for the obsequies, in order that the judges, the relations, and friends of the dead may be present, and they characterize it by saying, he is going to pass the lake; afterwards the judges, to the number of more than forty arriving, they place themselves in the form of a semi-circle beyond the lake. A batteau approaches the shore, carrying those who have charge of this ceremony, and in which is a sailor, whom the Egyptians name in their language Charon. They say, further, that Orpheus having remarked this custom in his voyage in Egypt, took occasion from it to imagine the fable of hell, imitating a portion of these ceremonies, and adding to them others of his own invention. Before placing in the batteau the coffin containing the body of the deceased, it is lawful for each one present to accuse him. If they prove that he has led a sinful life, the judges condemn him, and he is excluded from the place of his sepulture. If it appear that he has been unjustly accused, they punish the accuser with severity. If no accuser presents himself, or if the one who does so is known as a calumniator, the relatives, putting aside the signs of their grief, deliver an eulogium on the deceased without mentioning his birth, as is practised among the Grecians, because they considered all Egyptians equally noble. They enlarge on the manner in which he has been schooled and instructed from his childhood; upon his piety, justice, temperance, and his other virtues since he attained manhood, and they pray the Gods of hell to admit him into the dwelling of the pious. The people applauded and glorified the dead who were to pass all eternity in the abodes of the happy. If any one has a monument destined for his sepulture, his body is there deposited; if he has none, they construct a room in his house, and place the bier upright against the most solid part of the wall. They place in their houses those to whom sepulture has not been awarded, either on account of crimes, of which they are accused, or on account of the debts which they may have contracted; and it happens sometimes in the end that they obtain honourable sepulture, their children or descendants becoming rich, pay their debts or absolve them.” Orpheus communicated to the Greeks these usages of the Egyptians, applied to hell. Homer, following in his steps, adorned his poetry with them: “Mercury,” says he, “his wand in his hand, convoked the souls of the candidates.” And further on: “They traversed the ocean, passed near Leucadia, entered by the gate of the sun, (Heliopolis,) the country of dreams, and soon attained the fields of Asphodelia, where inhabit the souls who are the images of death.”
But to return to the recital of Herodotus. “There are in Egypt, certain persons whom the law charges with embalming, and who make a profession of it.
“When a body is brought to them, they show the bearers models of the dead in wood. The most renowned represents, they say, him whose name I am scrupulous to mention; they show a second, which is inferior to the first, and which is not so costly; they again show a third of a lower price. They afterwards demand after which of the three models they wish the deceased to be embalmed. After agreeing about the price, the relatives retire; the embalmers work alone, and proceed as follows, in the most costly embalming. They first withdraw the brain through the nostrils, in part with a curved iron instrument, and in part by means of drugs, which they introduce into the head; they afterwards make an incision in the flank with a sharp Ethiopian stone.
“The body being extended upon the earth, the scribe traces on the left flank the portion to be cut out. He who is charged with making the incision, cuts with an Ethiopian stone, as much as the law allows; which having done, he runs off with all his might, the assistants follow, throwing stones after him, loading him with imprecations, as if they wished to put upon him this crime. They regard, indeed, with horror, whoever does violence to a body of the same nature as their own. Whoever wounds it, or in one word, whoever offers it any harm.” (Diodorus, book I, t. i. p. 102.)
“They withdraw the intestines through this opening, clean them, and pass them through palm wine, place them in a trunk; and among other things they do for the deceased, they take this trunk, and calling the sun to witness, one of the embalmers on the part of the dead, addresses that luminary in the following words, which Euphantus has translated from his vernacular tongue. ‘Sun, and ye too, Gods, who have given life to men, receive me, and grant that I may live with the eternal Gods; I have persisted all my life in the worship of those Gods, whom I hold from my fathers, I have ever honoured the Author of my being, I have killed no one, I have committed no breach of trust, I have done no other evil: if I have been guilty of any other fault during life, it was not on my own account, but for these things.’ The embalmer, in finishing these words, shows the trunk containing the intestines, and afterwards casts it into the river. As to the rest of the body, when it was pure, they embalmed it.” (Porphyr., De abstinentia ab esu animalium, book 17, § 10, p. 329.)
“Afterwards they fill the body with pure bruised myrrh, with canella and other perfumes, excepting incense; it is then sown up. When that is done they salt the body in covering it with natrum for seventy days.” (Natrum, with the intention of carrying off, and drying the oily, lymphatic, and greasy parts; but this ought to have been the first operation, for if they had commenced with filling the body with myrrh and aromatics, previous to salting it, the natrum, acting on the balsamic matters, and forming with their oils a soapy matter, very soluble and readily carried off by the lotions, would have destroyed the greater part of the aromatics. Besides, Diodorus does not mention natrum.) “It is not permitted to let them remain longer in the salt. The seventy days elapsed, they wash the body and entirely envelope it in linen and cotton bandages, soaked with gum Arabic, commi, which the Egyptians used generally in place of glue.[I] The relatives now reclaim the body; they have made a wooden case of the human form, in which they enclose the corpse, and put it in a chamber destined for this purpose, standing erect against the wall. Such is the most magnificent method of embalming the dead. Those who wish to avoid the expense choose this other method; they fill syringes with an unctuous liquor which they obtain from the cedar; with this they inject the belly of the corpse without making any incision, and without withdrawing the intestines; when this liquor has been introduced into the fundament they cork it, in order to prevent its ejectment; the body is then salted for the prescribed time. The last day, they draw off from the body the injected liquor; it has such strength that it dissolves the ventricles and intestines, which come away with the liquid. The natrum destroys the flesh, and there remains of the body, only the skin and bones. This operation finished, they return the body without doing anything further to it.
“The third kind of embalming is only for the poorer classes of society. They inject the body with a fluid named surmata; they put the body into natrum for seventy days, and they afterwards return it to those who brought it. As to ladies of quality, when they are dead, they are not immediately sent to the embalmers, any more than such as are beautiful or highly distinguished; these are reserved for three or four days after death. They take this precaution lest the embalmers might pollute the bodies confided to their care.
“It is reported that one was surprised in the act, with a woman recently dead, and that on the accusation of one of his comrades.”
The preceding recitals have been the subject of numerous commentations, discussions, and researches. It is astonishing that Herodotus has omitted desiccation; but it naturally took place during the time consecrated to preparation. Some assert that the body was in the first place salted, and subsequently penetrated with resinous and balsamic substances, which, incorporating with the flesh, prevented putrefaction: others pretend that the body, after having been salted, was dried, and that it was not until after this desiccation that the resinous and balsamic substances were applied. A simple inspection of the mummies is sufficient to reject the first opinion. What union, indeed, could these last named matters have contracted with the fluids of the tissues? and how can we conceive from thence, that bodies often filled with corrupted serosity, could have resisted the intestine effects of such active causes in producing decomposition?
M. Rouelle thought that the natrum was a fixed alkali, which acted after the manner of quick-lime, despoiling the bodies of their lymphatic and greasy fluids, leaving only the fibrous and solid parts. Thus viewing in this manner the Egyptian process, it removes an error into which Herodotus has fallen on the subject of the first class of embalming. It is there stated, that they filled the belly of the corpse with myrrh, canella, and other perfumes, except incense, and that afterwards they put it into the natrum and then washed it. But of what use would have been these resinous matters, with which the alkali of the natrum would soon form a soapy mass, which the lotions would have carried off, at least, in great part? It is much more reasonable to suppose that these balsamic and resinous substances were not applied to the bodies until after they were withdrawn from the natrum.
The same author points out another inaccuracy, in what Herodotus has taught us on the bandages of the mummies. Very few mummies, says he, are enveloped agreeably to the description of Herodotus, that is to say, the linen bandages are not glued together with gum alone, applied directly to the body when simply dried without any resinous substances. Such kind of embalming is the least costly, although Herodotus describes it as the richest and dearest. The mummy preserved in the cabinet of St. Geneviève, and the two which are in that of the Celestins, may throw some new light on this passage of Herodotus, and confirm my conjectures. These mummies have two kinds of bandages; the body and the limbs are each separately invested with linen bandages, endued with resin or bitumen, and they are so intimately united together that they form but one mass. This is doubtless the reason that some authors have believed that this thickness was only embalmed flesh. There are other linen bandages without any bituminous substance, which envelope the whole body; both the arms are crossed upon the stomach, and the legs are glued together; these mummies are swaddled in new bandages, or, if you please, by this last bandage, just as infants are swaddled; these bandages are yellow, particularly those of the mummy of the cabinet of Saint Geneviève, and are absolutely destitute of resinous substance. We may, then, readily conclude, that these bandages have been only simply invested with gum. It appears that Herodotus had forgotten to describe the use of the first bandage, employed to retain the resinous matter on the surface of the body, and having probably seen among the embalmers, or elsewhere, some bodies swaddled like infants, he only described the second bandage.
If we examine with attention, the mummy of Saint Geneviève, and those of the cabinet of the Celestins, it will be perceived that the second bandage is equally a suit of ordinary embalming; for the mummy of the Celestins, of which the first bandage has been removed, no doubt in order to see the process of embalming, has the bands of the first bandage of a very clear and coarse linen: the bands of that of Saint Geneviève, on the contrary, are much finer, whilst the substances of the embalming of the two mummies are the same.
I am persuaded that mummies seldom come to us with the second bandage, and that the preservation of those of the mummies of the cabinet of Saint Geneviève, and of the Celestins, is only due to the state of the cases which hold them, or to the peculiar care of those who sent them.
In fine, Rouelle has analysed the substance of embalmings, and the result of the analysis made on six mummies gave him for two, amber, for the four others, Jew’s pitch or pisasphaltum, a mixture, into the composition of which, Jew’s pitch enters. Rouelle met with no traces of myrrh in any mummy. From these facts he arrives at the following conclusion: “Our experiments, then, furnish us with three materially different embalmings. The first, with Jew’s pitch; the second, with a mixture of bitumen, and the liquor of cedar, or cedria; and the third, with that mixture, to which they have added resinous and very aromatic matters.”
We confine ourselves to these reflections upon the processes described by the ancients, and given by them as those alone practised in Egypt.
We are going to cite some passages from the very remarkable memoir of M. Rouyer, from which it will be readily perceived that they were ignorant of several methods in use among these people. Nevertheless, it is just to give here some explanations which throw new light upon the sources which we have reproduced; they are principally extracted from the memoir of the Count de Caylus.
The exhibition of models on the part of the embalmers, had reference to the richness of the work demanded, and to the expense of the chosen form. The first model, which Herodotus had scruples in naming, was probably the figure of some divinity, (Isis.) Herodotus does not mention the price, and it is probable, that Diodorus has made his valuations without being any too well acquainted with them. According to his estimation, the first cost one talent, (about nine hundred dollars of our money;) the second, twenty mina, (three hundred dollars;) the third, a trifle, (vague.) Diodorus continues in these terms: “The office of burying is a particular profession, which, like all others, has been learned from infancy. Those who exercise it, go to the relatives of the deceased with a scale or rate of charges, and request them to make a selection. Having agreed, they take the body and give it to the officers whose duty it is to prepare it.”
In the head, which was sent by M. de Caylus, the skull had been actually pierced through the nostrils, and the bottom of the right orbit opened. As to perfume, the exception in favour of the incense is probably made out of respect to the divinity. He observed no trace of incision, nor were they at all necessary. The extreme dryness of the skin, and the solidity it acquires by the bitumen, renders such operation useless.
The Egyptians employed their natrum as we employ lime, to prepare and tan leather. Also kommi, or gum Arabic of Senegal. As respects bandages, they had many kinds; whether as regards the quality of the linen, or the manner of arranging them, more simple or more complex. As many as a thousand ells of these narrow bands have been found on a single mummy.
Diodorus, after speaking of those who make the incision, adds: “those who salt come afterwards: these officers are highly respected in Egypt; they hold commerce with the priests, and the entrance to sacred places is open to them, the same as to persons who are themselves sacred. They assemble around a corpse which has just been opened, and one of them introduces his hand through the incision into the body, and withdraws all the viscera, excepting the heart and kidneys. Another, continues he, washes them in palm wine and odoriferous liquors; they afterwards anoint the body for thirty days with cedar, gum, myrrh, cinnamon, and other perfumes, which not only contributes to preserve the body in its integrity a very long time, but which also causes it to shed a very sweet odour. They then return to the relatives, the body restored to its original form, in such a manner that even the hair of the eyelids and eyebrows remain unruffled, and the corpse preserves its natural expression of countenance and personal bearing. Many Egyptian families, having, by this means, preserved a whole race of ancestors, experience an inexpressible consolation in thus beholding them in the same figure, and with the same physiognomy, as if they were still living.”
As regards those who have been killed by a crocodile, or who have been drowned in the river, the inhabitants of the city nearest to which the body has been cast ashore, are obliged to embalm it; to adjust it in the most magnificent manner, and deposit it in the sacred tombs. Neither the relatives or friends are permitted to touch these bodies; they are embalmed alone by the priests of the Nile, considering them as something above humanity.—(Herodotus.) Are these sacred tombs those of the God Apis? Were there places of sepulchre different from the caves and pyramids?
The expense and care required for the embalming of princes must have been immense, as may be conjectured by the following fact. A portion of mummy preserved in the cabinet of Saint Geneviève, merits all the eulogiums that could be given to an object of this kind. It consists of the foot, leg, and thigh of an infant two or three years old; the care with which this embalming was made, was known to those who presented it to the cabinet, for they had written upon the box which contained this precious relic of the art, mummy of the little prince of Memphis. This denomination has no other foundation, perhaps, than the nature of the work, and the sensible difference observed between this and other mummies. The surface of the flesh is black, and so smooth that it may be compared to a fine Chinese varnish; the flesh has not altogether preserved its softness, but all the thickness and plumpness peculiar to little children can be distinguished, as well as the articulations and all the little wrinkles of the fingers. The nails are perfectly preserved and well set on; they have neither colour nor gilding, although they appear to have been gilded. The bandages do not appear to have been imbued with the same bitumens used for other mummies; the colour which they have acquired by the dried balsamic materials, as might be anticipated, resembles that of canella, although the odour, which is agreeable, has no analogy to that aromatic.
The bandages are fine, detached, and proportioned to the body which they cover; they are arranged with the greatest care and repeated a great number of times. Besides, the thigh bone, of which there is about four fingers breadth uncovered, has suffered very little alteration in its colour, nothing more than what the air alone might produce. Rouelle, with whom M. de Caylus visited this mummy, remarked, on piercing with a pin the sole of this foot, that the skin resembled stretched parchment, and was empty beneath—all of which proves a richer and more extensive preparation destined for princes. We may add to this conjecture, that the cases of touchstone, or of basalt, always expensive on account of their hardness, cases so rare that only three or four have been found, may be supposed to have been made only for princes, and even the more eminent of those.
We have not hesitated to include in this work the preceding observations, because they appeared to us necessary to rectify or complete the facts advanced by Herodotus, Diodorus Sicculus, Plutarch, Porphyrus, and many others. But the whole of these materials have need of new lights, drawn from researches made upon the spot. The scientific commission of Egypt felt the necessity of this, and several of its members applied themselves to personal examinations of the pyramids and caverns; and one of them, M. Rouyer, in his memoir on Egyptian embalming, traces us a history nearly complete. The following are the most interesting details:
The art of embalming is totally unknown at the present day in those places which gave it birth, and it has remained buried in profound forgetfulness, since Egypt, which, long the home of the sciences and the arts, has been overrun and successively ravaged by barbarian nations, who have destroyed all its institutions, political and religious.
“The historians, to whom we are indebted for all we know at the present time of the ancient wonders of Egypt, and who have written during the period when the Egyptians still possessed some of their customs, could alone transmit to us the ingenious secret of embalming; but their recitals prove, that they themselves possessed but an imperfect knowledge of it.”
All the ancient authors agree, in saying that the Egyptians made use of various aromatics to embalm the dead; that they employed for the rich, myrrh, (the resin of a species of Mimosa,) aloes, (the extracto-resinous juice of the Aloe perfoliata,) canella, (bark of the Laurus cinamomum,) and the cassia lignea, (bark of the Laurus cassia;) and for the poor, the cedria, (the fluid resin of the Pinus cedrus,) bitumen, (Bitumen judaicum, derived from the Dead sea,) and natrum, (a mixture of the carbonate, sulphate, and muriate of soda.)
“Although the recitals of Herodotus, and of Diodorus Sicculus, on embalming, are not very complete, and that some details appear inexact and improbable, as several of the French investigators have observed, however, on placing in convenient order what Herodotus relates on this subject, we shall soon perceive that he has described in a few lines almost the whole theory of embalming. The Egyptian embalmers knew how to distinguish from the other viscera, the liver, the spleen, and the kidneys, which they did not disturb; they had discovered the means of withdrawing the brain from the interior of the cranium without destroying the bones of the latter; they knew the action of the alkalies upon animal matter, since the time was strictly limited that the body could remain in contact with these substances; they were not ignorant of the property of balsams, and resins to protect the bodies from the larvæ of insects and mites; they were likewise aware of the necessity of enveloping the dried and embalmed bodies, in order to protect them from humidity, which would interfere with their preservation. These people had established invariable rules and a certain method for the process of embalming. We remark, in effect, that the labour of those who were charged with embalming the dead, consisted in two principal operations, very distinct: the first, to subtract from the interior of the corpse all that might become a cause of corruption during the time allotted to dry it; the second, to secure the body from any cause that might subsequently occasion its destruction.
“The odoriferous resins and bitumen not only preserved from destruction, but also kept at a distance, the worms and beetles which devour dead bodies. The embalmers, after having washed the bodies with that vineous liquor which Herodotus and Diodorus call palm wine, and having filled them with odoriferous resins or bitumen, they placed them in stoves, where, by means of a convenient heat, these resinous substances united intimately with the bodies, and these arrive in very little time, to that state of perfect desiccation in which we find them at the present day. This operation, of which no historian has spoken, was, without doubt, the principal and most important of embalming.
“The most noted grottoes and pyramids have been sacked by the Arabs. Also, in search of treasure, they have penetrated into the bosom of mountains, and descended into those vast and deep excavations, where they arrive only by long canals, with which some are encumbered. Here, in chambers, or species of pits, worked into the rock, are found millions of mummies, piled upon each other, which appear to have been arranged with a certain symmetry, although many are now found displaced and broken.
“Near these deep pits, which served for a common sepulture for several families, we meet also with other smaller chambers, and some narrow cavities in form of niches, which were destined to hold one mummy only, or at most two. The grottoes of Thebes enclose a great number of mummies, better preserved than those in the caverns and pits of Saggârah. It is particularly, near the ruins of Thebes, in the interior of the mountains which extend from the entrance of the valley of the Tomb of Kings, to Medynet Abou, that I have seen many entire and well preserved mummies.
“It would be impossible for me to estimate the prodigious number of those which I have found scattered and heaped in the sepulchral chambers, and in the multitude of caverns which exist in the interior of this mountain. I have developed and examined a great number of them, as much with the view of inquiring into their state, and examining the preparation, as with the hope of finding idols, papyrus, and other curious objects, that the most part of these mummies enclose beneath their envelopes. I have not remarked, what Maillet asserts, caverns specially destined to the sepulture of men, of women, and of infants; but I was surprised to find so few infant mummies in the tombs which I visited. These embalmed bodies, among which we meet with nearly an equal number of men and women, and which at first view appear to resemble each other, and to have been prepared in the same manner, differ, nevertheless, in the various substances which have been employed to embalm them, or in the arrangement and in the quality of the linen employed to envelope them.”
The Count de Caylus, and the celebrated chemist, Rouelle, have supposed that all the cloths that enveloped the mummies were of cotton; I have found a great number of them which were enveloped in linen bandages, of a much finer tissue than those of cotton, which are commonly found around mummies prepared with less care. The mummies of birds, particularly those of the Ibis, are also enveloped with linen bandages.
“On examining with attention and in detail some of the mummies found in the tombs, I have distinguished two principal classes: those in which they have made, on the left side above the groin, an incision about two and a half inches long, penetrating into the lower cavity of the belly; and those which have no incision whatever in any part of the body. In both classes, we find many mummies with the partition of the nose torn, and the ethmoidal bone entirely destroyed; but some of the last class have the spongy bones untouched, and the ethmoidal bone entire, which might make it appear that, sometimes the embalmers did not disturb the brain. The opening found in the side of most mummies, was doubtless made in all cases of select embalming, not only for the purpose of withdrawing the intestines, which are not found in any of these desiccated bodies, but also the better to clean the cavity of the belly, and to fill it with a greater quantity of aromatic and resinous substances, the volume of which contributed to preserve the body, at the same time that the strong odour of the resins kept off the insects and worms. This opening does not appear to me to have been sewn up, as Herodotus asserts; the borders have only been brought together, and are retained so by desiccation.
“1. Among the mummies with an incision in the left side, I distinguish those which have been desiccated by means of tanno-balsamic substances, and those that have been salted. The mummies that have been dried by means of astringent and balsamic substances, are filled as with a mixture of aromatic resins, and the others with asphaltum or pure bitumen.
“Mummies filled with aromatic resins are of an olive colour; the skin is dry and flexible, like tanned leather; it is rather contracted upon itself, and appears to form but one body with the fibres and the bones, the features of the face are recognizable, and appear to be the same as in the living state; the belly and chest are filled with a mixture of friable resins, soluble in part in spirits of wine: these resins possess no particular odour rendering them recognizable; but, thrown upon living coals, they shed a thick smoke and a strongly aromatic odour. These mummies are very dry, and easily unrolled and broken; they still preserve all their teeth, the hair of the head and eyebrows. Some of them have been gilded over the whole surface of the body; others are gilded only on the face, the natural parts, on the hands and on the feet; these gildings are common to a considerable number of mummies, which prevents me from partaking in the opinion of some travellers, who suppose that this kind of decoration was restricted to princes, and persons of a very distinguished rank.
“These mummies which have been prepared with great care, are unalterable so long as they are retained in a dry place; but, unbound, and exposed to the air, they promptly attract moisture, and after a few days shed a disagreeable odour.
“Mummies filled with pure bitumen, are of a black colour; the skin is hard and shining, as if it had been covered with a varnish, the features of the face are not altered; the belly, breast, and head, are filled with a resinous substance, black, hard, and with but little odour. This matter, which I have taken from the interior of many mummies, has presented the same physical characters, and has given, by chemical analysis, the same results as the Jew’s pitch of commerce. These sort of mummies, which are met with commonly enough in all caverns, are dry, heavy, without odour, difficult to unfold and to break. Almost all have the face, the natural parts, the hands, and the feet gilded; they appear to have been prepared with much care; they are very little susceptible of alteration, and do not attract the moisture of the air. The mummies with an incision in the left side, and which have been salted, are equally filled, the one with resinous substances, and the other with asphaltum. These two sorts differ but little from the preceding: the skin has also a blackish colour, but it is hard, smooth, and stretched like parchment; there is a space existing beneath it, and it is not glued against the bones; the resins and bitumen which have been injected into the belly and chest are less friable, and do not reserve any odour; the features of the face are somewhat altered, very little hair remains, which falls when touched. These two sorts of mummies exist in great numbers in all the caverns: when unwrapped and exposed to the air, they absorb moisture, and become covered with a light saline efflorescence, which I have ascertained to be sulphate of soda.
“2. Amongst those mummies without an incision in the left side, nor in any other part of the body, and from which the intestines have been withdrawn from the fundament, I also distinguish two sorts; those which have been salted, and then filled with a bituminous matter less pure than that which historians and naturalists call pisasphaltum; and those which have been only salted.
“The injections with cedria, or the surmaia for dissolving the intestines, according to Herodotus, could not produce this effect; it is much more reasonable to suppose that these injections were composed of natrum rendered caustic, which dissolved the viscera; and that after having emptied the intestines, the embalmers filled the belly with cedria, or with some other fluid resin which dried with the body.
“The salted mummies, which are filled with pisasphaltum, no longer retain any recognizable feature: not only have all the cavities of the body been filled with this bitumen, but the surface is also covered with it. This matter has so penetrated the skin, the muscles, and the bones, that it forms with them but one and the same mass.
“On examining these mummies, we are led to believe that the bituminous matter has been injected very hot, and that the bodies have been plunged into a kettle containing bitumen in liquifaction. These mummies, the most common and numerous of all those we meet with in the caverns, are black, hard, heavy, of a penetrating and disagreeable odour; they are very difficult to break; they have no longer either hair or eyebrows, none have been found gilded. Some of them only have the palm of the hands, the soles of the feet, the nails of the fingers and toes tinged with red, with this same colour used by the natives of Egypt of the present day, to stain the palms of the hand and soles of the feet, (the henna, or Lawsonia inermis.) The bituminous matter which I have taken from them, is greasy to the touch, less black, and less friable than asphaltum; it communicates to every thing that touches it, a strong and penetrating odour; it is only imperfectly soluble in alcohol; thrown upon living coals it sheds a thick smoke, and disagreeable odour; distilled, it yields an abundant oil, thick, of a brown colour, and fetid odour. These are the species of mummies which the Arabs, and inhabitants of the vicinity of the plain of Saggârah, formerly sold to Europeans, and which became an article of commerce for the use of medicine and painting, or as objects of antiquity; those filled with Jew’s pitch were preferred, since it is to this matter, which had for a long time remained in the body, they attributed formerly such marvellous medicinal properties; this substance, which was named balm of mummy, was subsequently in great request among the oil painters; it is on this account, that at first the mummy filled with bitumen was the only kind known in France. They are very little exposed to alteration; exposed to humidity, they become covered with a slight saline efflorescence with a base of soda. Mummies which have been only salted and dried, are generally more badly preserved than those in which are found resins and bitumen.
“Many varieties are met with in these last sort of mummies; but it appears that this is due to the want of care and negligence of the embalmers in their preparation. Some, still entire, have the skin dry, white, smooth, and stretched like parchment; they are light, inodorous, and easily broken; others have the skin equally white, but a little supple; having been less dried, they have assumed a fatty state. We find also in these mummies, masses of that fatty, yellowish matter, which naturalists call adipocere. The features of the face are entirely destroyed, the eyebrows and hair have fallen; the bones become detached from their ligaments without any effort, they are as white and clean as those of a skeleton prepared for the study of osteology; the cloth which envelopes them, tears, and falls to pieces at the slightest touch. These sort of mummies, commonly found in particular caves, contain a considerable quantity of saline substance, which I have ascertained to consist almost entirely of sulphate of soda. The various species of mummies of which I have just spoken, are swarthed with an art which it would be difficult to imitate. Numerous linen bandages, several metres in length compose their envelope; they are applied one over the other, to the number of fifteen or twenty thicknesses, and thus make several revolutions, first around each member, then around the whole body; they are so compact, and interlaced with so much address and skill, that they appear to have endeavoured by this means, to render to these bodies, considerably reduced by desiccation, their original form and natural thickness.
“All the mummies are enveloped nearly in the same manner; there is no other difference than the number of the bandages which surround them, and the quality of the linen, the tissue of which is more or less fine, according as the embalming was more or less precious. The body embalmed, is at first covered with a narrow chemise, we find only one large bandage enveloping the whole body. The head is covered with a piece of square linen cloth, of a very fine texture, the centre of which forms a species of mask; five or six are thus found sometimes applied one upon the other; the last being generally painted or gilded, and represents the figure of the person embalmed. Each part of the body is separately enveloped by several bandages impregnated with resin. The legs brought together, and the arms crossed upon the chest, are fixed in this position by other bandages which envelope the whole body. These latter, generally loaded with hieroglyphical figures, and fixed by long fillets which traverse each other with much art and symmetry, finish the envelope.
“Immediately after these first bands, are found various idols in gold, bronze, varnished terra cotta, wood, gilded or painted, rolls of papyri manuscripts, and many other objects which have no relation to the religion of these people, but which appear to be only souvenirs of objects cherished during life. It was in one of these mummies, placed in the bottom of a cave of the interior of the mountain, (behind the Memnonium temple of the plain of Thebes,) that I found a voluminous papyrus, which will be found engraved in the work. (Vide the plates 61, 62, 63, 64 and 65, of the second vol. of the plates of antiquities, and the description of the Hypogees of the city of Thebes.) This papyrus was rolled upon itself, and had been placed between the thighs of the patient, immediately after the first bandages of linen; this male mummy, the trunk of which was broken, did not appear to me to have been embalmed in a first rate manner; it had been enveloped in an ordinary linen cloth, and had been filled with asphaltum: the nails of the toes had alone been gilded.
“Almost all the mummies which are found in the subterranean caverns, which can yet be penetrated, are thus enveloped with linen bandages, with a painted masque on the face. It is rare to find any enclosed in cases, of which some wrecks only remain at the present day. These cases, which served doubtless, only for the rich, or for persons of distinction, were double; those in which the mummies were deposited, were made of a kind of carton or pasteboard, composed of many pieces glued together; this case was subsequently enclosed in a second, constructed of the wood of sycamore or cedar.”
It results, if we are not mistaken, from the analogy of so many carefully made observations, a consequence to which we might not have arrived by long continued reasoning: simple embalming might have been practised among the Egyptians from the earliest period of their civilization, without a very exact knowledge of the laws of preservation of animal matter, and before the other arts were far advanced. A description of the Plain of Mummies by M. de Maillet, will give to this opinion, already so firmly established, the value of a demonstrated truth.
“Opposite the borough of Manof, looking towards the west, is situated the Plain of Mummies—approximated to the north by the southern pyramids, which are a continuation of the cemetery which the inhabitants of Memphis had on this side—a plain famous, from the number of mummies which have been taken of late from the subterranean caverns which exist beneath these sands, and by the still greater numbers of the embalmed bodies which it encloses. This plain is circular and level, and may be about four leagues in breadth or diameter, so that it is certain that it is more than twelve leagues in circumference. Its base is a very flat rock, which was formerly covered by the waters of the sea, and which is covered at present with five or six feet of sand. It is in this rock that those who did not possess the means of building pyramids to enclose their bodies after death, secured a repose which we know that the Egyptians held of great consequence, and found a less difficult art of making asylums, which they were persuaded would be sheltered from the fury and impiety of men, and would secure to them the return of their souls to the same bodies, in case that their tombs should not be violated. With this view, they chose at first a place in this plain, where it was necessary to commence by taking away seven or eight feet of moveable sand. After having emptied a circumscribed space, and perfectly cleaned it, they commenced penetrating the rock by a hole of a foot and a half or two feet in diameter; and after having attained the depth of about five or six feet, they laboured to enlarge the hole and form a chamber in the rock. It was by this hole that the body descended to be deposited in these tombs; after which, they so accurately covered the opening with a stone, as not to admit either light or sand.
“In these chambers, formed in the rock, and to a considerable extent, they had hollowed out many niches in which were placed the bodies of the heads of families for whom these sepulchres were destined. These niches were made vertically. The bodies were thus placed upright in the cases which enclosed them, and from whence, in latter times, they have taken such great numbers. These cases are made of sycamore, which never rots, and consist of only two pieces. The first, in which the body is enclosed, is very deep, and excavated with great labour; the second serves as a cover, and fits the coffin perfectly. Some of these cases have been found with glass eyes, through which, without uncovering them, may be seen the body of the mummy enclosed. Others have been met with double, that is to say, one case enclosed within another, which leads to the belief that the first doubtless, contained the body of some person of distinction. It is, however, very rare to find a body enclosed in a costly case, because the Arabs who discover them, never fail to break to pieces these kind of bodies in search of golden idols, in which, indeed, they are often successful. They afterwards replace the body in a common case, where idols of any value are seldom found. Some time ago, the master of Saccara, a village in the vicinity of the Plain of Mummies, investigated the openings of some of these subterranean sepulchres, and as he is a firm friend of mine, he presented me with various curiosities, a great number of mummies, images in wood, and inscriptions of a hieroglyphical and unknown character, which had been found there.
“In one of these chambers they found, for example, the case and the mummy of a woman, before which was a wooden figure of a young boy on his knees, with one finger on his lips, and in the other hand holding a chaffing dish, resting on his head, and in which there had doubtless been perfume. This young man was marked on the stomach with some hieroglyphic characters; they broke it to pieces to see if it contained gold. They found in the mummy, which they opened for the same reason, a little vase a foot long, containing the same balm which they use for preserving the body from corruption. I took to pieces another female mummy, of which the Sieur Bagarry made me a present. The opening was made in the house of the Capuchin fathers of this city; and they had the imprudence to cut the fillets with scissors; these bands, of considerable length and breadth, were not only charged from one end to the other with hieroglyphic figures, but they also discovered beneath certain unknown characters, traced from right to left and forming a species of verse. Indeed, they remarked the same termination in several little consecutive lines. It consisted most probably, of the eulogium of this person, written in the language which was in use, in his time, in Egypt. However this may be, these bandages taken to pieces, were immediately pillaged by some pedlars, who were present with me at the opening of this mummy; there was only left for me a small portion, which I have since sent to France: none of the Savans have been able to decipher them. This mummy held the right hand applied to his stomach, and under this hand were held instrumental cords perfectly preserved; whence I concluded that it was the body of a person who played upon some instrument, or who, at least, had been addicted to music. I am persuaded that, if each mummy was examined with the same care, some sign of this nature would be occasionally met with.
“I have made another observation, which appears to me neither less curious nor less useful; it is, that in these mummies all the faces differ, some are remarkable for youth, others for beauty. Those who have seen whole mummies know that they have all a gilded mask, composed of several folds of silk cloth, which form a kind of very solid carton. I judged from this diversity, that the masks or cartons, crowded with hieroglyphic characters, which indicate, without doubt, the age, the actions, the manners, and the condition of the person, were also a natural representation of them, either that care had been taken to form this model during life, or that it had only been taken after death by applying these cloths to the face, after the same manner that we take the likeness of a corpse in the present day with plaster or wax. By this means, they not only preserved the bodies of a family entire, but, on entering these subterranean places where they were deposited, they could in an instant see represented all their ancestors for a thousand years, such nearly, as they were when living; nothing was more likely vividly to recall the recollection of their virtues, to perpetuate their memory and love in the hearts of their posterity.
“Not satisfied to preserve, by these means, the recollection of their princes and of their relatives, the Egyptians still further deposited their marble images near to their mummy. I have certain proofs of what I advance, in one of the most curious antiquities which I have acquired in this country. It is a figure in three pieces, representing a woman. The head and the feet are of black touchstone; the body is sheathed, and made of verd antique marble, rayed with white. These three pieces united, form a figure five feet five inches in height. It is very perfect, and of exquisite beauty. The priest who sold it to me with great scruples, and at a high price, swore by the Evangelist, that the figure was found in a pyramid seven or eight hundred years ago.
“In these chambers of which I speak, are found many niches, some large, others small, the chambers also often communicate, from a second to a third, and sometimes even to a fourth; but it is not to be understood, that all the bodies deposited in these sombre apartments, were all enclosed in cases and placed in these niches; the most of them were simply embalmed and swathed, as every one knows; after which they contented themselves in arranging them thus carelessly near each other; some of them were even placed in these tombs without being embalmed, or were so lightly so, that at the present time there remain only the bones among the linen which enveloped them, and which are half rotten. It is thus also are seen in some of these chambers heaps of bones mixed with these sort of linens, which have been left after they carried off the bodies which were preserved entire, to be exported beyond the seas. It is probable, that every family of any consideration, had for themselves one of these sepulchres; that the niches were destined to receive the heads of families, and that those of domestics and slaves were simply placed on the ground, after having been embalmed, or even without that ceremony; it is the same, without doubt, as regards the chiefs even of a family of less distinguished houses. They have even discovered, lately, in this plain of mummies, a mode, unknown until now, of burying the dead. At the extremity of this extensive plain and towards the mountains which bound it on the west, beds of carbon have been discovered, upon which bodies lie simply swathed with linen, and covered by a mat, seven or eight feet beneath the sands. Nevertheless, it ought to be observed, that these bodies, although they were not embalmed, or only slightly so, similar to those which they had neglected to enclose in cases, they were none the less protected from corruption.”
When I consider with what facility the Egyptians were able to preserve their dead, I can scarcely comprehend this passage of an author otherwise so ingenious: “An industry so complicated, could not have presented itself all at once to the genius of the people. Like all other nations of the earth, these could only have devoted themselves to the arts, properly so called, after securing their subsistence by agriculture. Review all these arts, arrange them in the order in which it might be supposed that they originated, and endeavour to determine the precise period of each, you will not be able to find this. History is mute on this point; and however rash it may be to interpret her silence, it is, nevertheless, evident, that the art of embalming, very ancient for us, was very new to the Egyptians, and, perhaps, ulterior to all others.” I do not deny that this mode of rebutting history with a priori views and conjectures, is any less positive than the method of historians, who do it often by acknowledged falsehood; but neither one of them are assuredly worth much.
The numerous facts which we have brought together in this chapter, appears to us most calculated to fix all the questions relative to embalming which long discussions and reasonings have lost sight of. They prove that bodies, placed in the bosom of the earth, covered only with a few feet of sand have been preserved for ages; that others scarcely embalmed, have been discovered untouched: after this, what becomes of the necessity of advanced arts, and perfection of ingenuity, when on the other hand, we see nations that have attained a high degree of civilization, with an immense mass of knowledge of all kinds, but in other conditions, geological and atmospherical, have not transmitted to us, although nearer our own epoch, any thing more than a little dust from the most gorgeous sepulchres?
The brief view which we cast upon the assemblage of facts which have been submitted to us, leads to totally different conclusions from those which precede, and which convinces us—1st. Of all the arts, that of embalming ought the most readily to have presented itself to the mind of the Guanches, of the Egyptians, and of all those nations placed under analogous atmospherical and geological conditions: 2d. For no others does nature offer more positive lessons or more efficient aid: 3d. The Egyptians have embalmed from the earliest period of their civilization, before any art was very much advanced; four or five species of their mummies offer sufficient proof of this: 4th. The arts of perfecting and weaving tissues; of melting, fashioning, and colouring glass and metals; the delicate art of engraving on fine stones; the art of working wood, of painting it, of ornamenting it, and of giving it the éclat of gold, of varnish, and of enamel; the art of preparing perfumes, and of causing to enter even the very flesh, odoriferous powders, essences, and resins; all these arts have contributed, according to their degree of development, to complicate and perfect the art of making mummies, so simple at its commencement: 5th. Transported into countries where the exterior conditions are different, this art has been found inefficacious, and has scarcely ever attained its end. We shall have proofs of this in the following chapter.
CHAPTER V.
EMBALMING, FROM THE EGYPTIANS DOWN TO OUR DAY.
Here facts are almost entirely wanting, and the history of the art we are studying, can only be followed in the recitals of historians, to control whose veracity we have no longer those monuments which Egypt offers us in such great numbers. Among the Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, and all modern nations, we see the honours of embalming accorded to kings, princes, and men of distinction; but no tomb that has been opened, has rendered a single mummy so perfect, as those which we admire among the Egyptians; and if some rare and distant examples inform us of a durable preservation, the marvellous and extraordinary details accompanying it causes us to doubt the fact itself.
Thus, on the assertion of Gabriel Clauder, they saw in the time of St. Augustin, the bodies of Alexander, and of Ptolemy; their tomb has been visited for many ages, and they were enabled to distinguish the skin preserved with the members. But, continued they, all bodies do not resemble that of Alexander the Great, which was during his life, according to the report of Plutarch, and of Quintus Curtius, of a composition so rare and wonderful, that his skin, mouth, and all his person, rendered a very agreeable odour, and perfumed his clothes. It is said that his corpse, by the negligence of his friends and of his captains, remained several days without being embalmed, and that, nevertheless, when they went to visit it, it was found sound, without blemish, having even the complexion as fresh and florid as if he had been living, although he died of a continued fever: his appearance was so natural that the Egyptians and Chaldeans, who were charged to embalm him after their own manner, were at first afraid to approach him, thinking he might not be dead.
Such marvellous accounts are not sufficiently in harmony with the rigorous course which we have thus far followed, to induce us seriously to discuss them; we confine ourselves to the statement of each down to our own day, where well established facts will offer ample matter for reflection.
The Jewish people, who, like others, testified their respect for the dead, never admit the care of embalming the body as a common usage. Thus, Abraham purchased the field where Sarah was buried; Joseph had the body of his father magnificently embalmed; Moses only carried away the bones of Joseph; David praised the people of Gilead, for having buried with pomp Saul and his sons, &c. In most of these examples, no mention is made of embalming; nevertheless, the body of Jesus Christ was embalmed.
The following is nearly the method: each sex took care of its dead; they, first of all, close the mouth and eyes of the expired person, afterwards they shaved, washed, and rubbed it with perfumes; they tied it with bands, and buried it in several cloths of very fine linen or woollen, and finally, they put it into the sepulchre. Cornelius Jansenius thinks that the myrrh and aloes which they employed, had the virtue powerfully to resist putrefaction. It is useless to say that this opinion is without foundation; that the great quantities of aromatics which they consumed, was rather for pomp, than for the long preservation of the subject. They took no pains to dry the body; they did not disembarrass it of the intestines, and, in spite of all these odoriferous drugs, as Penicher justly remarks, decomposition must soon have revealed itself, as was testified by the body of Lazarus when resuscitated.
Neither did the Persians, probably, propose by embalming, any thing beyond a very limited preservation; the passage which we cited in the first chapter is in proof of this. Besides, this custom with them does not possess a general character. Cyrus, King of Persia, said to his children: “when I have ceased to live, place my body neither in silver, nor in gold, nor in any other coffin, but return it immediately to the earth, for how can it be more happily and more desirably disposed, than to be returned to that which produces and which nourishes most excellent things?” It will be perceived, that Cyrus, in forbidding that any care should be taken with his body, does not allude to embalming, which, of all other means, would have been the most efficient in preventing its elements from returning to the common mother. The Greeks and the Romans, among whom we have particularized some examples of embalming, practised it in a coarse and imperfect manner. The examination of their method would be here without interest.
In order to recover some traces of this art, we must refer to De Bils, Ruysch, Swammerdam, Clauderus, &c. They only boast of their astonishing success, without giving us the means of studying their methods. What we do know of them suffices only to make us doubt, as we have seen, the perfection of their processes. De Bils, of whom we have not yet spoken, had a cabinet which excited the admiration of visiters; he never revealed his secret, and he even shed an odour of aromatics through his anatomical rooms, in order to deceive observers. Clauderus, who suspected the deception, applied his moistened finger to one of the bodies, and carrying it to his lips recognised the taste of salts. He started from this fact to attempt numerous researches, and succeeded in forming different compounds, of which the preservative powers are, without doubt, exaggerated; we shall give the analysis of them hereafter.
De Rasière, ècuyer, sieur Dèsenclosses, published in 1727, a description of a cabinet, in which he preserved a hundred specimens; the following extract from his pamphlet presents several descriptions of subjects skilfully prepared; it is preceded by an engraving, representing the cabinet, of which he gives the description.
Extract from the description of the cabinet of anatomy, of M. De Rasière, ècuyer, sieur Dèsenclosses, 1727.
This cabinet is eighty feet long, by sixteen wide, the glass windows are double, and exposed to the south, with a good ceiling and boarded, which renders it very proper for the preservation of the curious pieces which it encloses, and which are more than one hundred in number, differently worked, and arranged so that entire men are placed in the inferior departments, and the infants in the superior; all the fleshy pieces are enclosed in glass cases, and the skeletons in niches covered by a curtain.
The whole so disposed, that the skeletons and muscular pieces are arranged alternatively. We see, also, entire carcases of men, so arranged, that the head, which is placed on the large bones, is crowned by the vertebræ, and the ribs are suspended above. This order, added to the quantity of paintings and gildings which embellish the cases and cornices, produces a very fine effect. The side which looks to the south, includes a great number of bottles of all sizes, and contains objects taken from the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms.
The middle of the cabinet is occupied by numerous interesting objects. We first perceive a large glass case, which includes all the internal parts of man, and fetuses of all ages, and a microscope to view the circulation of the blood. Then appears a horse’s skeleton, mounted by a skeleton cavalier, holding a sword in his hand; an air pump; an anatomical table, upon which is a corpse, and an anatomist in wax, standing before it, dissecting.
Among the pieces of the cabinet mentioned by M. De Rasière, the most remarkable are: In the first glass case, the preparation of Gotard’s skeleton, in which are distinctly displayed the four hundred and fifty-six muscles. Second case: partial preparation of the eyes and the tongue, of the head, of the body, of the arms and legs. Third case: preparation of the muscles, arteries, veins, and nerves of the right side, and the skeleton of the left side. The fifth case is a complete preparation, in which the skin and fat has only been removed, and all the parts beneath separated. We here observe, first, the ascending aorta, which carries the blood to all the superior parts; second, the carotid arteries, which supply the head; third, the temporal arteries; fourth, the radial arteries (pulse;) fifth, the crural arteries, and an infinity of others even to the most delicate branches. The veins are filled with a black fluid. Sixth, preparation of the veins of the arm. Seventh, jugular veins; eighth, veins of the foot; ninth, vena cava ascendens. Eighth case: a subject resembling accurately a mummy or embalmed body, such as are brought from Egypt. All the flesh is covered by the skin, through which may be seen the veins and arteries filled with congealed and coloured wax. The hair of the head, the beard, and all the hair of the body, as well as the nails, are still attached to it. The eleventh glass case encloses the body of Nicholas Lefort, aged eighty-three years, a native of Douai, in Flanders: this subject is peculiarly tasteful, every thing being naturally arranged; the external muscles are divested of their fat, and all the arteries, veins, and nerves, which ramify upon the muscles, skin, &c., have been preserved, which renders this preparation as curious as it was difficult of execution. Twelfth case: preparation of the nerves.
But the author is silent regarding the manner of making these preparations. Let us endeavour to find in the writings of the time, a description of processes capable of producing such results.
Penicher, in his chapter fifth, (of embalming according to the moderns,) gives us the composition and properties of balm. “It is composed,” says he, “of different mixtures, both fluid and solid, calculated to arrest putrefaction, either by the aromatic virtues of sulphur and volatile salts, medicaments which enter into its composition, or by a strong bitter principle which consists in very penetrating particles, the property of which is to consume and attenuate the crude matters, which disposes and hastens the body to corruption; or by remedies, inheriting a quantity of particles which dissipate and absorb all putrescent moisture, or by their viscosity agglutinating the parts which ferment and rarify too readily; or, finally, by their astringency, which, fixing these same parts, prevents the resolution of all.”
It is easy to perceive, by the explanations which precede, that the embalmers themselves possess no very clear ideas of the success which they obtained. The nomenclature which we give below, will justify the doubt we have expressed.
The powders, which constitute the base of the balm, are made of all parts of the plants which fulfil the indications so confusedly announced. Such were the roots of angelica, imperatoria, galanga, acorus, carolina, caryophillata, gentian, enula campana, valerian, Florentine iris, flambe, calamus aromaticus, ginger, pyrethrum, cyperus, dictamus, rosewood, sassafras, guiacum, juniper, box wood, citron bark, oranges, canella, cassia lignea, tan, nutmeg, mace, cloves, cubebs, spicknard, colocynth, bay-berries, juniper-berries, and myrtle-berries, gall-nuts, cypress, anis-seed, cumin-seed, fennel-seed, coriander-seed, cardamon-seed, long, white, and black pepper, rue-leaves, thyme, absynth, savin, horehound, mugwort, laurel, mint, myrtle, calomint, balm, balmgentle, marjorum, rosemary, sage, summer savory, wild-thyme, pennyroyal, mountain-mint, hyssop, nepeta, basilic, scordium, flowers of saffron, roses, pale and red, stæchas, centaury, melilot, chamomile, germander, chamæpitys, hypericum, caraway-seed, dill-seed, lavender.
Many gums and resins entered into the composition of balm, such as resin, Burgundy pitch, ship-pitch, gum elemi, assafœtida, aloes, myrrh, galbanum, acacia, tucamahaca, benzoin, styrax calamite, fluid styrax, turpentine, camphor, cedria, all the species of balm; wood of aloes, tartar, potash, from the lees of wine, civet, castor, musk, ambergris, labdanum, Jew’s pitch, asphaltum, pisasphaltum, slacked-lime, plaster, sulphur, common salt, rock-salt, saltpetre, alum, amber, &c.
The article of compound drugs, is not less extensive, such as the tincture of musk, ambergris, civet, benzoin, styrax, aloes, myrrh. The distilled oils and essences of the plants which we have named,—spirits of wine, distilled myrrh, aloes, and amber,—is excellent for the preservation of the fetus.
The salt of Clauderus has also enjoyed a great reputation; the following is its composition: Dissolve one pound of common salt with a pound of oil of vitriol in a crucible, apply a cover closely luted, and distil it gradually in a sand bath; you may pour off a spirit very excellent for a lotion; in the bottom of the crucible will remain a caput mortuum, which should be dissolved according to art, and after evaporation, you will have the salt so much esteemed by the author. We may add here the brine, which is described in the collections of Charles de Maetz, (chap. 100, et 194; and chap. 23 of the book entitled Chemia Rationalis, and also in the work of Blanchard,) they advise that after a corpse has been emptied and cleaned of its excretions, it be placed in a leaden coffin, and there macerated in a sufficient quantity of pure oil of turpentine, and after some days of maceration, to wash it with spirits of wine to remove the odour, then sprinkle it with a strong tincture of myrrh and aloes, which they call balsamum mortuorum, and that it be finally dried in the sun.
I shall not now enter into the endless discussions upon the different species of salts, which some boast of for embalming, whilst others consider them injurious to the preservation of bodies. I abstain also, from speaking of lime, to which, however, wonders have been attributed: thus it was lime which preserved the body of Afra: and in the year 1523, under the pontificat of Adrian VI., the body of Saint Thomas, the Apostle, was likewise found towards the Gulf of Coromandel, endued, and covered with a cement made of lime and urine; the bones were very white, and along side of him the spear of his lance, a part of the cane which had served him during his journey, and an earthen vase which had been sprinkled with his blood. Notwithstanding these remarkable examples, if they are true, the authors who relate them give no importance to the processes to which we owe them, they even complain of the sordid views of those, who, in order to augment the mass of matters, do not hesitate to mix thereto plaster, ashes, &c. We give the description of some of these mixtures composed of the substances which we have enumerated.
1.—Balsamic Wine.
| ℞. | Good red wine, 8 pints. | |
| Cloves, roses, citron bark, colocynth, a.a.* | 2 ℥. | |
| Styrax, benzoin, a.a. | 1 ℥. | |
| * a.a. of each. |
Reduce these drugs to a coarse powder, macerate for a few hours in wine, and boil slightly.
Usages.—Lotion for the interior parts of the body; and to disinfect the chamber during the operation.
2.—Compound Brandy.
| ℞. | Absynth leaves, great centaury, rhue, sage, marjory, mugwort, thyme, a.a. | 4 handsfull. |
| Colocynth, | 2 ℥. | |
| Styrax, calamite, benzoin, a.a. | 3 ℥. | |
| Pepper, ginger, a.a. | 2 ʒ. |
Macerate in a sea-bath for twenty-four hours, in fifteen pints of best brandy, with as much distilled vinegar.
3.—Vinegar for washing the head, the breast, the belly, and for injections.
| ℞. | White and black pepper, ginger, a.a. | 1/2 ℔. |
| Colocynth, | 3 ℥. | |
| Absynth, centaury, hypericum, a.a. | 4 ℥. |
Reduce to a coarse powder, and macerate in forty pints of rose-vinegar; then strain for use.
4.—Another.
| ℞. | Absynth, five or six handsfull. | |
| Colocynth apples, | 30. | |
| Alum, common salt, a.a. | 1 ℔. | |
| Concentrated vinegar, | 14 pts. |
Let it boil a little, and add two pints of brandy; better than the preceding.
The embalmer ought to have several large sponges; about four pounds of tow to dry the blood and absorb the powders; cotton for the mouth, nose, and ears; coarse brush for rubbing the exterior of the body with the liniment. The artist should have, besides, two ells of cere-cloth, which he can prepare for himself after one of the following formulæ:
1.—Cere-cloth.
| ℞. | New wax, | 12 ℔. |
| Fluid styrax, oil of turpentine, a.a. | 1 ℔. |
Melt and mix them over a slow fire, then draw the linen through it frequently so as to impregnate both sides.
2.—Another.