J.-N. Gannal

“ A subject injected with alcoholic sublimate, then opened, emptied, and macerated, afterwards exposed to the air, dries easily;7 but it assumes a deep gray colour, and the tissues become hardened to such a degree, that it hardly preserves a human form. These are the rigorous results of experience. In the preservation by the aid of deuto-chloride, one portion of the subject is sacrificed to preserve a few remains; the most noble of all the organs, the brain, the throne of thought, cedes its importance to a few bones clothed with dried muscles, and a skin transformed, and not easily known again. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Tho interesting and important subject of embalming, and of preserving and preparing anatomical objects, though much improved of late, is by no means exhausted. It has long been our desire to turn our attention in a special manner to such researches, and to have instituted numerous experiments, but imperative duties, and unexpected events, have interfered with such views for the present—we are not without a hope, however, that some one of our countrymen, more fortunately situated, will push his discoveries in a direction which affords so admirable a field for distinction. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 reasons which have hindered the ancients from carrying to any great length a knowledge of the structure of man and animals, was not only the idea of filthiness attached to the sight and dissection of dead bodies, or the difficulty of procuring the means of dissection; but rather the almost absolute impossibility of preserving dead bodies in part or entire, which has retarded the progress of anatomy. ”

“ It is necessary, in effect, to preserve to the tissues in embalming, a freshness and suppleness which is lost by desiccation, at the end of some months, in the subjects injected for the use of the anatomist; it is necessary, above all, to secure to the body, in this latter case, a more prolonged preservation: the facts which I can show, will prove that I have attained my end. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These researches, which I have pushed in various directions, have weighed hardest upon the substance which has been extolled as excellent, and as very superior to any thing used by the ancients in embalming: I applied myself to establish, as far as practicable, the precise degree of confidence that the deuto-chloride of mercury merited under these circumstances. It is very true that it preserves animal matter plunged into a solution of it ”

“ Alcohol, is more serviceable than any other liquor in use, but its high price renders its employment almost impossible for objects of normal anatomy; it hardens and sensibly alters objects of pathological anatomy; and these alterations, however trifling they may be, and unimportant to regular anatomy, are serious for the physician, who cannot have too exact an idea of the progress of disorganization in the living tissues. If alcohol is eminently useful for natural history, its costliness renders it impossible to extend the use of it as far as the interest of science demands. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Nevertheless, it is incontestible, that the use of the injections of M. Gannal deprives subjects of all putrid odour, and it is to be hoped that it will diminish, if not altogether put an end to the serious accidents which happen too often to anatomists who are so unfortunate as to be wounded in dissecting. This is yet only a presumption; extended experience can only determine the fact.
Your commission thinks, then, that it has reason to recommend the adoption of this process in the amphitheatres of dissection, notwithstanding it may occasion a slight increase of expense. ”

“ The nitrate of potash, the muriate of ammonia, those of lime, or of soda, are very proper for preserving pieces of myology; they appear even to reclaim the red colour of the muscles, when these solutions are strongly saturated; but, then, they are liable, some of them, to liquify, others, to effervesce or to chrystalize upon the sides of the jars, and even on the surface of the parts themselves, which is a very great inconvenience when it is wished to expose the parts to view.
The solution of the triple sulphate of alumine, (alum of commerce) is employed with the same advantages ”

“ Alcohol is the only substance employed up to the present for preservation; but its action upon the tissues, its extreme volatility, the difficulty of transporting it, and its extreme dearness, makes another process desirable.
Tannin cannot be employed, because water does not contain enough of it in solution to render an injection of it preservative; a corpse immerged, even in a great mass of tannin, is no better preserved, the skin is tanned, but the flesh decomposes. [O]
Gallic acid acts in the same manner, but yet more feebly than tannin. ”

“ The method of preservation ought to be preceded by some other operations, such as dissection, maceration, injection, ablution, corrosions, ligature of vessels, separation and distention of parts.
a. Dissection.—It consists in stripping the part which it is intended to preserve, of the tissues and organs which are foreign to it: if the object be the preparation of muscles, for example, these organs are left alone with their insertions in the bones, or rather, the vessels, previously injected, preserve their relations with the muscles and the bones. ”

“ 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 researches on the preservation of bodies demanded the re-union of different circumstances, without which it would have been impossible for me to have attained a satisfactory solution. It is easy to conceive, in effect, the great difference which ought to exist between the action of any given liquid upon some scruples of animal matter, and its action on an entire corpse ”

“ When there is occasion to mount a subject prepared with sublimate, whether it has been employed in powder or in solution, in arranging the animal there arises a dust, which penetrates the nostrils, and may cause serious accidents. Arsenic, though much less energetic, is not even free from this inconvenience. Thus it is only with much precaution that preparors should handle preparations in skins which they receive from foreign countries, the substances used in the preparation of which they are ignorant. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Finally, when the body is to be publicly exposed on the bed where it died, the face should be washed with spirits of wine, and with true balm, refreshing it frequently; but when it is necessary to expose it on a bed of parade to remain several days, it is commonly sufficient to mould it in wax, and to show only its external figure, during the time that the body is upon the bed embalmed in a coffin. But, when the body itself of the deceased is exposed, it is necessary, in the first place, to paint and powder the hair or wig with a fine powder of pleasant 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. ”

“ 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. ”