Читать книгу Anatomy and Embalming - Charles Otto Dhonau - Страница 9

—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, etc. In most of these examples, no mention is made of embalming; nevertheless, the body of Jesus Christ was embalmed. It is written that Joseph of Arimathea, a secret disciple, and Nicodemus, ministered unto him, after the crucifixion, and that 100 lbs. of myrrh and aloes were used. In this action the greatest secrecy had been observed, for “when the Sabbath was over, very early on the first day of the next week, came the faithful women who had loved him, with spices and ointment they had prepared where with to annoint him, not knowing that, already, this loving service had been performed by the hand of pious affection.”

The following is nearly the method used by the Jews: Each sex took care of its dead; they first of all, close the mouth and eyes of the exposed person, afterward they washed the body and then rubbed it with perfumes, tied it with bands, and then bandaged it in several cloths of very fine linen or woolen; and finally, they put it into the sepulture. It is thought that the myrrh and aloes which they employed had very little virtue to resist putrefaction, and 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 take away the intestines, and in spite of all these odoriferous drugs, decomposition must have soon revealed itself as was testified by the body of Lazarus when resurrected.