History of Embalming

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Gannal Jean-Nicolas. History of Embalming

NOTE OF THE TRANSLATOR

To Messrs. Members of the Academy of Sciences

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

HISTORY OF EMBALMING

CHAPTER I. OF EMBALMING IN GENERAL

CHAPTER II. NATURAL MUMMIES

CHAPTER III. EMBALMING OF THE GUANCHES

CHAPTER IV. EMBALMING AMONG THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS

CHAPTER V. EMBALMING, FROM THE EGYPTIANS DOWN TO OUR DAY

CHAPTER VI. ART OF EMBALMING IN OUR OWN DAYS, PREVIOUS TO MY DISCOVERIES

CHAPTER VII. METHODS OF PREPARING AND PRESERVING SUBJECTS OF ANATOMY, PATHOLOGY, AND NATURAL HISTORY, PREVIOUS TO THE PROCESS OF GANNAL

CHAPTER VIII. GENERAL PROCESSES FOR THE PRESERVATION OF OBJECTS OF NORMAL ANATOMY, PATHOLOGICAL ANATOMY, AND OF NATURAL HISTORY

APPENDIX

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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.

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“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 amadou10 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.”

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