Many years ago I was approached at a visitation by the deceased’s spouse, whose husband was morbidly obese. She asked me to explain the moisture and the odd sound emanating from his casket. Luckily, he was dressed in a black sports shirt, which made the moisture less apparent to the public; however, as I held my ear to his belly, I could distinguish a bass sound similar to the opening notes of the 1960s gag song “Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport.” I asked those gathered to leave the room for a moment while I investigated further.
I pulled up his shirt and undershirt and discovered that the trocar hole, originally closed with a threaded plastic button, was belching liquid, probably propelled by a belly full of gas. His immense girth and the pressure of arms and hands had forced the liquids outward and onto his clothing. I replaced the trocar button, laid plastic sheeting against his bare belly, and sprayed Lysol around the casket. It sufficed until the visitation was over, and we were able to treat the problem later more thoroughly. I had not been the embalmer in this case; whoever was had obviously not treated the thoracic and abdominal organs.
Those who leave a larger body behind make a larger impression on us all.
CHAPTER FIVE
How do you snag the instant attention of a young class of mortuary students—or anyone else, for that matter? Just mention decapitation. Amazingly enough, it’s a far more common cause of death than people think, particularly in cases of industrial or auto accidents.
Back in the 1970s, my classmates and I listened attentively as our embalming instructor detailed the proper procedure for restoring a victim who had suffered the separation of head from body. He outlined for us the fine art of plunging a wooden mop handle, sharpened on both ends, down the spinal column and positioning the head back onto the shoulders by inserting the opposite end into the corresponding column section. The surrounding skin would then be sutured and the sutures waxed over.
In my more than thirty years as a licensed embalmer, I have used this technique only twice. Both victims, one male and one female, were passengers in an automobile that a fully loaded gravel truck had struck head-on. Apparently the leading edge of the car’s interior windshield frame had sliced off the heads of both occupants. Also, because of the tremendous force of the truck, the injuries were not cleanly administered. Jagged steel and glass had slammed into soft flesh, nearly obliterating all facial features. The only way to distinguish which head belonged to which body, in fact, was the long hair with feminine barrettes still affixed. I situated the heads back onto the corresponding shoulders, but otherwise there was far too much damage to complete a satisfactory restoration.
“They sure do good work here” is a comment I have been hearing more and more since I opened my own funeral home in 2001. My wife, who also works with me, did not quite understand its meaning at first. She assumed that people were congratulating us on our dignified, compassionate manner and the care we provided to client families and our visiting public. But actually, good work, when we’re talking about funerals, is the term used in my part of the country to describe how natural dead bodies look while reposing in their respective caskets—and that all starts with embalming.
Injecting a preservative chemical into the right femoral artery or right common carotid artery and opening the accompanying vein allows the blood to drain out of the body, thus allowing the chemical to react with and preserve or harden the surrounding tissues. Today, formaldehyde-based chemicals “fix,” or firm and preserve, human tissue to such a state as to allow for preparation of the body and the funeral to take place.
Without such treatment, the unforgettable odor of decomposition would greet funeral guests. Even biblical scholars made note of putrefaction: “Jesus lay in the tomb for three days; surely He stinketh.” Biblical accounts report that the dead Jesus was anointed with spices, no doubt to abate inevitable odors. And Shakespeare’s scene in which Romeo visits Juliet in her family’s mausoleum for one last kiss? No way. Since Juliet wasn’t really dead yet, she would have smelled just fine. But her grandparents’ remains would have knocked poor Romeo right out of his socks.
The Egyptians were the first true embalmers. The Egyptians removed the brain through the nostrils with a pointed tool and then inserted natron-soaked linens. They removed the abdominal organs and treated that area as well. Because those organs had a mystical value, they were stored in decorative jars with carved lids depicting certain animals. The body was then wrapped in linen sheets dipped in spices and natron, a preservative, and—voilà!—a mummy.
This crude embalming process was successful, but there was another quality of the Egyptian process that resulted in the mummies we see today. The arid Egyptian climate lacked humidity, which speeds decomposition. Without humidity, the body simply dries up if left outdoors, whether or not any preservation is attempted.
By the early 1800s, time was of the essence in preparing the deceased. The dead needed to be buried in a hurry to avoid the inevitable ravages of decomposition. And until the 1860s, undertakers could offer only ice to retard the inevitable decomposition process. But early undertakers realized that if surrounding meat with ice, straw, and even salt successfully kept it fresh for a few days, then might such a procedure work with human bodies too? Ice was a precious commodity back in the day, so a premium price was added to the undertaker’s bill if a bereaved family desired to have their loved one viewed in the home or in the church. And so the first “cooling boards” were developed, crude wooden tables with a shallow metal pan to allow for ice to be placed under the deceased. Sometimes the deceased was viewed and eulogized while reposing on the cooling board, but on most occasions, the body was placed into a wood coffin after any ceremony and then buried. The cooling board was improved and refined over the years to include padding for the reposing deceased and hinges in the center for easier transport and storage. Cooling boards in the early l900s were transported along with the embalmer’s other necessary equipment to the deceased’s home.
But then Dr. Thomas Holmes, a physician who had been fascinated with cadavers in college, experimented with fellow medical students to devise a preservative to allow the cadavers to last longer for more instruction time at school. Holmes tinkered with arsenic, mercury, and zinc compounds in solutions as possible preservatives, and arsenic seemed the best candidate.
During the Civil War, President Lincoln was greatly disappointed that many of the war dead from his hometown had to be buried on the battlefield because rapid decomposition precluded their transportation back home. Dr. Holmes offered his experimental arterial embalming procedure to the War Department in 1861. In a field hospital setting, Holmes and his assistants made an incision in any available area of the body. If the deceased had incurred trauma to the head and neck, then they made an incision into the femoral (upper thigh) space, raised the femoral artery and vein, and inserted an arsenic-based solution into the artery via a hand pump. In that way, by distributing the liquid throughout the arterial system, the blood would drain through the venous system. The arsenic solution replaced the blood, which was a major source of odor and decomposition, and “fixed” the tissues to retard or delay the ravages of decomposition.