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.
The preservative qualities of the solution were amazing for the era, but there were serious problems associated with the arsenic. Because of its severe toxicity, the arsenic solution made several of Holmes’s assistants ill and even proved fatal to a few battlefield embalmers. With no protective gloves available and a general lack of personal hygiene, arsenic on bare skin was hazardous. Danger notwithstanding, President Lincoln was reported to be summarily impressed with Holmes’s efforts and commended him. Holmes was always trying new methods of preservation, including alcohol, but the advent of formaldehyde proved a watershed development.
Formaldehyde was cheap and safer than arsenic-based solutions, but best of all, it proved the best preservative ever conceived, the very one used almost exclusively today. After the Civil War, arterial embalming dwindled because of a lack of interest and the fact that so few were capable of performing the procedure. Dr. Holmes maintained his keen interest in embalming and began to develop, sell, and demonstrate his preservative fluid to undertakers around the country who would entertain the presentation. If Dr. Holmes had trained an undertaker, then the undertaker could refer to himself as an embalmer and could take advantage of the new preservation technique to garner new customers who were anxious for the opportunity to view their dead for a longer period of time and to actually schedule a funeral ceremony instead of hurriedly placing their loved one into the ground. In 1882, the Cincinnati College of Embalming (now the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science) began operations with a precise emphasis on embalming.
Today the embalming process buys time—enough time to hold a funeral visitation and service three or four days after a death. Embalming, however, is not forever. The procedure merely retards decomposition for a matter of days, or perhaps weeks. In time, the skin begins to leather and eventually assumes a grayish-brown tint, known among funeral directors as formaldehyde gray.
Years ago I worked at a funeral home where comments concerning deceased appearances were universally negative. Rarely were congratulations expressed—much to the ongoing chagrin of my former employer. As the low man on the totem pole and an infrequent, inexperienced embalmer, my input was neither encouraged nor welcomed. But when the chief embalmer resigned, his duties fell to me, and a marked improvement began.
My older brother had always stressed that people come to a funeral home to see a deceased loved one looking natural and well groomed. The smallest details, from buffed fingernails and hand placement to an impeccable knot in a gentleman’s necktie, are equally essential. That dedication to a dignified presentation has stuck with me to this day, and I have repeatedly stressed and ranted to my own sons that such devotion to duty is the only thing I will accept.
In time, my former boss, who no longer felt the need to enter the preparation room at all, was duly impressed and delighted with the sudden satisfaction of his clientele. In those archaic times, he would greet the deceased’s family upon their arrival and then take full credit for the “good work,” as if he had performed everything in the prepping stage.
My next stop on the employment road found me at a funeral home where the employees felt as I did—that the attractive appearance of the deceased, not the sale of an expensive casket, should be the ultimate goal. Although most funeral home visitors briefly admire the casket in which the decedent is reposing, as well as the spray of flowers adorning it and other bouquets blanketing the entire area, it can be difficult to distinguish one casket from another. The deceased loved one is the star. Rarely have I heard departing guests whisper, “Wow, Stan sure had a beautiful casket.” More likely they say, “Wow, Stan looked like he could get up and talk to you; they sure do good work here.”
That good work unfortunately seems to be missing from today’s corporate-owned funeral homes. The company’s stock exchange performance and the general manager’s bonus expectations are far more important. One result is the purging of experienced embalmers and funeral directors in favor of kids fresh out of mortuary school who lack the proper seasoning but whose salary requirements meet bottom-line qualifications. As an elderly embalmer informed me many years ago, “It takes at least ten years to become a professional.” I share that adage with my sons on a daily basis.
To present a dead human for viewing to his or her grieving family sounds like a strange custom. Why is it necessary that the deceased be present for a funeral to take place? Simple—it satisfies the need to say good-bye to a vessel that once held a beloved soul and that others still carry a strong emotional attachment toward.
In
With the death of President Kennedy, what did America see for the first time on live national television? A funeral of the grandest proportions, complete with a dead human contained in a very expensive solid mahogany casket, provided by a funeral home in Washington, D.C. That wasn’t the casket from Texas, however. Upon Kennedy’s death on November 22, the Secret Service contacted a Dallas funeral home to come to Parkland Memorial Hospital with the finest casket available. The dutiful director arrived with a solid bronze casket into which Kennedy’s unembalmed body was placed. The president was then spirited off to the airport and flown to Andrews Air Force Base for an autopsy by navy doctors.
It was later reported that an actual tug-of-war with President Kennedy’s body occurred between Secret Service agents and the Dallas county sheriff. The sheriff correctly noted that a homicide victim should be autopsied in the county of death, but he was overruled, and the body left Dallas. The temporary casket was never paid for, although the Dallas funeral director billed the Kennedy family on numerous occasions. After never receiving payment, he mentioned the problem to a newspaper reporter, and the negative publicity from the story damaged his image so much that his business suffered and eventually closed. The same bronze casket was stored in the basement of the White House for several years until 1967, when Robert F. Kennedy, the president’s brother, had it unceremoniously dropped into the Atlantic Ocean.
Secret Service agents accompanied Kennedy’s body throughout its travels, from the trip back to Washington, D.C., to the naval hospital’s autopsy room, and finally to the funeral home. One agent, unimpressed with the pomp and circumstance of the funeral and believing the embalming process was a crude, barbaric, and unnecessary procedure, wondered why Kennedy wasn’t just cremated, since there was so much damage to his head. Later, however, that same agent was reported to have been totally amazed at the work of the embalmers and their restoration process. He had watched as the formaldehyde-based chemical was injected and the color quickly came back to the president’s face. The Kennedy family was able to privately view the body in a most presentable state, looking very natural—unlike what Mrs. Kennedy had experienced in Dallas, when she was photographed attempting to retrieve pieces of her husband’s skull and brain tissue from the trunk lid of their open limousine.
So, is it really a good thing to embalm and restore a body, then put cosmetics on it and dress it in its
