The History of Embalming

PHOTO:Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division
A Civil War doctor embalming on the battlefield.

he Egyptians are generally credited with being the first civilization to embalm and preserve their dead. Scientists believe that, between 6,000 B.C. and 600 A.D., an estimated 400 million bodies were preserved through the practice of embalming and mummification in Egypt alone.

Although its roots go back to ancient Egyptian times, embalming did not become common practice in the United States until the Civil War, when war casualties needed to be preserved in order to be transported home for burial. Col. Elmer Ellsworth, a former clerk in President Lincoln’s Springfield, Ill., law office, was the first to be embalmed on the battlefield in 1861.

Dr. Thomas Holmes, a Brooklynite who had worked as a New York City coroner, is credited with developing the modern practice of embalming. A captain in the Army Medical Corps, Holmes worked through the Civil War as an embalmer – including performing the embalming of Ellsworth – before returning to Brooklyn and resigning his army commission for public practice.

After the war, however, the need for embalming fell off considerably. The lack of demand and of experienced embalmers led the majority of the day’s undertakers to limit their preservation methods to icing the remains until burial.

Rarely did 19th century embalmers serve the deceased or the family in any other capacity. Holmes, for instance, supplemented his fledgling embalming business working as a doctor and druggist. It wasn’t until much later that embalmers began to combine their skills with those of the undertaker – providing coffins, transportation and services. These were the early incarnations of today’s modern funeral director.

nitially, embalming solution was prepared using arsenic solutions and other dangerous substances. Holmes, who was registered with Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, conducted substantial research on the compounds used to preserve cadavers at the time. He criticized the widespread use of arsenic in embalming fluids, citing the many deaths caused to medical students during routine dissections at the nation's medical schools. Once formaldehyde was made available, however, it rapidly replaced all other former compounds.

The deceased is embalmed to disinfect and preserve the body. While most pathogens tend to die shortly after their host, many can survive for extended periods of time in dead tissues. With the risk of infection removed, it is possible to preserve the body so that the funerary customs of family and friends might be observed.

Embalming fluids – usually a mixture of formaldehyde, methanol and water – are injected into the body with an electric pump to replace its natural fluids. Modern embalming takes between two to five hours.

 

  



Out of Egypt

The Egyptians weren't the only civilization to preserve their dead.

 

  • Cro-Magnon man practiced funerary rituals some 37,000 years ago.
  • The ancient peoples of Mesopotamia (Babylonians, Persians and Syrians) would place their dead in jars of wax or honey, which would gel, leaving the bacteria without air and the body preserved.

  • For the Greeks to reach heaven, they believed that the dead must cross the mythical river Styx. To assure passage by Charon, the dreaded boatman of the Styx, relatives would place a coin in the mouth of the deceased so that they might pay the toll. In the 10th century B.C., Greeks began the practice of cremating their dead. The method made the collection of the dead on the battlefield much easier for the grieving families.
  • A full millenia before the Spaniards ever reached the Americas, Incans practiced an advanced form of mummification. They buried their dead in sitting positions and may even have had contact with Africans and other ancient peoples hundreds of years before Pizarro conquered their Andean capital of Cuzco.

  • The ancient Abyssinians (located in what is now Ethiopia) also preserved their dead in much the same way as the Egyptians did. In fact, Abyssinians actually ruled Egypt through at least two separate dynasties.
Source: New York State Funeral Directors Association; National Funeral Directors Association; www.britannica.com
Using special procedures developed over a period of centuries, the ancient Egyptians probably began embalming and mummifying their dead. They continued the practice for well over three millennia.