As the object of this book is to give, not only the best modes of
preserving and embalming bodies, but also to make comprehensive to
our professionals the _modus operandi_, it is a most important matter
to them that the different conditions of a body, as influenced by
the cause of death, should be made a study of, and fully understood,
before proceeding any farther. These different circumstances may so
influence the state of the body, that the process of embalming, as
given hereafter and as usually practiced, may not be successful.
I repeat an assertion already made, that one body having been treated
successfully in a certain manner, yet the same method may fail in
another case. Although the same chemicals may have been used in both
instances, and given full satisfaction in the first, they failed to
accomplish their object in the last.
It is a well known fact that the arterial system must be intact
and without lesions, if the injecting fluid is to be carried
in a thorough manner, and by the natural channels through the
body—therefore any rupture in the arteries may cause the fluid to
escape at that point, and fill the neighboring cavities. The result
would certainly not in that case be satisfactory to the operator;
for as the fluid would thus be arrested in its course, and fail to
permeate the tissues through the arteries, veins and smaller vessels,
the corpse would soon putrefy in consequence.
Destructive inflammation of the surrounding tissues may invade and
destroy the walls of an artery. Thus, ulceration of the brachia,
bronchial glands, and œsophagus, may perforate the aorta; gangrene of
the lungs, the pulmonary arteries, ulcer of the stomach, the gastric
arteries, etc.
Let us suppose that the operator chooses the femoral artery as a
point of injection. The injecting fluid will fill the arteries of
the abdomen and the thorax until it reaches a point where the walls
of the arteries are ruptured, and then will lose itself into the
surrounding cavities, thereby failing to reach the upper portion of
the body. It will of course, in an instance of this kind, be found
necessary to inject again at some other point situate in a higher
part of the body, as for instance, the axillary artery. It is,
therefore, easily understood that—
1st. The cause of death may so affect the arterial system that the
point selected for injecting may not be the proper one.
2d. That it may be necessary to inject the body at different points.
3d. That, in many cases, the cause of failure does not lay in the
lack of antiseptic properties of the chemicals used, but in the need
of discrimination on the part of the embalmer, in choosing the
proper place for injecting, and also in his ignorance of where that
place should be.
It is, therefore, patent, that should the course of the arteries
and veins be not readily understood by the operator, it will be a
rather hard matter for him to discover the cause of his failure. This
want, we will try to supply in the following chapters, by giving
in detail the course of the blood vessels, also of the different
positions of the several parts of the viscera, which it is necessary
for the embalmer to be acquainted with, and which it is absolutely
indispensable to know, so as to fully comprehend the instructions
given further on in this book.