class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="20"/>unite so many interesting documents up to the present time scattered throughout so many works, would not be without interest. If my readers join with me in this opinion, I shall not have laboured in vain, and my work shall have received that recompense of which I am most ambitious.

Nevertheless, I conceived that my endeavour should not be restricted to the simple exposition of my researches, and that it was a duty I owed, to place at the disposition of my fellow citizens the means of continuing some relations with the remains of persons whom they had held dear. The sentiments of love, friendship, respect, and veneration, which preserves in our hearts as a sacred depôt, the memory of friends and relations, give, even to an indifferent portrait, which recalls their features to us, an inappreciable value. The heart warms and vivifies this faint image, and recalls to us the words and actions of those who have departed.

These same sentiments cause us painfully to experience the full rigour of that law of nature which condemns to the decomposition of the grave, remains so sacred to us. I have desired to offer to persons groaning under an afflicting loss, the means of preserving all that death has left them; with this intention I have founded an Embalming Society, and I have placed the price for this operation within the reach of the majority of persons. For men destitute of resources, who have rendered themselves worthy, by their talents or virtues, of the remembrance of their species, the public authorities may reclaim of us a gratuitous embalming. We shall be happy to preserve to society the mortal spoils of those who honour and are useful to it.

HISTORY OF EMBALMING.

CHAPTER I.

OF EMBALMING IN GENERAL.

As soon as life ceases in animal matter, disorganization commences; the constituent elements separate, to be variously recombined, and to give birth to new compounds.

The elevation of atmospheric temperature in certain determined hygrometric limits, and the action of oxygen, are those circumstances which lead necessarily to this decomposition. But, at a given temperature, the progress of putrid fermentation is not the same for all animals; this varies among different species, and different individuals of similar species, according to laws not well determined. But so important, however, are these laws, to the art of embalming, that processes which are sufficient for the preservation of one body, may fail in their application to others.

The ancients had well observed, it is true, that the diversity of climates contributed much to the difference in mummies, and to the success of embalming; for, according to Camerarius, great difference exists between the bodies of Europeans and Orientals; the latter, of a dryer temperament, are not exposed to so rapid a decomposition. The example related by Ammian Marcellini is a convincing proof. Four days, says he, after a combat between the Persians and Romans, the countenance of the latter could scarcely be recognised; the bodies of the Persians, on the contrary, were dry, without humidity, without sanies, and without any alteration.

If sufficient attention is given to this fact, and we consider further, that the thermometrical and hygrometrical conditions of the atmosphere were such in Egypt, that the bodies abandoned to themselves, become dried and formed natural mummies, we shall perceive how vain and unreasonable have been the attempts of those who, for a long series of ages, expected in the middle and northern portions of Europe to embalm human bodies by processes which are only an imperfect imitation of those of Egypt, even in what is defective. Finally, we shall understand how it happens that the sepulchres of the Guanches and Egyptians, yield bodies in such a perfect state of preservation, whilst those of our country offer only bones and dust.

Whilst according to the Egyptians the just tribute of admiration which their profound wisdom and extensive acquirements merit, we ought, in a scientific question, to defend ourselves from the infatuation of our predecessors, which led them into error, and appreciate at their just value facts badly observed.

We read in the letters of M. de Maillet, “the dry and nitrous earth of Egypt has the property of naturally preserving entire bodies without the aid of any art, especially in those countries at a distance from the Nile. This is a fact which experience does not permit us to doubt. Not long since, there were buried some Frenchmen, in a Coptic church which is in old Cairo, and those who descended the cavern found the bodies of others who had been previously deposited for some time, as perfect as they were the very day that they were inhumed: The clothes even of a Venetian consul, whose corpse had been here interred, were perfectly preserved. I have likewise visited several ancient Mosques, formerly celebrated, but now in ruins, which are situated on the road from Cairo to Suez; these edifices have served as tombs to some Mahommedan kings, whose bodies were here deposited, during the period when Egypt was subject to the Arabs. I investigated some of these caverns, and can assert that I observed bodies so light from desiccation that they could be raised with one hand as easily as if they were a walking stick. Among these bodies, was one which weighed less than four pounds; I saw also a thigh, which, although it appeared entire and full of flesh, with the leg and foot attached, did not weigh one pound. Finally, the same thing is daily observed by the caravans which go to Mecca. There are none of these wanderers who have made this voyage, who could not testify that the bodies of those who die on the route, are dried to such a degree as to become as light as straw.”

If, then, we would wish to judge a priori of the relative value of the processes of embalming, followed by the people of Asia and Africa, and of those employed by European nations, we ought to start from this double fact—that among the first, bodies abandoned to themselves have a tendency to dry and mummify, both on account of the small quantity of fluid they contain, and on account of atmospheric influences; whilst those of the second, rot and dissolve under the influence of contrary causes.

We think then, with M. Rouyer, member of the Egyptian commission, that the most efficacious cause of the perfection of the art of embalming of the Egyptians, and of the wonderful preservation of the mummies, was the climate of Egypt, and chiefly that elevated and equal temperature (20° R.) which exists in the interior of sepulchral chambers, and in all subterranean places specially consecrated to sepulchres. A fact which ought to be joined to this last, has been proved by MM. Docts. Boucherie, Bermont, and Gaubert, during a visit to the caves of St. Michel at Bordeaux. These caverns which contain seventy bodies, taken from the neighbouring sepulchres forty years ago, and mummified by causes of which we shall speak in the sequel, are of a temperature of eighteen degrees.

In order to terminate this discussion by a fact universally known, the mummies preserved untouched for several thousand years in the caverns of Egypt, become altered and destroyed very rapidly, when transported into Europe, and divested of their bandages, they are exposed to the influence of our atmosphere.[C]

These various observations convince me that a precise knowledge of the art