and legitimate mummy; and even at the present time, they make no scruples to give the name of mummy to the dead bodies found in the Deserts of Arabia, and make patients take it internally.”—(Durenou.) The characters of a mummy of good quality, had, nevertheless, been well determined. “Those bodies are not mummies,” says Penicher, “dried by the sands of Lybia, nor those buried and preserved beneath the snow; nor those bodies submerged by the sea, thrown up and dried on the coast, even to the last degree of blackness; nor of criminals, hung and dried in the sun—for these are of no use.”—(Ant. Santorel.) The Pissasphaltum, which is the mummy of the Arabians and the ancients, according to Serapion and Avicenna, is not what we desire; because the odour is disagreeable, and it can possess no other virtue than a mixture of pitch and asphaltum. Neither is mummy a certain fluid which flows from the coffins of embalmed bodies, mentioned by Dioscorides and Mathioles, and which is only, properly speaking, a mixture of humours, mixed, soaked, and penetrated by aromatics, of which the embalming consists.

Andrew Gryphius teaches us, that a good mummy ought to be reddish, light, greasy, and with some odour, but as the embalming materials vary much, as well as their quality, the bodies being more or less well preserved, and it is even possible they may be poisonous, it has appeared expedient to compose a mummy methodically digested. Among the numerous formulæ for officinal mummies, we shall content ourselves with citing here that of Crollius.

Mummy of Crollius. “Choose the body of a hanged person, preferring one with red hair, because in this sort of temperament the blood is thinner; the flesh impregnated with aromatics is better, being filled with sulphur and balsamic salt; it ought to be about twenty-four years of age, healthy, whole, and of good constitution; you will take pieces of the flesh of this corpse, they would be still better if taken from the body of a living man; notably, from the thighs, buttocks, &c.; strip them of their arteries, nerves, veins, and fat, and then wash them well with spirits of wine; then expose them to the sun and moon for two days, during mild and dry weather, to the end that the action of the rays of light of these two planets, particularly of the sun, may exalt and liberate the principles concentered in the flesh; powder it with myrrh, styrax, aloes, saffron, which constitute the basis of the elixir proprietatis of Paracelsus; having previously rubbed the flesh with true balm, macerate it for twelve or fifteen days in a well corked vessel with first quality spirits of wine and salt, which form of themselves a species of balm: at the end of this time withdraw the flesh, let it drain, and dry in the sun; let them again, for the same space of time, and in the same manner, macerate in a similar fluid, and expose it afterwards to the sun and fire, in the same manner they do hams; flesh thus prepared will be found to be an excellent mummy.”

Conceding that the use of the mummy in medicine is one of the strangest and most extravagant abuses of empyricism, the officinal mummy of Crollius must be considered as an improvement, inasmuch as it is divested of the dangers attached to other mummies; it was even a benefit, for this remedy divested of the marvellous, reduced to the level of a common drug, was justly appreciated and soon forgotten. The art of embalming among the Egyptians and Guanches, was carried to a degree of perfection attained by no other nation who followed their example. And, nevertheless, what are the mummies of these countries? They are, according to the definition of R. P. Kircher, bodies stuffed and filled with odoriferant, aromatic, and balsamic drugs, capable of arresting the progress of putrid decomposition. Numerous incisions enabled the preservative matter to enter the cavities and deep tissues: agreeably to the relations of Herodotus, of Diodorus Sicculus, and of Porphyrus, the cranium was emptied either through the nostrils, or by an opening made in one of the orbits: the contents of the thorax and abdomen were withdrawn and placed in a trunk. “The Egyptians,” says Plutarch, “drew the intestines from the dead bodies, and, after having exposed them to the sun, cast them away as the cause of all the sins committed by man.”

The moderns have adopted an analogous mode of preparation, and in our days, previous to my researches on the preservation of animal matters, the processes of embalming were long and complicated.

In the Dictionary of Medicine, of twenty-five volumes, (Paris, 1835,) M. Murat traces in these terms the rules for embalming:

“Before commencing this operation, it is necessary to procure the following objects: alcohol saturated with camphor, camphorated vinegar, a varnish composed of the balsams of Perou and copaiba, fluid styrax, the oils of Muscat, of lavender, and of thyme, &c., alcohol saturated with proto-chloride of mercury, a powder composed of tan, of decrepitated salt, of quinquina, of cascarilla, of mint, of benzoin, of castor, of Jew’s pitch, &c.—all these substances mixed and reduced to a fine powder, are sprinkled with essential oils. The powdered tan ought to form nearly half the weight, and the salt one-fourth; there ought also be placed, at the disposition of the embalmer, a certain number of bandages, linen, sponges, and waxed threads, also several basins filled with pure water, &c.

“The breast and belly must be opened by large incisions, and their contents extracted; the brain is removed after the necessary incisions of the scalp, and sawing circularly the bones of the cranium; deep and repeated incisions are to be made in the viscera. If we wish to preserve the intestinal tube, we must open it throughout its whole length, wash it well in water and compress it; wash it a second time in camphorated vinegar, and finally with camphorated alcohol. Large incisions must be multiplied on the interior surfaces of the great cavities, and along the extremities.”

I stop at these details, because they suffice to prove that the art of embalming, down to the present, has had for its object, not the preservation of the whole subject intact, but the preparation of animal matters padded, stuffed with aromatics and salts: a preparation always incomplete, tedious, and expensive. This is the point from which I start in the preservation of animal matter, and the art of embalming. Have I the happiness of adding a step to science? my readers shall be the judges.

The Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Academy of Medicine, have proved that, by one of my processes, subjects destined for dissection can be preserved. Bodies kept for several months, and afterwards carried to the amphitheatre, have been found as fresh and as fit for dissection, as individuals dead only two days.[B]

These early successes, and the honourable encouragements which they have received, gave me the idea of bringing the art of embalming to perfection; and I have attained to the power of preserving bodies, with all their parts, both internal and external, without any mutilation or extraction, and so as to admit of the contemplation of the person embalmed, with the countenance of one asleep.

This discovery has been confirmed by a commission of the Academy of Sciences, who, in its public sitting in the month of August, 1837, conferred upon me the grand prize.

Having decided to publish the result of my researches, I thought it best to precede it by a general history of embalming, and it appeared to me that a book which would re