Death Care Series

The American Way of Death Revisited by Jessica Mitford, 1996

Embalming is indeed a most extraordinary procedure, and one must wonder at the docility of Americans who each year pay hundreds of millions of dollars for its perpetuation, blissfully ignorant of what it is all about, what is done, and how it is done. Embalming and restorative art is so universally employed in the United States and Canada that for years the funeral director did it routinely, without consulting corpse or kin.

The practice of preserving dead bodies with chemicals, decorating them with paint and powder, and arranging them for a public showing has its origin in antiquity – but not in Judaeo-Christian antiquity. The Jews frowned upon embalming, as did the early Christians, who regarded it as a pagan custom.

This incongruous behavior towards the human dead originated with the pagan Egyptians and reached its high point in the second millennium B.C. Thereafter, embalming suffered a decline from which it did not recover until it was made part of the standard funeral service in twentieth-century America.

The Egyptian method of embalming as described by Herodotus sounds like a rather crude exercise in human taxidermy. The entrails and brain were removed, the body scoured with palm wine and purified with spices. After being soaked for seventy days in a saline solution, the corpse was washed and wrapped in strips of fine linen, then placed in a “wooden case of human shape” which in turn was put in a sepulchral chamber.

Egyptian preoccupation with preservation of the body after death stemmed from the belief that the departed spirit would one day return to inhabit the earthly body; that if the body perished, the soul would eventually perish too. Yet although embalming was available to all who could pay the price, it was by no means so universally employed in ancient Egypt as it is today in the USA. The ordinary peasant was not embalmed at all; yet, curiously enough, his corpse comes down to us through the ages as well preserved as those of his disemboweled and richly aromatic betters, for it has been established that the unusually dry climate and the absence of bacteria in the sand and air, rather than the materials used in embalming, are what account for the Egyptian mummies’ marvelous state of preservation.

Death Care Series

The American Wayof Death Revisited by Jessica Mitford, 1996

John Eckels, President of the Eckels College of Mortuary Science: “In the hands of a skilled practitioner, this work may be done in a comparative short time and without mutilating the body other than by slight incision, so slight that it scarcely would cause serious inconvenience if made upon a living person. It is necessary to remove the blood, and doing this not only helps in the disinfecting, but removes the principal cause of disfigurements due to discoloration. The earlier this is done, the better, for every hour that elapses between death and embalming will add to the problems and complications encountered.”

The preparation room has the tiled and sterile look of a surgery. His equipment – consisting of scalpels, scissors, augers, forceps, clamps, needles, pumps, tubes, bowls, and basins – is crudely imitative of the surgeon’s, as is his technique, acquired in a nine- or twelve –month post-high school course at an embalming school. He is supplied by an advanced chemical industry with a bewildering array of fluids, sprays, pastes, oils, powders, creams, to fix or soften tissue, shrink or distend it as needed, dry it here, restore the moisture there. There are cosmetics, waxes, and pints to fill and cover features, even plaster of Paris to replace entire limbs.

The blood is drained out through the veins and replaced by embalming fluid pumped in through the arteries. Every operator has a favorite injection and drainage point. Typical favorites are the carotid artery, femoral artery, jugular vein, and subclavian vein. There are various choices of embalming fluid. If Flextone is used, it will produce a “mild, flexible rigidity. The skin retains a velvety softness, the tissues are rubbery and pliable. Ideal for women and children.” Suntone comes in three separate tints: Suntan, Special Cosmetic, and moderately pink.

About three to six gallons of a dyed and perfumed solution of formaldehyde, glycerin, borax, phenol, alcohol, and water is soon circulating through Mr. Jones, whose mouth has been sewn together with a “needle directed upward between the upper lip and gum and brought out through the left nostril,” with the corners raised slightly “for a more pleasant expression.” His eyes, meanwhile, are closed with flesh-tinted eye caps and eye cement.

The next step is to have at Mr. Jones with a thing called a trocar. This is a long, hollow needle attached to a tube. It is jabbed into the abdomen and poked around the entrails and chest cavity, the contents of which are pumped out and replaced with “cavity fluid.” This, done, and the hole in the abdomen having been sewn up, Mr. Jones’s face is heavily creamed [to protect the skin from burns which may be caused by leakage of the chemicals], and he is covered with a sheet and left unmolested for a while. He has been embalmed, but not yet restored, and the best time to start the restoration work is eight to ten hours after embalming, when the tissues have become firm and dry.

The object of all this attention to the corpse, it must be remembered, is to make it presentable for viewing in an attitude of healthy repose. The embalmer, having allowed an appropriate interval to elapse, brings into play the skill and equipment of sculptor and cosmetician. If a lip, a nose, or an ear should be missing, the embalmer has at hand a variety of restorative waxes with which to model replacement. Pores and skin texture are simulated by stippling with a little brush, and over this cosmetics are laid on. Head off? Decapitation cases are rather routinely handled. Ragged edges are trimmed, and head joined to torso with a series of splints, wires, and sutures. It is a good idea to have a little something at the neck – a scarf or high collar – when time for viewing comes. Swollen mouth? Cut out tissue as needed from inside the lips. If too much is removed, the surface contour can easily be restored by padding with cotton. Swollen neck and cheeks are reduced by removing tissue through vertical incisions made down each side of the neck.

The opposite condition is more likely to present itself – that of emaciation. His hypodermic syringe now loaded with massage cream, the embalmer seeks out and fills the hollowed and sunken areas by injection. In this procedure, the backs of the hands and fingers and the under-chin area should not be neglected.

Positioning the lips is a problem that recurrently challenges the ingenuity of the embalmer. Closed too tightly, they tend to give a stern, even disapproving expression. Ideally, embalmers feel, the lips should give the impression of being ever so slightly parted, the upper lip protruding slightly for a more youthful appearance.  This takes some engineering, however, as the lips tend to drift apart. Lip drift can sometimes be remedied by pushing one or two straight pins between the two front upper teeth.

Masking pastes and cosmetics are heavily laid on, burial garments and casket interiors are color-correlated with particular care, and Jones is displayed beneath rose-colored lights. Death by carbon monoxide can be rather a good thing form the embalmer’s viewpoint: “One advantage is the fact that this type of discoloration is an exaggerated form of a natural pink coloration.” This is nice because the healthy glow is already present and needs by little attention.

The patching and filling completed, Mr. Jones is now shaved, washed, and dressed. A cream-based cosmetic, available in pink, flesh, suntan, brunette, and blond, is applied to his hands and face, his hair is shampooed and combed, his hands manicured.

Jones is now ready for casketing. Positioning the hands is a matter of importance, and special rubber positioning blocks may be used. The hands should be cupped slightly for a more lifelike, relaxed appearance. Proper placement of the body requires a delicate sense of balance. It should lie as high as possible in the casket, yet not so high that the lid, when lowered, will hit the nose. On the other hand, we are cautioned, placing the body too low “creates the impression that the body is in a box.”

Jones is next wheeled into the appointed slumber room, where a few last touches may be added – his favorite pipe placed in his hand, or, if he was a great reader, a book propped into position.

Lenin's Tomb

Obama Series

Credit Crisis

You don't need to hear another list of statistics to know that our economy is in crisis.

You see, the flow of credit is the lifeblood of our economy. But credit has stopped flowing the way it should. Too many bad loans from the housing crisis have made their way onto the books of too many banks. And with so much debt and so little confidence, these banks are now fearful of lending out any more money

There will be no real recovery unless we clean up the credit crisis that has severely weakened our financial system. And our goal is to quicken the day when we restart lending to the American people and American business and end this crisis once and for all.

To respond to an economic crisis that is global in scope, we are working with the nations of the G-20 to restore confidence in our financial system,

The weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation. If we come together and lift this nation from the depths of this crisis, if we put our people back to work and restart the engine of our prosperity, then some day, years from now, our children can tell their children that this was the time when we performed.

My budget does not attempt to solve every problem or address every issue. It reflects the stark reality of what we've inherited: a trillion-dollar deficit, a financial crisis, and a costly recession.

With the deficit we inherited, the cost of the crisis we face, and the long-term challenges we must meet, it has never been more important to ensure that, as our economy recovers, we do what it takes to bring this deficit down.

In a time of crisis, we cannot afford to govern out of anger or yield to the politics of the moment.

Debt

We still managed to spend more money and pile up more debt, both as individuals and through our government, than ever before.

The only way this century will be another American century is if we confront at last the price of our dependence on oil and the high cost of health care, the schools that aren't preparing our children and the mountain of debt they stand to inherit.

Another responsibility we have to our children, and that's the responsibility to ensure that we do not pass on to them a debt they cannot pay. In order to save our children from a future of debt, we will also end the tax breaks for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.

Invest and Grow

A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future.

Now is the time to jump-start job creation, re-start lending, and invest in areas like energy, health care, and education that will grow our economy. A failure to act would have worsened our long-term deficit by assuring weak economic growth for years. The only way to fully restore America's economic strength is to make the long-term investments that will lead to new jobs, new industries, and a renewed ability to compete with the rest of the world.

The budget I submit will invest in the three areas that are absolutely critical to our economic future: energy, health care, and education.

We will invest $15 billion a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power, advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more efficient cars and trucks built right here in America.

Our recovery plan will invest in electronic health records and new technology that will reduce errors, bring down costs, ensure privacy, and save lives. It makes the largest investment ever in preventive care, because that's one of the best ways to keep our people healthy and our costs under control.

We've made a historic investment in education through the economic recovery plan. We'll invest in innovative programs that are already helping schools meet high standards and close achievement gaps.