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For It’s About Time column Written by Susan Parsons Preserving the Union: a History of Modern Embalming (Not for the faint of heart) In the 1850’s, Dr. Thomas Holmes (1817-1900), born in New York City, attended New York University Medical College. No records exist as to whether he graduated, but he became a coroner’s surgeon in the City. While there he perfected modern arterial embalming techniques begun by the French. Dr. Holmes is known as the “Father of Modern Embalming.”• When the Civil War began he opened an embalming office in Washington, DC. Over the four years of war he prepared about 4000 bodies to be sent home. Ironically, he requested that upon his own death his body not be embalmed. During the early part of the war, the embalming surgeon conducted the embalming. This was considered a new profession, and named such because surgeons were the first to learn the technique of embalming. Many of these embalming surgeons had studied under Dr. Holmes. The embalmer would pump a chemical solution into the body via the arteries to prevent decay, making it possible to ship home a soldier’s remains. Embalming was practiced only in the North because it was perfected there and the chemical solution was manufactured in the North. The South did not have the knowledge nor the resources to do embalmings. One of the first casualties of the Civil War was Col. Elmer E. Elsworth, (died 5/24/1861), a friend of Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln. Dr. Holmes offered to embalm him for free. Mrs. Lincoln, upon seeing the body, remarked that he appeared to be asleep. Both Lincolns were so impressed with Holmes’ work that when the Lincolns’ beloved son, Willie died (Feb. 20, 1862), they had him embalmed. Abraham Lincoln soon offered Dr. Holmes a commission to embalm Union soldiers to enable the bodies to be sent home. Holmes created a team of “embalmer surgeons,” and he oversaw the Lincoln project until he realized that he could make great profits on his own. After one year he resigned his commission and began charging a $100 embalming fee per corpse as a private embalming surgeon. Others also began to recognize that embalming was becoming a lucrative profession. Holmes’ competitors charged $50 per officer and $25 for the lesser ranked. Later their fees were raised to $80 and $50, still less than Dr. Holmes’ fees. Average income in the US in 1860 was a bit less than ---PAGE BREAK--- $400, making an embalming a considerable expense for families. Some Northern families wanted their loved-one to be brought home for a Christian burial and so they were willing to take on the huge financial hardship. Other choices were few for the remains of those loved-ones who lost their lives. A burial as a rite of honor was impractical under the circumstances of the Civil War, especially with the great numbers of casualties. More deaths occurred from this war than any other the USA has been involved with, before or since (Civil War—over 618,000 deaths; World War II—405,399 deaths). Unmarked graves were common on both sides. ---PAGE BREAK--- During the early part of the War when Washington, D.C. was the center of activity, embalmers flocked there only to be seen as such nuisances that they were driven out of the city. From there, they tended to stay near the various battlefields and field hospitals. Dr. Holmes began creating his own embalming fluid out of arsenic, creosote, alcohol, mercury, turpentine and zinc among other compounds. He began selling it to other practitioners for $3 per gallon. (Formaldehyde, the main ingredient in today’s embalming fluid, was not discovered until 1867, after the Civil War was over.) For a time embalmers would approach soldiers just as they were headed into battle about the soldiers having themselves embalmed and shipped home, should the need arise. If a soldier arranged payment via himself or his family the embalmer would give him a card stating so. If possible, soldiers wanted their bodies protected, should they die. Soldiers tended to believe that it was a fate worse than death to die in battle only to leave their bodies in the hands of the enemy. Soon, though, military officers began to see that the behavior of the embalmer was so harmful for morale of these frightened soldiers that the military put an end to the solicitations. At the same time the railroads began refusing to ship home unembalmed corpses, even those on ice, because of the horrible smell of rotting flesh. To make things more complicated, with the huge number of deaths occurring, the embalmer might find great difficulty in locating a slain soldier on the battlefield or field hospital. Soldiers began pinning cards on their sack coats or shirts or wearing metal disks on their necks with their names and home towns noted, to aid the embalmer. (This became the basis for the Army’s later use of “dog tags” to identify soldiers, especially since it is estimated that 54% of the 300,000 reinterred Union soldier’s bodies in National Military Cemeteries were unnamed.) ---PAGE BREAK--- Embalming a Civil War Soldier At times the busy embalmer would have dozens of bodies piled up waiting as he did his work. Sometimes the embalmer would have a body temporarily buried until he could make contact with the family about financial arrangements. Deceased officers were favored because the family might be more able to pay. A few embalmers attempted extortion with the family. If the price was right, the body was dug up, embalmed and shipped home. Though at least 618,000 died in the Civil War, it is estimated that just 40,000 were embalmed. Just at the end of the War when Lincoln was assassinated, Mary Todd Lincoln had her husband embalmed by a Dr. Brown. Lincoln was the first President to be embalmed. His funeral train left Washington, DC on April 21, 1865 and after several stops for viewings, arrived in Springfield Ill. on May 3, 1865. ---PAGE BREAK--- After the War ended, the public generally turned its back on embalming, believing it to be barbaric and an immoral invasion of the body. By the beginning of the 20th Century, the process again became more common. At first, embalming was done in the home by an undertaker, but as funeral homes became more popular as places to reckon with the issue of death, the practice of embalming became more popular as well. Indeed, undertakers used several methods of public relations, such as newspaper advertising and interviews to encourage the use of embalming. The News- Bulletin-Auburnian, an Auburn, New York newspaper, (August 26, 1885) published an interview with an undertaker, part of which follows: “Years ago…the ice box was the only known method of preserving dead bodies. It consists (sic) of a large double box of refrigerator –like arrangement in which the remains were placed. Ice had to be applied almost constantly in very hot weather and sometimes the box leaked on the carpets. A man had to be employed to tend the thing and carry out the water which accumulated. The only way to obtain a view of the remains was to shade the hand and peer through a small round glass in the top of the box. Often I have seen children weep bitterly at the sight of the huge clumsy things that filled them with an indescribable dread. …It was always necessary to be very careful in handling the body after it had been lying in the ice box or it would fall to pieces and to ship it a great distance was impossible. You see the freezing process rendered the flesh extremely brittle. By the present system of embalming the remains of a friend can be kept for weeks and even months… In many of the fluids [embalming recipes] arsenic is the principal ingredient and it is remarkable that a material that, taken when the person is alive will cause him to swell to an enormous size, when injected after death will perfectly preserve the body… If all bodies were embalmed before burial there would be no danger of water being contaminated from cemeteries, because the bodies gradually dry up. Today, in most cases, embalming is not required by law but if a body will be publicly viewed, most funeral homes insist on it. No state requires embalming except: ---PAGE BREAK--- ---when a body will be transported by plane or train from one state or country to another; ---when the time lapse between death and cremation or burial will be more than one week; ---in the case of certain communicable diseases. Hallie Sweeting, in Pioneers of Sterling, noted that John Sant, born in Sterling and resident of the village of Fair Haven, enlisted as a Private in the H Company, NY 111th Infantry, and died of disease as a prisoner at Camp Douglas in Chicago in 1863. Raymond T Sant stated in Tales of Sterling that Christian Sant, John’s father, rode his horse to Auburn and took a train to Chicago to claim the body. Research shows that Christian Sant did bring home his son’s body. A Hudson Post GAR Memorial Service program (1914) lists John Sant as having been buried at Van Fleet Ground (also known as Phillips Cemetery). Was John Sant embalmed? We can only guess. Christian Sant, Fair Haven Resident and father Of Deceased Civil War Soldier John Sant Sources: ---PAGE BREAK--- Armydogtags.com civilwarundertaker.net Preserving a Nation Pioneers of Sterling, 1998, Hallie Sweeting Fair Haven, Folks and Folklore, 1941, Raymond T Sant GAR Memorial Service program, 1914 News-Bulletin-Auburnian, August 26, 1885 Library of Congress, prints and photographs division