How Embalming Works

of them, but I'm surprised of two things. That we haven't covered this in full yet too, and that you managed to find an article on our old our old Pals website and housetop works dot com we hadn't used or written dude. I I scour the site frequently and everyone too. Yeah, sometimes you can find like how did this slip by? That's why it just keeps you going, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, it's hard to believe.

We still get a lot of a lot of our shorties ideas from there, which is great, But it has been a while I think since we were able to find something. It's just hiding in there, hiding in the blood vessels of the body. Very nice and speaking of bodies, Chuck, I don't remember where we talked about this before, but I do remember that we talked about the death of Abraham Lincoln and how he was one of the first um presidents. Two it must have been lying in state.

I'll bet it was the short stuff on lying in state, because I think he was one of the first presidents

to to lie in state in different places. And the reason he was able to do that is because he was involved he was subject to some modern chemical embalming techniques that had recently been introduced by a guy named Dr. Thomas Holmes, and it allowed Abraham Lincoln to take a very leisurely nineteen days to make it from Washington, D's see to his hometown of Springfield, Illinois for burial, which is a long time for a corpse in the nineteenth

century to be above the ground. And yet he was still fairly presentable by the time he got to Springfield when he was buried, and um, it was all thanks to that embalming process. Yeah. And this was and we'll get to the we'll get to Holmes Moore in a minute, But this was during the Civil War, So great timing for Lincoln. Also terrible timing for Lincoln just in general, but as far as going on display, great timing previous to this, he would have been on literally on ice.

When you hear like, you know, the bodies on ice. That's how they used to do it. It's the only way they could do it. Yeah, I have to say, you mean. I went to this thing called the Merchants House Museum in New York. It's the oldest house in New York and it was owned by a sea merchant named sea Bury Treadwell, if I'm not mistaken, one of

the great names of all time. And we just happened to go at a time when they were recreating what the house would have been like for the funerals Seaburry Treadwell, and they had like a cast get set up and everything in the living room they had lilies everywhere just stunk of lilies, which is one of the things they used to mask the smell of decay. And then they also had a little soundtrack playing of water dripping because he would have been on huge blocks of ice to

kind of keep him to keep his body cold. But it's one of the cooler things I've ever seen in my life. And you know, walking around the museum even when they don't have something like that going on, it's pretty cool. It's definitely worth the visit. What part of town downtown somewhere in Manhattan. I don't remember exactly where. I don't, but I'm pretty sure it's lower I don't know if it's east side or west side. It's got to be, I mean, that was early New York. Yeah,

but it's it's super cool. The Merchant House Museum, if I'm not mistaken, fantastic. Uh. And while you're down there, check out the Tenement Museum, Yes, which we have not I've not been to. You've been there, I guess, Yeah, Okay, good stuff. Okay, Yeah, it's very cool. I mean if you like old New York and seeing how things used to be, right and then going downstairs and having some tapas.

Oh man, you're having a tapas, tapas or sushi. Uh. But this is h Embalming, however, is not something that was invented during the Civil War that was just sort of using more modern chemicals. Uh, it was. This is something that people have been doing since ancient times. The word itself, embalm just means to put on a bomb. And that comes from the fact that, uh, in ancient times,

like we're talking thousands and thousands of years ago. They would put spices and perfume things, kind of anything that they could think of to keep that body from becoming bones. Yeah, and apparently Thomas Holmes was inspired by some Egyptian mummies that he had been studying and realized like they had done a really great job of embalming techniques, so started

coming up with his own embalming concoctions. I believe his was Arsenic that he was using UM, which came into wide US in the eighteen sixties until the nineteen tens, I think UM. But his his introduction of the chemical embalming to the US, it just changed funerals in the United States to this day. We still have things like viewings where you basically say, you know, come see the dead body with your own eyes before the funeral, the night before the funeral wakes. Like all just things that

we wouldn't have done. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been able to do UM, delaying funerals for you know, until the weekend when everybody's available. UM. All of the modern trappings of of an American or Canadian or it turns out New Zealand funeral um are based on the fact that Thomas Holmes introduced chemical embolming in the eighteen sixties, and

that allows us to do things like that. Now, that's right. Uh. If you want to go back through time and look at the beginnings, you could go all the way back about five thousand years ago to Spain. Uh. There were cadavers found there in uh Lavella. That's why I would go with sure, all right, and this is in Spain, and they were found to be covered in um hundreds of pounds of ground up cinnabar, which is the most delicious way to be involved, right, although I don't know, honey,

don't forget honey. Yeah, that's true. Oh it's not sinna bun. I thought it was sinna bun cinnabar. Sorry about that. We talked about cinda bar before. Sin A bun will put you in the tomb from the inside out and actually know that, I think about it. If you ate enough, Yeah, probably so. I haven't had one of those in a long time. Um, And this is like a suspected case basically.

If you want to know, like for sure that they were purposely embalming people, you can go back to four thousand b C. With the Egyptians that you were talking about. People would be wrapped in cloth. They would sometimes be buried with charcoal and sand. Uh, they would be buried away from the Nile River or where anywhere where there

in our river could reach via flooding. And you know, the idea here is that in the afterlife you were going to be physically resurrected at some point an immortal, so your body needed to be kind of recognizable so the soul and the shadow and the heart and the name of the individual could lure it back. Um, they embalmed about seven and thirty million people, so it was a very common practice, even though the methods that we're going to talk about here in a sect would be

different depending on kind of what status you were. And you know, just keep in mind, this wasn't like modern day embalming that you would think like that kind of preservation. It's the kind of preservation to where you don't just

rot into bones and eventually just dust. But I mean, the body is like you've seen these embalmed into embodies or you know, they look like sort of baseball gloves at that point, but it's still recognizable as a human body exactly, which in and of itself is a triumph of embalming, because you know, without any embalming, human body, depending on the climate, is going to skeletonize, which is just a kay into nothing left but a skeleton in

anywhere from a few weeks to a few years. So the idea that like you said, it's still a recognizable human with with tissue still intact and sometimes hair and things like that. Like that, that was a successful embalming and then some oh yeah, big time. We even have a description thanks to a historian from Greece name Herodotus who described how they did it. Uh, and you know,

it makes sense considering what we know now. Like if you're if you hunt an animal and if you're into that kind of thing, the first thing that you do when you're when you're field dressing that animal is you take those organs out because that keeps the body very hot and warm, and that is going to really just

speed up the bacteria and the decay. So the first thing that they did was remove the vital organs to to cool that body down, remove the brain, wash it and palm wine and then uh, you have all these different vases. You know, at the time they didn't have these modern chemicals. They had herbs and stuff like that. They had these canopic jars filled to the top with

all these various herbs that they used. Yep. Uh. Then they would basically take the body and fill it with some mirror or other resins, perfumes, that kind of stuff, stash it in some potassium nitrate for I believe seventy days to kind of desiccate it. And then after that is when they would put it in those famous bandages, wrap it up like what we understand as a mummy um, and then uh put it in the coffin and inside it two and we did a whole episode on Mummy.

So if you're just like, I want to know more, tell me some more about mummies. We're gonna take our leave for mummies here. But you can pause this one, go listen to the Mummy's episode. Maybe you have a sandwich, and then come back and listen to the rest of this episode and you will be chock full of embalming. Yeah, and then maybe top it off with our cremation episode

just for a full day that since you had the sandwich. Um. So this process was you know, kind of with all the bells and whistles, was for people with a lot of money. Maybe the royal family even of the time, you know, the kind of the further you went down the social ladder, the less complicated it got as far

as having access to some of this stuff. So you know, one thing they might do if you were sort of maybe middle class was injected with cedar oil, store it in that potassium nitrate for the same amount of time, and then withdrawal that oil. And I got the feeling that that just kind of pulls out a lot of the stuff with it, and then you've got skin and bones.

And then if you really we're sort of at the top of the totem pole um, they would pull the intestines and then just cover the body and that potassium nitrate and probably not even for seven seventy days. Very nice. It was a beautiful early s YSK reference to I know, I can't wait to get emails if I got that wrong, right right, Um, we'll be like, you need to go further back in the catalog, friend, Yes, exactly. Do you want to keep going and talking about the ancient world?

Or take a break? First? Oh, I got a sandwich, so let's take that break. Okay, we're gonna we'll be right back. Everybody and we're gonna talk about you guessed it, more ancient world in balming, all right, chuck. So the Egyptians, the ancient Egyptians do get a lot of the glory and credit for embalming techniques, and rightfully so, I mean, they got really good at it. Apparently the peak of their embalming prowess came from the New Kingdom from fift

seventy to ten seventy five b c. UM. But you know, that's kind of where people people's minds go when they think of embalming. What's interesting, though, is there were other cultures that were totally detached from Egyptians at the time. There the Egyptian influence and culture would not possibly have spread to these areas that we're doing very similar things um. In some cases even predating the Egyptian embalming process. UM. There was a group called the Chinchorros who or in

I believe modern day Ecuador and Chile. I'm sorry, they were in Chile and about seven thousand years ago they were disassembling bodies, treating the body parts with embalming um I guess, fluids, um resins, that kind of stuff, and then reassembling them with wooden structures so that they could still I guess, move around do the robot and stuff

like that, covering them with clay and painting them. This is seven thousand years ago, so it's clear there's a real impulse among humans to like kind of preserve bodies. It's not a new thing. It's a really ancient impulse. It is. You mentioned honey earlier. I think it was the Assyrians that we're using honey. Persians were using wax. I believe the indigenous people of the Canary Islands, the guanches. Is the way Google told me to say it. Look that one up, good job. Let's say what walks shaw?

Oh boy. Uh. They would remove the soft internal organs and then it's kind of like food preservation techniques. In some cases they fill it salt and vegetable powder and the same goes true. Uh for the Hivado in Ecuador and Peru, they were they took their their tribal chiefs and would it said here, they would slow roast them over a fire. I think they were kind of smoking them. Yeah, for preservation. There's really no other way to put it.

And there was probably some part of the people around there's brain who's like this sounds really good, you think, so, there's just no way. Um. There's also instances of um Buddhist monks being preserved, which is a little interesting because Um Buddhism usually calls for cremation, although I don't believe there's any prohibition on embalming UM. And they would pack

the body and salt for a few months. And there was a pretty famous case of a uh Tibetan monk um being discovered accidentally this way, when somebody for some reason x ray a Buddhist statue sitting Buddha. They found out that there was a mummified monk inside. Who didn't that neat, that's pretty cool. Yeah, I mean imagine being the guy to figure that out, and just how surprising that would be, you know, and by guy of course,

that it was gender neutral. Guy. Sure, Uh, not all cultures got into this, though, I think you mentioned Buddhists generally don't UM. Back in the day, Sumerians and Babylonians and Jewish people, uh did not often use embombing in these days. If you're Muslim or Jewish, you know, and if you're if you're strict about it, they prohibit that. And I think Uh, it's pretty rare if you're Hindu as well, because they usually cremate just pretty quickly. Yeah,

there's not like a prohibition on it. It's just yeah, it doesn't come up, you know. Um So, from what I can tell, Chuck's going back to it today for a second. The countries that have far in a way the highest rates of embalming are the US, Canada, and like I said, New Zealand, and I saw Australia somewhere and I double checked and it said no, it's not very common in Australia. So maybe listeners in Australia can

let us know one way or the other. And then apparently it's also not common in the UK, but it's common enough that the funeral industry is very much interested in keeping embalming processes as they are. Um So, I guess some people get involved in the UK. But I guess America is the world leader in embalming corpses. Now, what do you mean as they are like they just don't want to be bothered and regulated or something. Don't know,

I don't understand, I think I get. I can't tell if they just are being resistant to change or if they're genuinely isn't an alternative, And they're like, we actually need these techniques to preserve people for people who want to be involved. I can't quite tell, but we'll talk

about any controversy a little further down the road. All right. Uh, there have been some, you know, aside from King tut, there's been quite a few famous people throughout antiquity that have been embalmed, including but not limited to Alexander the Great, Charles the Great a KA Charlemagne a k A CEO of the Holy Roman Empire, CEO of the h r E. That's right, he was involved and placed in a sitting

position in his tomb, which was super cool. Yeah. Uh, and we know that because a couple of hundred years after he died, the then ruler of the Holy Roman Empire Otto the Third cracked his tumb open and went inside and he's sitting up super unsettling. Yeah, he's watching me.

So they're using herbs, and they're using salt, and they're using smoke, and they're using things that they could find at the time, kind of like I said, how you would preserve um an animal if you were to kill and want to eat that them all and because that's all we are anyway, right, And it started to decline in the Middle Ages. It was costly. Um, these herbs were expensive unless you were super upper class or even royal,

then you couldn't afford it to begin with. H And then religious opposition kind of starts to pop up in the Middle Ages. And it was sort of during this pause that they actually um took took a leap forward, I guess you could say, and the Renaissance, when all of a sudden people like, hey, science is awesome, art is cool, the body is great, let's investigate it more.

And it was da Vinci himself that actually developed was the as far as I can tell, one of the first two or the first to develop an injection method, which is sort of, um, not sort of, it's exactly how we do it today, when instead of like putting things inside the body cavity, you would actually inject something

into the bloodstream, right. And if you've ever been in an embalming room, um, you know that they use exactly the same invention Da Vinci came up with, with wooden gears to power the pumps and a flying machine that goes around the room that I can't quite put my finger on what it does. I think it's mostly for show.

I think so too, so UM. The French and the Italians really were the ones we talked about UM Thomas uh homes Um in the United States, and you know, we do that because he was an American and this is America an American podcast. UM. But prior to him, the French and the Italians in the nineteenth century, UM really kind of got into figuring out how to preserve um corpses. And the reason why it had nothing to

do with funerals. It had to do with UM the advancement of medical science to where all those grave robbed corpses that were used by med students needed to be preserved somehow, and so that really kind of pushed chemical embalming to advance by leaps and bounds. And we have our French and Italian brothers and sisters to thank for that. That's right. And we also have a great live episode on grave robbing. Yeah, live in London. It was. That was one of the most fun trips we've ever done.

That was a good tour. It was a great tour. Remember that we performed in a church in London. It was just one of them. I can't believe they let us in that place. I know. I felt like really like I I can't curse here, and I just went out the window really quick after a couple of gene teas. And here's a little hint, London crowds, it wouldn't kill you to make a little more noise, and you know, like ham it up a little bit, sure, because when

you're on stage you can't tell that people are enjoying it. No, but that was really the big problem was managed more than London. Yeah, that's true. But then when we talked everyone, they're like, no, we loved it. We just don't to we don't express ourselves like Americans, caring over yourself. All right, So where are we are in Italy? We are in France. Things are moving along. They are using chemicals now, like arsenic,

like you mentioned, copper sulfate, zinc chloride, potassium carbonate. They're basically trying everything. Sure, the chloride of mercury. Is this a deadly chemical? Yes, well then let's use it for embalming and see what happen. Let's give it a shot. Uh. And then in the US is finally when we come back to Dr Thomas Holmes introduced on the battlefield of

World War two. Uh, because basically people, you know, families wanted to go out and see their loved ones, and they had to preserve them because it took a while to get to these battlefields in these places, in these hospitals, uh, like field hospitals. Yeah. And in fact, I guess the the Union Army hired and trained embalming surgeons to go out on the battlefields. They paid eighty dollars for an inbalmed body of an officer and thirty dollars for an

imborm body of a soldier. And um, it was a big deal for families to be able to come and claim there there they're dead relative and bring them back home, which is yeah. Again, it just changed funerals in the United States. That process changed everything. Um, and it has changed since then, which we'll get to. But one of the things that they needed to change was some of this stuff that they were using, Like you were talking about these dangerous chemicals arsenic um, not the least of

which is very dangerous. When these you know, the body eventually does decompose, and then that wooden box that they're buried in decomposes and all of a sudden, you've got arsenic, which doesn't decompose, just leaching into the soil. So if you lived near a cemetery, and if that cemetery was near groundwater, um, you had some trouble going on back in the day. You did. Now it's all fine. It's probably not still right now. I gotta live near a

Civil War cemetery, but it's probably not great. No, um, I I did not see the threat of arsenic poisoning from cemetery still today, um, anywhere. But I think it's I mean, I don't know, it's possible. We put a lot of stuff into the ground, we bury somebody, and it's not not all good, as we'll see. I was being totally facetious that it's all fine today though, because we're still doing the same process. He was using different chemicals, that's right, And I guess that's where we are, sort

of the more modern process. Uh. If you are, if you work in the in the funerary industry, if you're I don't know even know the words that they call themselves these days, funerals mists now, like they probably don't call themselves morticians anymore. No, I think they're funeral directors. You can be a funeral director, but if you're you know, in the basement getting your hands dirty, uh like Arthur on six ft under then like what is what is

that title? Even embalmer? Okay, And there's you know, if you were a a funeral director, you probably are also an embalmer. Um. But there's also such things as trade Embalmer's people whose job it is to evolved. They're not like that. They don't hang with the families or playing the funeral or anything like. Yeah, they just the body.

And there's right. There's one other thing though that um I didn't realize about embalmers, and that it's way more than just their jobs, way more than just embalming the body. Like embalming entails a lot of different um components to where you basically take a corpse and turn it into to a presentable version of a corpse. Yeah, I have a feeling if you sit down in a funeral home they would say something like one of our restorative artists would take care of that process. Yes, I don't know

if they call them that, like in the building. The feeling that's the terminology they probably. I don't know. If you want to just kind of you know, keep it legit. You might just to use that all the time. I could see it. But yes, I think I think you might be onto something chunk. But these people are you know, even though I am on record is not not being down with this process. Uh, it is. And we'll talk about, you know, the real value if there is any for people to be able to view the body. Um, it

is still very valuable to a lot of people. And the people that do this to perform a great service for a fee. But they perform a great service and are very talented at what they do. And it's I'm sure not the easiest job to to to perform, No, And I was thinking about what it takes to perform that job and not be freaked out, not to have nightmares, not to be um, you know, profoundly affected in ways where you just can't keep doing it. And I don't know,

I think you're just maybe born a certain way. You're just a certain you like if you watch six ft under, it's a it's just a job, you know, it's very commonplace. I don't remember which one was Arthur. I haven't seen it in a long enough time. He was Dwight from the Office. Oh wow, I didn't remember him being on there. Rain Wilson, yeah, Rain Wilson was wow. I have no recollection of that whatsoever I got. Yeah, he was just

on at least one season, maybe two. But he lived in the Fisher Home and uh as a tenant and was there in balmer and was sort of an odd ball. He ended up in this weird sort of relationship with the mom uh that bordered on sexual but not quite though. The embalmer I remember is Ileana Douglas. Yeah, yeah, she was great early on. She just kind of worked at the Fisher House for a little bit. She was fantastic, A big fan of hers, But you know, the main

embalmer was usually it was usually Michael. If you loved her in six ft Under, you would love her in the intro video to the Aerosmith d at Disney Hollywood Studios. I think she's great. It's one of the most piece oar cameos you will ever see. And before I retired movie crush I was I know mentioned it before, but if you were a six ft Under fan, please go listen to my great, great interview with Alan Ball for the twentieth anniversary of six ft Under it was a

lot of fun. So UM, Okay, so we're talking about the modern process, Like if you're an embalmer, if you're a restorative artist at whatever you are, if you're Ileana Douglas, UM, you have certain steps that you're going to follow. And apparently everybody is different, which is not really surprising, but I think it's worth pointing out. Like people die in all sorts of different ways, and they arrive at a funeral home in all sorts of different states differ yep.

And because of all these differences, how you're approached and the stuff that is UM like the measures taken in the steps undertaken to get you back to UM, something like a peaceful life like presentation. Um, They're just gonna be different for every person, but there are some general steps and categories that everything's gonna fall into. Yeah. My favorite part of this article was when it the UM they interviewed someone who did this and they said, there

isn't a standard amount of time. It takes. An embalming takes as long as it takes. I was like, it takes about a third of an episode of six ft under That's all it takes. It's like, I'm a specialist. Uh so the first things and again it's gonna differ, but generally speaking, um, if any you know, because hair can still grow some if you had any facial hair grow after you passed away, or we're just unshaven and are typically clean shaven, uh, they will shave that hair off.

If you have a beard or mustache or something, they're gonna leave that obviously. But um, sure, you don't want to like change radically your appearance on your wedding day or your funeral day. Yeah, that's a big if you're planning on getting married, don't let anyone talk you into shaving whatever you have on your face just because it's your wedding day. I mean, both of those are times you want to look like yourself. Look yourself. I do

whatever you want, it's your life. Don't want yuck anyone's young, but feel feel you should feel comfortable and looking like yourself. I got a cheesy fifteen year ago goatee on my wedding day that I now look back on. I'm like, why was I wearing that stupid goatee? Yeah, you were in that and some Oakley's backward on the back of your head. Yeah, but that was a weird look for you. You know, you're you're like chewing gum, talking like yeah, my fly was down, that's just me. Uh So you

shave that face. If the and imagine the family has you know, some say so if they're like no, like you know, they always had a five o'clops stubble and that was their favorite thing. He was super into George Michael exactly. Alright, p uh so you close the eyes, but those eyes have gotta stay closed. Sure, um so they would. Sometimes they'll use skin glue. Sometimes they use

something called an eye cap. It's like a little fleshy oval shaped kind of like your eye that sits on the eye and secures that eyelid in place, because you want those eyes stay closed. Another thing you want to stay closed is the mouth. You don't want it suddenly falling open, as if the cadaver is now going to address everybody at the viewing um. And so they'll do like pretty scary stuff to it, like wiring the jaw shut.

If it really wants to stay open, or if it's just kind of like you just want to make sure it doesn't to come open, you can just sew it shut and there's all sorts of sewing techniques. But either way, the mouth is going to stay shut. And then once you have it shut like that, um, you can kind of manipulate it into doing whatever you want, like kind of resting peacefully, smiling a little bit, blowing into a saxophone,

that kind of thing. Yeah. I think a lot of times they'll put cotton in the mouth before they so or wire or it shut, because I think that just fills it out a little bit. Uh, you know, like Marlon Brando style. M m. Yeah, he actually had a piece made for the Godfather, but did he I think he auditioned with cotton. What a great idea, Like, it just made him that character and not Marlon Brando, even

though it's still Marlon Brando. It's one of those really weird times where you can watch it and you're like, I'm watching Brando, but you're also totally buying the character. Yeah. I think he was in his forties when he made that. Dude is crazy. Yeah, that's a good movie. I mean they aged him up obviously, but it's one of those that's one of those things where you realize you're older if you're older than like something in pop culture. Yeah, boy,

I remember when that when it hit me. I started watching baseball one season and realized that I was older than like all of the team. That was the first time I ever felt old. And it was only like twenty two, but they were all like nineteen at the time, you know. Or when one of your favorite players, like you're watching their kids play later. Oh yeah, or your favorite player as a manager, it's like, wait, when did that happen? Yeah, totally, it's it's the pits for sure.

The other one too, that was going around the internet for a while was when, uh something about you know that moment you realize that you're older than all of the traveling Wilburies were. And they made that out. They seem so old they did. They seemed like they were sixty. They were there in their forties. I think where they really. I mean, I think Orbison was a little older, but maybe not. I don't know. Okay, I'm meant to do that research for this article for this episode, but I forgot. Well,

I'll tell you some research I was doing. I talked about blowing into a saxophone with the mouth. I looked high and low for stories like that, because surely somewhere somebody was buried some some sacks. Guy was buried with the sacks. And I couldn't find some like true tales of a mortician, you know, saying like yeah, I did I did that once, or anything even remotely like it. So if you're a mortician or a restorative artist or an undertaker, I would love to hear any story like that.

Who was the saxomaphonist from us Murphy? Yeah but he did, Yeah, buried with the saxophone, playing a saxophone and wearing sunglasses and sandals. Alright, so you got the mouth shut, you got the eyes taken care of, and it's right here that we're going to take a break and leave you in suspense on what happens with the rest of the body. How about that? Very nice? All right, So the mouth is shut, eyes are shut. They're gonna stay that way.

I'm actually gonna read this part if I may, because I found a great interview with someone who does this for a living, I think from the Guardian, and uh it has a little more detail than the article that we used, and it's just sort of lays it all out there. So thank you to the Guardian for this interview. Uh, they said, They use a scalpel to make an incision

near the right collar bone. Uh. And then they're they're looking for the carotid artery and the internal jugular vein and they make a little nick in each of those. And they put these arterial tubes in the artery and you point one towards the heart, and then you do another one towards the head. And then you have a drain tube a k a. Angled forceps and you put that in the vein to facilitate that drainage of the

blood because that that blood's got to come out. That's what you're doing basically, is you're pumping in embalming fluid, which we'll get to what that is in a sect, and you're removing all the blood. And that is connected to a misch sen that no longer is like a footpump type of thing. It's it's powered by electricity, uses gears. He's just wooden gear still though. Uh. And then that's

connected to the arterial tube directed towards the heart. And then you regulate your pressure and all that stuff and get you the rate of flow going that you need. And you're kind of adjusting everything depending on who it is. And like the body size and how things are going because every case is different. And then that fluid starts going through the hose and it pushes through the art arterial system and the blood is forced out through the jugular vein and then it is washed down the drain

and you eventually drink it. Mm hmm. Don't they have to sequest her that stuff? Is it really washed down the regular drain? No way, Just like your poop and p. Blood goes down the drain, into the into the waste system. Poop and p goes down the drain. We did a whole episode on it blood to really yeah they I mean, obviously you have to dispose of the embalming fluid and stuff in a different way, but you were you were

literally just draining that blood down the drain. Well. I remember one of our episodes What Can be Done with the dead Body. One of the things they were talking about was using auto license so that it turned you into a goo that could legally be poured down the drain. I didn't realize your blood could be that's insane. Wow. Yeah, there's one six Under episode where they have a clog in their system. Oh yeah, I remember the blood all comes up to the floor horror movie. So, Um, that

embalming fluid is uh pretty special stuff. Most people associated with formale hyde, and it definitely does contain formale hyde. Um, but it also contains some other stuff too. UM. When you put it all together, the body is not only preserved, but it's also disinfected, which is not something you would think about. But if say, you know, somebody died of a contagious disease and you're sitting there kneeling on a little kneeler in front of their call, been talking quietly

to them. If they hadn't been embalved, you could conceivably catch that infectious disease because it would still be present in their body. Uh. Embalming takes care of that. The formale high that's in the embalming fluid actually um hardens and dehydrates the blood vessels uh that it's put through uh, and then some other stuff like um uh galuta aldehy to believe is one is a disinfectant and it actually

kills bacteria in the body and prevents it from coming back. UM. So it's it's preserved, uh, and it's also disinfected too. And that was just the arterial um that you talked about. There's there's another part of the body, the abdominal cavity, that requires a separate additional procedure, right, yeah, and you know we should note that like there again, not to bring up six ft under again, but they really were pretty accurate and how they did it. They're doing like

a soapy, gentle massage on the body. They're they're bending the knees and the legs and the elbows and sort of the limbs and this all just sort of helps facilitate the flow through the body. It also restores movement to the body. Again, where after rigorously said in two. But yeah, they'll also sometimes I saw add into embalming fluid dies that kind of tint the skin healthier color. Again, let's let's blue. I guess, let's blue more peach, right, yeah,

that's really not but sure. Uh yeah, So the cavity, and this is from the same Guardian article, they suction out the fluid from the hollow organs with something well it's something called a troke car. But you might remember from our episode on the video game what was it Night Trap, Night look Out behind You. So they use an actual choke car and then uh, what he called a very high index fluid, which is the stuff that

we're talking about. Um, I think even more high index than what goes through the arteries and the blood vessels. And then the incision is closed with a little circular plastic button called a trocar button. Yeah. That came from a Verge article about a there's supposedly a woman in Russia who was embalmed alive and they got in touch with an actual embalmer, like a third or fourth generation funeral home person. Um and got kind of the skinny

on the evolvement process. And his name escapes me right now. But um, if you look up Russian woman embombed alive on the Verge you will find the interview with him was really enlightening interesting. And what did that reference the button? Yeah? That was the person who's talking about the trocar and the trocar button. Oh from the Guardian article. No, from the Verge article. Okay, well I was talking about the guy from the Guardian article. Got okay, yeah, I'm talking

about a different guy. Okay, good, good for that person too. Should them off with our two different embalmers? See who wins? That's why I configut what you're talking about. You're like, that's from the thing. I was like, no, that's not what are you talking about. It's from the other thing. You're like that it's from the other thing. Uh. They say in general, although again everybody's different, every process differs, but roughly about a gallon of embalming solution per fifty

pounds of body weight, it's what it's gonna take. Yeah, And depending on whether it's the arterial solution, which is pretty low index um, it could be one and a half to five percent from ald hyde or off its

high index. It could be from alde hyde for the abdominal cavity, which you said something earlier when we were talking about canopic jars about getting the inners out, And it would make sense you would want to use higher index from alde hyde embalming solution in the abdominal cavity because that's just basically a bag of bacteria in there. So I would guess that's where your decomposition really starts to take off and center from is in your gut,

wouldn't you? I would think so. But that's just so mean to the to the microbiome that's kept you alive from now and now finally they get their great reward at the end, and then they're wiped out by formal the hide. Yeah, it doesn't seem fair, I know. Humans. Yeah, forget about the little guy. I guess we should talk about the pros and cons of embalming. Uh. You know,

we we already mentioned that. Um, even though I'm not into it, that people still in in America these days, and I guess in Canada and I guess New Zealand want to see the body and it can bring people peace and closure and all the things that we've talked about in all of our other uh funerary podcast episodes. Uh. And that's really the main purposes are to disinfect this body, preserve it, and restore it so people can look at it.

So there's a question, though, Chuck, like, do people actually need to see the body foreclosure or is that kind of like a funeral industry hustle. Yeah. I mean I I can only speak personally and saying I do not, and I think it is personal. I don't think it's kind of thing you can quantify. Although I know that you did find a study and there's not a lot of studies like this, but you did find one that followed people after it was sort of a big tragedy and found that people that saw the body UM had

better outcomes. But it didn't really say what that meant. I guess happier or more content I believe less regret was one of the was one of the UM qualifiers. UM that they've they felt less um stuck in the grieving process. UM, but it's like you said, it does

seem to be personal and UM. What they found interestingly was that people who decided not to see the body and people who decided to see the body, and this includes bodies that are like like we're presented UM long before they ever made it through the funeral home, like through through people who had I d like a family member at the morgue, all right, so they were in like the worst possible state. UM that both of them. Both groups expressed like almost none expressed regret for their decision.

So the impression I got is like, whatever your gut is telling you you, you should probably go with it. Like if you just have a gut instinct that you yes, you you need to see the body, even if people try to talk you out of it, and apparently they will, UM, you need to just follow through on it. It's your right to see a deceased loved one. Um, not necessarily to touch it or to be alone in a room

with your deceased loved one. Uh, but you have a right to see them, and if you want to, you should be insistent on that, because you could regret not being able to or not deciding not to because you were talked out of it. In the same way some people will tell you like you need to see the body foreclosure, and if your instincts are telling you should not see this body, go with that. That's from what I saw in this British Medical Journal survey of people who had seen or not seen a body of a

loved one. That seemed to be kind of like the through line like trust your gut and just just know you made the right decision one way or the other. Yeah, and uh, there's more than one six ft Under episode where they tackle that very issue of either people not wanting to get involved or you know, it's not a comedy. You keep laughing every time I mentioned it, but it's

just so funny. Rain Wilson was just such a goofball. Uh. It is really accurate though, as far as I think they tackle so many real situations because there are episodes where people don't want to get involved and they're trying to talk them into it and the reasons why. And you know, I don't see it so much of a hustle as you know, this is their job and they are salespeople. They're selling their service, so they're they're gonna

do that. Um. I don't want to be involved, and I'm not gonna be if it's up to me, um and my rights being respected. But uh, I just want to be cremated as soon as possible. I don't. I don't want to be filled full of stuff. If you die with your beard, you want your beard left on, right, Yeah, you burn it up. Although now they I think they're using a I think they're dissolving people more that aren't more but yeah, not not more than uh in numbers, yeah,

more than these do. Well. That's so that's the thing. So that auto license process again, go listen to what can be done with the dead body episode, But it's where you basically sterilize the body into Google that could, like I said, be poured down the drain. Um. But even if you're cremated, Chuck, there's a there's a good chance that if you're cremated in the United States, Canada,

or New Zealand, you were also embalmed too. And one of the big pushbacks you don't want to be that's true, right, But I'm saying, like, uh, if you didn't state otherwise in your family gave permission that you might have been embolved through the whole funeral process and then at the end of it, rather than being buried, you were cremated um. And the one of the big concerns, aside from religious reasons that people usually have in opposing embalming, is the

environmental impact on it. Because we talked about arsenic you know, leaching into the groundwater. Well, there's a good chance that all the formalde hyde and glut aalde hyde and methanol and ethanol and everything else that was pumped into your body um is going to make it into the ground too. And it's not an insubstantial amount of embalming fluid that is put into the ground through burials every year. I think there's enough to to fill eight Olympic sized swimming

pools just in America alone every year. That's how much embalming fluid is committed. To the ground in the bodies of people who were involved. But then it also can affect the air quality too, right, because people can be embalved and then cremated and then all that stuff gets released in to the air from the cremation process. Sure, and and you're also working around it if you work

in that industry. I think the EPA, the United States, and the World Health Organization list formalde hyde as a probable carcinogen and mutagen, so you know, they take great precautions to do it safely. But you're working around very dangerous materials and like you said, you were burning that stuff into the air or eventually it will go into the ground. So um, it's not like the old wooden box caskets of old as far as how quickly they deteriorate.

But like eventually those things will deteriorate too, right, Uh yeah, I mean eventually or the concrete will crack and it'll leach out. Like if it's not an immediate problem now, it's not like it's never going to be, you know what I mean. Yes, and we're running out of space. Yeah, that's another one too. So all good reasons to be um to be cremated I guess to turn into cremated remains, not cremines. Now, remember I think in our cremation episode we said that that was that was not classy. Oh

I don't remember that. So a couple of things. You got anything else? I got nothing else. A couple of things. That funeral director was named Caleb Wilde, the guy who was interviewed in the Verge. I want to give a shout out to him. I also want to give a shout out to who is widely believed to have been the best embalmed body of all time, a Chinese noble woman named the Lady Die. That wasn't her name, that's her nickname. She died in b C and you've probably

seen pictures of around the internet. Um kind of on like an examination table with you know, class straped over her breasts and genitals for modesty. But other than that, hanging out and for being years old. That she's in a ghastly state. But she's still like her skin still there, it still has you know, kind of some color to her. Her hair is still there. It's it's pretty amazing. So look up the Lady Die if you're dare um. But she's one of the best preserved bodies of all time.

Amazing and I do have more more things. Since you looked up your person, I felt like I had to look at my person. Okay, fair enough? Uh? And from the Guardian that is jin Park Mustachio. Oh nice working as a funeral director and embalmer, at least at the time of this writing in New Jersey. I think that's great, Chuck, we did a great job here. Uh. If you want to know more about embalming, I'll ask a restorative artist and see if they look at you weird for calling

him a restorative artist. And since I said that, it's time for a listener Mayo, I'm gonna call this email from Ron Swanson of Parks and Wreck. Hey guys, I've been listening to you for years, uh and love your podcast. You always deliver interesting, interesting topics and fun ways. But I gotta say on the latest podcast about Les Pond Leo Fender, you mispronounced the city of Waukesha, Wisconsin. And boy, we've heard it today right and we're going to for

months to come. But this is one of those good people of Wisconsin are not having it. No, they're not. They're definitely are kind of up in arms with algia. What do we say wa Kesha and it's Waukeshaw. Yeah, well I think we even made a nod to Kesha and said Waukesha. Oh did we? I think so? Brother, You're like at least I meant to right. Uh, we heard from a lot of folks already, and and it

just got dropped like you know, hours ago. Only emailed descrrection because I'm a resident of Walkeshaw and even work for Walksha County and I'm used to hearing it pronounce the incorrect way a lot. It's always also gave me an excuse to find the email you guys to say I'm such a big fan, keep up the great work. Let us from Ron Swanson, who works, believe it or not, at the Parks Department of walker Shot County. Very nice, thanks a lot of Ron. Quite a coincidence, and I'm

sure Ron has to hear that all the time. Wait, why? Who? What? What's a coin? What's a coincidence? Ron Swanson? The name sounds very familiar. Is that parks and write? The TV show Nick Offerman's character was Ron Swanson. No, so this guy is Ron Swanson? Actually insane? Wow? That's amazing. Yeah, pretty great. Great, um, well great, thanks for writing in Ron Swanson if it is your real name, and if

it is, that's pretty great. Uh. And if you want to be like Ron Swanson and be an amazing coincidence, you can send us an email to Stuff Podcast iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.