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How Embalming Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:14
Speaker 1: and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant and Jerry's here too,
0:17
Speaker 1: And this is Stuff you should Know part of the
0:21
Speaker 1: Famed and Legendary Deaths suite, which just rambles on. Yeah,
0:29
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about this in a couple
0:31
Speaker 1: of them, but I'm surprised of two things. That we
0:35
Speaker 1: haven't covered this in full yet too, and that you
0:38
Speaker 1: managed to find an article on our old our old
0:42
Speaker 1: Pals website and housetop works dot com we hadn't used
0:47
Speaker 1: or written dude. I I scour the site frequently and
0:51
Speaker 1: everyone too. Yeah, sometimes you can find like how did
0:55
Speaker 1: this slip by? That's why it just keeps you going,
0:58
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Yeah, it's hard to believe.
1:00
Speaker 1: We still get a lot of a lot of our
1:02
Speaker 1: shorties ideas from there, which is great, But it has
1:05
Speaker 1: been a while I think since we were able to
1:07
Speaker 1: find something. It's just hiding in there, hiding in the
1:11
Speaker 1: blood vessels of the body. Very nice and speaking of bodies, Chuck,
1:15
Speaker 1: I don't remember where we talked about this before, but
1:18
Speaker 1: I do remember that we talked about the death of
1:21
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln and how he was one of the first
1:26
Speaker 1: um presidents. Two it must have been lying in state.
1:30
Speaker 1: I'll bet it was the short stuff on lying in state,
1:33
Speaker 1: because I think he was one of the first presidents
1:34
Speaker 1: to to lie in state in different places. And the
1:38
Speaker 1: reason he was able to do that is because he
1:41
Speaker 1: was involved he was subject to some modern chemical embalming
1:46
Speaker 1: techniques that had recently been introduced by a guy named Dr.
1:50
Speaker 1: Thomas Holmes, and it allowed Abraham Lincoln to take a
1:56
Speaker 1: very leisurely nineteen days to make it from Washington, D's
2:00
Speaker 1: see to his hometown of Springfield, Illinois for burial, which
2:04
Speaker 1: is a long time for a corpse in the nineteenth
2:08
Speaker 1: century to be above the ground. And yet he was
2:12
Speaker 1: still fairly presentable by the time he got to Springfield
2:17
Speaker 1: when he was buried, and um, it was all thanks
2:20
Speaker 1: to that embalming process. Yeah. And this was and we'll
2:24
Speaker 1: get to the we'll get to Holmes Moore in a minute,
2:26
Speaker 1: But this was during the Civil War, So great timing
2:30
Speaker 1: for Lincoln. Also terrible timing for Lincoln just in general,
2:35
Speaker 1: but as far as going on display, great timing previous
2:38
Speaker 1: to this, he would have been on literally on ice.
2:41
Speaker 1: When you hear like, you know, the bodies on ice.
2:43
Speaker 1: That's how they used to do it. It's the only
2:44
Speaker 1: way they could do it. Yeah, I have to say,
2:46
Speaker 1: you mean. I went to this thing called the Merchants
2:49
Speaker 1: House Museum in New York. It's the oldest house in
2:51
Speaker 1: New York and it was owned by a sea merchant
2:54
Speaker 1: named sea Bury Treadwell, if I'm not mistaken, one of
2:57
Speaker 1: the great names of all time. And we just happened
2:59
Speaker 1: to go at a time when they were recreating what
3:02
Speaker 1: the house would have been like for the funerals Seaburry Treadwell,
3:06
Speaker 1: and they had like a cast get set up and
3:08
Speaker 1: everything in the living room they had lilies everywhere just
3:11
Speaker 1: stunk of lilies, which is one of the things they
3:13
Speaker 1: used to mask the smell of decay. And then they
3:17
Speaker 1: also had a little soundtrack playing of water dripping because
3:20
Speaker 1: he would have been on huge blocks of ice to
3:22
Speaker 1: kind of keep him to keep his body cold. But
3:25
Speaker 1: it's one of the cooler things I've ever seen in
3:27
Speaker 1: my life. And you know, walking around the museum even
3:29
Speaker 1: when they don't have something like that going on, it's
3:31
Speaker 1: pretty cool. It's definitely worth the visit. What part of
3:35
Speaker 1: town downtown somewhere in Manhattan. I don't remember exactly where.
3:41
Speaker 1: I don't, but I'm pretty sure it's lower I don't
3:43
Speaker 1: know if it's east side or west side. It's got
3:46
Speaker 1: to be, I mean, that was early New York. Yeah,
3:47
Speaker 1: but it's it's super cool. The Merchant House Museum, if
3:51
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken, fantastic. Uh. And while you're down there,
3:54
Speaker 1: check out the Tenement Museum, Yes, which we have not
3:58
Speaker 1: I've not been to. You've been there, I guess, Yeah, Okay,
4:01
Speaker 1: good stuff. Okay, Yeah, it's very cool. I mean if
4:05
Speaker 1: you like old New York and seeing how things used
4:07
Speaker 1: to be, right and then going downstairs and having some tapas.
4:11
Speaker 1: Oh man, you're having a tapas, tapas or sushi. Uh.
4:16
Speaker 1: But this is h Embalming, however, is not something that
4:19
Speaker 1: was invented during the Civil War that was just sort
4:21
Speaker 1: of using more modern chemicals. Uh, it was. This is
4:26
Speaker 1: something that people have been doing since ancient times. The
4:29
Speaker 1: word itself, embalm just means to put on a bomb.
4:33
Speaker 1: And that comes from the fact that, uh, in ancient times,
4:37
Speaker 1: like we're talking thousands and thousands of years ago. They
4:40
Speaker 1: would put spices and perfume things, kind of anything that
4:45
Speaker 1: they could think of to keep that body from becoming bones. Yeah,
4:49
Speaker 1: and apparently Thomas Holmes was inspired by some Egyptian mummies
4:53
Speaker 1: that he had been studying and realized like they had
4:56
Speaker 1: done a really great job of embalming techniques, so started
5:00
Speaker 1: coming up with his own embalming concoctions. I believe his
5:03
Speaker 1: was Arsenic that he was using UM, which came into
5:06
Speaker 1: wide US in the eighteen sixties until the nineteen tens,
5:10
Speaker 1: I think UM. But his his introduction of the chemical
5:16
Speaker 1: embalming to the US, it just changed funerals in the
5:20
Speaker 1: United States to this day. We still have things like
5:24
Speaker 1: viewings where you basically say, you know, come see the
5:27
Speaker 1: dead body with your own eyes before the funeral, the
5:30
Speaker 1: night before the funeral wakes. Like all just things that
5:34
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have done. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been able
5:36
Speaker 1: to do UM, delaying funerals for you know, until the
5:39
Speaker 1: weekend when everybody's available. UM. All of the modern trappings
5:44
Speaker 1: of of an American or Canadian or it turns out
5:47
Speaker 1: New Zealand funeral um are based on the fact that
5:51
Speaker 1: Thomas Holmes introduced chemical embolming in the eighteen sixties, and
5:55
Speaker 1: that allows us to do things like that. Now, that's right. Uh.
5:59
Speaker 1: If you want to go back through time and look
6:01
Speaker 1: at the beginnings, you could go all the way back
6:03
Speaker 1: about five thousand years ago to Spain. Uh. There were
6:07
Speaker 1: cadavers found there in uh Lavella. That's why I would
6:15
Speaker 1: go with sure, all right, and this is in Spain,
6:17
Speaker 1: and they were found to be covered in um hundreds
6:21
Speaker 1: of pounds of ground up cinnabar, which is the most
6:24
Speaker 1: delicious way to be involved, right, although I don't know, honey,
6:28
Speaker 1: don't forget honey. Yeah, that's true. Oh it's not sinna bun.
6:32
Speaker 1: I thought it was sinna bun cinnabar. Sorry about that.
6:36
Speaker 1: We talked about cinda bar before. Sin A bun will
6:38
Speaker 1: put you in the tomb from the inside out and
6:43
Speaker 1: actually know that, I think about it. If you ate enough, Yeah,
6:46
Speaker 1: probably so. I haven't had one of those in a
6:47
Speaker 1: long time. Um, And this is like a suspected case basically.
6:51
Speaker 1: If you want to know, like for sure that they
6:54
Speaker 1: were purposely embalming people, you can go back to four
6:57
Speaker 1: thousand b C. With the Egyptians that you were talking about.
7:00
Speaker 1: People would be wrapped in cloth. They would sometimes be
7:03
Speaker 1: buried with charcoal and sand. Uh, they would be buried
7:06
Speaker 1: away from the Nile River or where anywhere where there
7:09
Speaker 1: in our river could reach via flooding. And you know,
7:13
Speaker 1: the idea here is that in the afterlife you were
7:17
Speaker 1: going to be physically resurrected at some point an immortal,
7:20
Speaker 1: so your body needed to be kind of recognizable so
7:24
Speaker 1: the soul and the shadow and the heart and the
7:26
Speaker 1: name of the individual could lure it back. Um, they
7:30
Speaker 1: embalmed about seven and thirty million people, so it was
7:33
Speaker 1: a very common practice, even though the methods that we're
7:37
Speaker 1: going to talk about here in a sect would be
7:39
Speaker 1: different depending on kind of what status you were. And
7:42
Speaker 1: you know, just keep in mind, this wasn't like modern
7:46
Speaker 1: day embalming that you would think like that kind of preservation.
7:49
Speaker 1: It's the kind of preservation to where you don't just
7:52
Speaker 1: rot into bones and eventually just dust. But I mean,
7:56
Speaker 1: the body is like you've seen these embalmed into embodies
8:00
Speaker 1: or you know, they look like sort of baseball gloves
8:03
Speaker 1: at that point, but it's still recognizable as a human
8:06
Speaker 1: body exactly, which in and of itself is a triumph
8:09
Speaker 1: of embalming, because you know, without any embalming, human body,
8:14
Speaker 1: depending on the climate, is going to skeletonize, which is
8:18
Speaker 1: just a kay into nothing left but a skeleton in
8:21
Speaker 1: anywhere from a few weeks to a few years. So
8:24
Speaker 1: the idea that like you said, it's still a recognizable
8:26
Speaker 1: human with with tissue still intact and sometimes hair and
8:29
Speaker 1: things like that. Like that, that was a successful embalming
8:33
Speaker 1: and then some oh yeah, big time. We even have
8:36
Speaker 1: a description thanks to a historian from Greece name Herodotus
8:41
Speaker 1: who described how they did it. Uh, and you know,
8:45
Speaker 1: it makes sense considering what we know now. Like if
8:48
Speaker 1: you're if you hunt an animal and if you're into
8:51
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, the first thing that you do
8:54
Speaker 1: when you're when you're field dressing that animal is you
8:56
Speaker 1: take those organs out because that keeps the body very
9:00
Speaker 1: hot and warm, and that is going to really just
9:03
Speaker 1: speed up the bacteria and the decay. So the first
9:06
Speaker 1: thing that they did was remove the vital organs to
9:10
Speaker 1: to cool that body down, remove the brain, wash it
9:14
Speaker 1: and palm wine and then uh, you have all these
9:19
Speaker 1: different vases. You know, at the time they didn't have
9:20
Speaker 1: these modern chemicals. They had herbs and stuff like that.
9:23
Speaker 1: They had these canopic jars filled to the top with
9:27
Speaker 1: all these various herbs that they used. Yep. Uh. Then
9:31
Speaker 1: they would basically take the body and fill it with
9:34
Speaker 1: some mirror or other resins, perfumes, that kind of stuff,
9:38
Speaker 1: stash it in some potassium nitrate for I believe seventy
9:42
Speaker 1: days to kind of desiccate it. And then after that
9:45
Speaker 1: is when they would put it in those famous bandages,
9:48
Speaker 1: wrap it up like what we understand as a mummy um,
9:51
Speaker 1: and then uh put it in the coffin and inside
9:55
Speaker 1: it two and we did a whole episode on Mummy.
9:58
Speaker 1: So if you're just like, I want to know more,
10:00
Speaker 1: tell me some more about mummies. We're gonna take our
10:02
Speaker 1: leave for mummies here. But you can pause this one,
10:05
Speaker 1: go listen to the Mummy's episode. Maybe you have a sandwich,
10:08
Speaker 1: and then come back and listen to the rest of
10:10
Speaker 1: this episode and you will be chock full of embalming. Yeah,
10:14
Speaker 1: and then maybe top it off with our cremation episode
10:16
Speaker 1: just for a full day that since you had the sandwich. Um.
10:21
Speaker 1: So this process was you know, kind of with all
10:23
Speaker 1: the bells and whistles, was for people with a lot
10:27
Speaker 1: of money. Maybe the royal family even of the time,
10:31
Speaker 1: you know, the kind of the further you went down
10:33
Speaker 1: the social ladder, the less complicated it got as far
10:37
Speaker 1: as having access to some of this stuff. So you know,
10:40
Speaker 1: one thing they might do if you were sort of
10:42
Speaker 1: maybe middle class was injected with cedar oil, store it
10:46
Speaker 1: in that potassium nitrate for the same amount of time,
10:50
Speaker 1: and then withdrawal that oil. And I got the feeling
10:53
Speaker 1: that that just kind of pulls out a lot of
10:55
Speaker 1: the stuff with it, and then you've got skin and bones.
10:59
Speaker 1: And then if you really we're sort of at the
11:01
Speaker 1: top of the totem pole um, they would pull the
11:05
Speaker 1: intestines and then just cover the body and that potassium
11:09
Speaker 1: nitrate and probably not even for seven seventy days. Very nice.
11:14
Speaker 1: It was a beautiful early s YSK reference to I know,
11:17
Speaker 1: I can't wait to get emails if I got that wrong,
11:20
Speaker 1: right right, Um, we'll be like, you need to go
11:24
Speaker 1: further back in the catalog, friend, Yes, exactly. Do you
11:27
Speaker 1: want to keep going and talking about the ancient world?
11:29
Speaker 1: Or take a break? First? Oh, I got a sandwich,
11:33
Speaker 1: so let's take that break. Okay, we're gonna we'll be
11:35
Speaker 1: right back. Everybody and we're gonna talk about you guessed it,
11:37
Speaker 1: more ancient world in balming, all right, chuck. So the Egyptians,
12:05
Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptians do get a lot of the glory
12:07
Speaker 1: and credit for embalming techniques, and rightfully so, I mean,
12:10
Speaker 1: they got really good at it. Apparently the peak of
12:13
Speaker 1: their embalming prowess came from the New Kingdom from fift
12:18
Speaker 1: seventy to ten seventy five b c. UM. But you know,
12:22
Speaker 1: that's kind of where people people's minds go when they
12:25
Speaker 1: think of embalming. What's interesting, though, is there were other
12:28
Speaker 1: cultures that were totally detached from Egyptians at the time.
12:33
Speaker 1: There the Egyptian influence and culture would not possibly have
12:36
Speaker 1: spread to these areas that we're doing very similar things um.
12:41
Speaker 1: In some cases even predating the Egyptian embalming process. UM.
12:46
Speaker 1: There was a group called the Chinchorros who or in
12:50
Speaker 1: I believe modern day Ecuador and Chile. I'm sorry, they
12:55
Speaker 1: were in Chile and about seven thousand years ago they
12:59
Speaker 1: were disassembling bodies, treating the body parts with embalming um
13:04
Speaker 1: I guess, fluids, um resins, that kind of stuff, and
13:08
Speaker 1: then reassembling them with wooden structures so that they could
13:11
Speaker 1: still I guess, move around do the robot and stuff
13:14
Speaker 1: like that, covering them with clay and painting them. This
13:17
Speaker 1: is seven thousand years ago, so it's clear there's a
13:20
Speaker 1: real impulse among humans to like kind of preserve bodies.
13:25
Speaker 1: It's not a new thing. It's a really ancient impulse.
13:29
Speaker 1: It is. You mentioned honey earlier. I think it was
13:32
Speaker 1: the Assyrians that we're using honey. Persians were using wax.
13:38
Speaker 1: I believe the indigenous people of the Canary Islands, the guanches.
13:43
Speaker 1: Is the way Google told me to say it. Look
13:45
Speaker 1: that one up, good job. Let's say what walks shaw?
13:51
Speaker 1: Oh boy. Uh. They would remove the soft internal organs
13:55
Speaker 1: and then it's kind of like food preservation techniques. In
13:59
Speaker 1: some cases they fill it salt and vegetable powder and
14:02
Speaker 1: the same goes true. Uh for the Hivado in Ecuador
14:06
Speaker 1: and Peru, they were they took their their tribal chiefs
14:10
Speaker 1: and would it said here, they would slow roast them
14:12
Speaker 1: over a fire. I think they were kind of smoking them. Yeah,
14:17
Speaker 1: for preservation. There's really no other way to put it.
14:20
Speaker 1: And there was probably some part of the people around
14:24
Speaker 1: there's brain who's like this sounds really good, you think, so,
14:28
Speaker 1: there's just no way. Um. There's also instances of um
14:34
Speaker 1: Buddhist monks being preserved, which is a little interesting because
14:39
Speaker 1: Um Buddhism usually calls for cremation, although I don't believe
14:42
Speaker 1: there's any prohibition on embalming UM. And they would pack
14:48
Speaker 1: the body and salt for a few months. And there
14:51
Speaker 1: was a pretty famous case of a uh Tibetan monk
14:56
Speaker 1: um being discovered accidentally this way, when somebody for some
15:00
Speaker 1: reason x ray a Buddhist statue sitting Buddha. They found
15:04
Speaker 1: out that there was a mummified monk inside. Who didn't
15:08
Speaker 1: that neat, that's pretty cool. Yeah, I mean imagine being
15:12
Speaker 1: the guy to figure that out, and just how surprising
15:15
Speaker 1: that would be, you know, and by guy of course,
15:18
Speaker 1: that it was gender neutral. Guy. Sure, Uh, not all
15:22
Speaker 1: cultures got into this, though, I think you mentioned Buddhists
15:25
Speaker 1: generally don't UM. Back in the day, Sumerians and Babylonians
15:30
Speaker 1: and Jewish people, uh did not often use embombing in
15:34
Speaker 1: these days. If you're Muslim or Jewish, you know, and
15:39
Speaker 1: if you're if you're strict about it, they prohibit that.
15:42
Speaker 1: And I think Uh, it's pretty rare if you're Hindu
15:47
Speaker 1: as well, because they usually cremate just pretty quickly. Yeah,
15:50
Speaker 1: there's not like a prohibition on it. It's just yeah,
15:53
Speaker 1: it doesn't come up, you know. Um So, from what
15:58
Speaker 1: I can tell, Chuck's going back to it today for
16:00
Speaker 1: a second. The countries that have far in a way
16:03
Speaker 1: the highest rates of embalming are the US, Canada, and
16:07
Speaker 1: like I said, New Zealand, and I saw Australia somewhere
16:11
Speaker 1: and I double checked and it said no, it's not
16:13
Speaker 1: very common in Australia. So maybe listeners in Australia can
16:16
Speaker 1: let us know one way or the other. And then
16:18
Speaker 1: apparently it's also not common in the UK, but it's
16:21
Speaker 1: common enough that the funeral industry is very much interested
16:24
Speaker 1: in keeping embalming processes as they are. Um So, I
16:28
Speaker 1: guess some people get involved in the UK. But I
16:32
Speaker 1: guess America is the world leader in embalming corpses. Now,
16:36
Speaker 1: what do you mean as they are like they just
16:38
Speaker 1: don't want to be bothered and regulated or something. Don't know,
16:41
Speaker 1: I don't understand, I think I get. I can't tell
16:44
Speaker 1: if they just are being resistant to change or if
16:47
Speaker 1: they're genuinely isn't an alternative, And they're like, we actually
16:51
Speaker 1: need these techniques to preserve people for people who want
16:54
Speaker 1: to be involved. I can't quite tell, but we'll talk
16:57
Speaker 1: about any controversy a little further down the road. All right. Uh,
17:01
Speaker 1: there have been some, you know, aside from King tut,
17:04
Speaker 1: there's been quite a few famous people throughout antiquity that
17:07
Speaker 1: have been embalmed, including but not limited to Alexander the Great,
17:12
Speaker 1: Charles the Great a KA Charlemagne a k A CEO
17:17
Speaker 1: of the Holy Roman Empire, CEO of the h r E.
17:21
Speaker 1: That's right, he was involved and placed in a sitting
17:25
Speaker 1: position in his tomb, which was super cool. Yeah. Uh,
17:29
Speaker 1: and we know that because a couple of hundred years
17:31
Speaker 1: after he died, the then ruler of the Holy Roman
17:36
Speaker 1: Empire Otto the Third cracked his tumb open and went
17:39
Speaker 1: inside and he's sitting up super unsettling. Yeah, he's watching me.
17:47
Speaker 1: So they're using herbs, and they're using salt, and they're
17:51
Speaker 1: using smoke, and they're using things that they could find
17:54
Speaker 1: at the time, kind of like I said, how you
17:55
Speaker 1: would preserve um an animal if you were to kill
17:59
Speaker 1: and want to eat that them all and because that's
18:02
Speaker 1: all we are anyway, right, And it started to decline
18:06
Speaker 1: in the Middle Ages. It was costly. Um, these herbs
18:10
Speaker 1: were expensive unless you were super upper class or even royal,
18:15
Speaker 1: then you couldn't afford it to begin with. H And
18:17
Speaker 1: then religious opposition kind of starts to pop up in
18:21
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages. And it was sort of during this
18:24
Speaker 1: pause that they actually um took took a leap forward,
18:28
Speaker 1: I guess you could say, and the Renaissance, when all
18:32
Speaker 1: of a sudden people like, hey, science is awesome, art
18:35
Speaker 1: is cool, the body is great, let's investigate it more.
18:38
Speaker 1: And it was da Vinci himself that actually developed was
18:42
Speaker 1: the as far as I can tell, one of the
18:43
Speaker 1: first two or the first to develop an injection method,
18:47
Speaker 1: which is sort of, um, not sort of, it's exactly
18:50
Speaker 1: how we do it today, when instead of like putting
18:54
Speaker 1: things inside the body cavity, you would actually inject something
18:57
Speaker 1: into the bloodstream, right. And if you've ever been in
19:01
Speaker 1: an embalming room, um, you know that they use exactly
19:05
Speaker 1: the same invention Da Vinci came up with, with wooden
19:08
Speaker 1: gears to power the pumps and a flying machine that
19:12
Speaker 1: goes around the room that I can't quite put my
19:15
Speaker 1: finger on what it does. I think it's mostly for show.
19:18
Speaker 1: I think so too, so UM. The French and the
19:22
Speaker 1: Italians really were the ones we talked about UM Thomas
19:26
Speaker 1: uh homes Um in the United States, and you know,
19:31
Speaker 1: we do that because he was an American and this
19:33
Speaker 1: is America an American podcast. UM. But prior to him,
19:39
Speaker 1: the French and the Italians in the nineteenth century, UM
19:42
Speaker 1: really kind of got into figuring out how to preserve
19:46
Speaker 1: um corpses. And the reason why it had nothing to
19:50
Speaker 1: do with funerals. It had to do with UM the
19:52
Speaker 1: advancement of medical science to where all those grave robbed
19:57
Speaker 1: corpses that were used by med students needed to be
20:01
Speaker 1: preserved somehow, and so that really kind of pushed chemical
20:06
Speaker 1: embalming to advance by leaps and bounds. And we have
20:09
Speaker 1: our French and Italian brothers and sisters to thank for that.
20:13
Speaker 1: That's right. And we also have a great live episode
20:16
Speaker 1: on grave robbing. Yeah, live in London. It was. That
20:22
Speaker 1: was one of the most fun trips we've ever done.
20:24
Speaker 1: That was a good tour. It was a great tour.
20:27
Speaker 1: Remember that we performed in a church in London. It
20:30
Speaker 1: was just one of them. I can't believe they let
20:31
Speaker 1: us in that place. I know. I felt like really
20:34
Speaker 1: like I I can't curse here, and I just went
20:36
Speaker 1: out the window really quick after a couple of gene teas.
20:39
Speaker 1: And here's a little hint, London crowds, it wouldn't kill
20:43
Speaker 1: you to make a little more noise, and you know,
20:45
Speaker 1: like ham it up a little bit, sure, because when
20:48
Speaker 1: you're on stage you can't tell that people are enjoying it. No,
20:52
Speaker 1: but that was really the big problem was managed more
20:55
Speaker 1: than London. Yeah, that's true. But then when we talked everyone,
20:58
Speaker 1: they're like, no, we loved it. We just don't to
21:00
Speaker 1: we don't express ourselves like Americans, caring over yourself. All right,
21:07
Speaker 1: So where are we are in Italy? We are in France.
21:09
Speaker 1: Things are moving along. They are using chemicals now, like arsenic,
21:13
Speaker 1: like you mentioned, copper sulfate, zinc chloride, potassium carbonate. They're
21:18
Speaker 1: basically trying everything. Sure, the chloride of mercury. Is this
21:22
Speaker 1: a deadly chemical? Yes, well then let's use it for
21:26
Speaker 1: embalming and see what happen. Let's give it a shot. Uh.
21:29
Speaker 1: And then in the US is finally when we come
21:31
Speaker 1: back to Dr Thomas Holmes introduced on the battlefield of
21:34
Speaker 1: World War two. Uh, because basically people, you know, families
21:38
Speaker 1: wanted to go out and see their loved ones, and
21:41
Speaker 1: they had to preserve them because it took a while
21:42
Speaker 1: to get to these battlefields in these places, in these hospitals, uh,
21:47
Speaker 1: like field hospitals. Yeah. And in fact, I guess the
21:50
Speaker 1: the Union Army hired and trained embalming surgeons to go
21:54
Speaker 1: out on the battlefields. They paid eighty dollars for an
21:57
Speaker 1: inbalmed body of an officer and thirty dollars for an
22:00
Speaker 1: imborm body of a soldier. And um, it was a
22:04
Speaker 1: big deal for families to be able to come and
22:06
Speaker 1: claim there there they're dead relative and bring them back home,
22:11
Speaker 1: which is yeah. Again, it just changed funerals in the
22:15
Speaker 1: United States. That process changed everything. Um, and it has
22:20
Speaker 1: changed since then, which we'll get to. But one of
22:21
Speaker 1: the things that they needed to change was some of
22:24
Speaker 1: this stuff that they were using, Like you were talking
22:26
Speaker 1: about these dangerous chemicals arsenic um, not the least of
22:30
Speaker 1: which is very dangerous. When these you know, the body
22:33
Speaker 1: eventually does decompose, and then that wooden box that they're
22:36
Speaker 1: buried in decomposes and all of a sudden, you've got arsenic,
22:39
Speaker 1: which doesn't decompose, just leaching into the soil. So if
22:43
Speaker 1: you lived near a cemetery, and if that cemetery was
22:46
Speaker 1: near groundwater, um, you had some trouble going on back
22:50
Speaker 1: in the day. You did. Now it's all fine. It's
22:54
Speaker 1: probably not still right now. I gotta live near a
22:57
Speaker 1: Civil War cemetery, but it's probably not great. No, um,
23:01
Speaker 1: I I did not see the threat of arsenic poisoning
23:05
Speaker 1: from cemetery still today, um, anywhere. But I think it's
23:10
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, it's possible. We put a
23:12
Speaker 1: lot of stuff into the ground, we bury somebody, and
23:15
Speaker 1: it's not not all good, as we'll see. I was
23:18
Speaker 1: being totally facetious that it's all fine today though, because
23:21
Speaker 1: we're still doing the same process. He was using different chemicals,
23:25
Speaker 1: that's right, And I guess that's where we are, sort
23:27
Speaker 1: of the more modern process. Uh. If you are, if
23:32
Speaker 1: you work in the in the funerary industry, if you're
23:36
Speaker 1: I don't know even know the words that they call
23:37
Speaker 1: themselves these days, funerals mists now, like they probably don't
23:44
Speaker 1: call themselves morticians anymore. No, I think they're funeral directors.
23:48
Speaker 1: You can be a funeral director, but if you're you know,
23:50
Speaker 1: in the basement getting your hands dirty, uh like Arthur
23:54
Speaker 1: on six ft under then like what is what is
23:57
Speaker 1: that title? Even embalmer? Okay, And there's you know, if
24:01
Speaker 1: you were a a funeral director, you probably are also
24:06
Speaker 1: an embalmer. Um. But there's also such things as trade
24:10
Speaker 1: Embalmer's people whose job it is to evolved. They're not
24:13
Speaker 1: like that. They don't hang with the families or playing
24:16
Speaker 1: the funeral or anything like. Yeah, they just the body.
24:19
Speaker 1: And there's right. There's one other thing though that um
24:22
Speaker 1: I didn't realize about embalmers, and that it's way more
24:27
Speaker 1: than just their jobs, way more than just embalming the body.
24:31
Speaker 1: Like embalming entails a lot of different um components to
24:35
Speaker 1: where you basically take a corpse and turn it into
24:40
Speaker 1: to a presentable version of a corpse. Yeah, I have
24:43
Speaker 1: a feeling if you sit down in a funeral home
24:47
Speaker 1: they would say something like one of our restorative artists
24:51
Speaker 1: would take care of that process. Yes, I don't know
24:54
Speaker 1: if they call them that, like in the building. The
24:58
Speaker 1: feeling that's the terminology they probably. I don't know. If
25:00
Speaker 1: you want to just kind of you know, keep it legit.
25:03
Speaker 1: You might just to use that all the time. I
25:05
Speaker 1: could see it. But yes, I think I think you
25:06
Speaker 1: might be onto something chunk. But these people are you know,
25:10
Speaker 1: even though I am on record is not not being
25:13
Speaker 1: down with this process. Uh, it is. And we'll talk about,
25:17
Speaker 1: you know, the real value if there is any for
25:19
Speaker 1: people to be able to view the body. Um, it
25:21
Speaker 1: is still very valuable to a lot of people. And
25:25
Speaker 1: the people that do this to perform a great service
25:27
Speaker 1: for a fee. But they perform a great service and
25:30
Speaker 1: are very talented at what they do. And it's I'm
25:33
Speaker 1: sure not the easiest job to to to perform, No,
25:38
Speaker 1: And I was thinking about what it takes to perform
25:42
Speaker 1: that job and not be freaked out, not to have nightmares,
25:46
Speaker 1: not to be um, you know, profoundly affected in ways
25:50
Speaker 1: where you just can't keep doing it. And I don't know,
25:53
Speaker 1: I think you're just maybe born a certain way. You're
25:56
Speaker 1: just a certain you like if you watch six ft under,
26:00
Speaker 1: it's a it's just a job, you know, it's very commonplace.
26:03
Speaker 1: I don't remember which one was Arthur. I haven't seen
26:06
Speaker 1: it in a long enough time. He was Dwight from
26:08
Speaker 1: the Office. Oh wow, I didn't remember him being on there.
26:13
Speaker 1: Rain Wilson, yeah, Rain Wilson was wow. I have no
26:16
Speaker 1: recollection of that whatsoever I got. Yeah, he was just
26:19
Speaker 1: on at least one season, maybe two. But he lived
26:25
Speaker 1: in the Fisher Home and uh as a tenant and
26:28
Speaker 1: was there in balmer and was sort of an odd ball.
26:31
Speaker 1: He ended up in this weird sort of relationship with
26:34
Speaker 1: the mom uh that bordered on sexual but not quite though.
26:40
Speaker 1: The embalmer I remember is Ileana Douglas. Yeah, yeah, she
26:44
Speaker 1: was great early on. She just kind of worked at
26:46
Speaker 1: the Fisher House for a little bit. She was fantastic,
26:49
Speaker 1: A big fan of hers, But you know, the main
26:51
Speaker 1: embalmer was usually it was usually Michael. If you loved
26:55
Speaker 1: her in six ft Under, you would love her in
26:57
Speaker 1: the intro video to the Aerosmith d at Disney Hollywood Studios.
27:03
Speaker 1: I think she's great. It's one of the most piece
27:04
Speaker 1: oar cameos you will ever see. And before I retired
27:08
Speaker 1: movie crush I was I know mentioned it before, but
27:10
Speaker 1: if you were a six ft Under fan, please go
27:12
Speaker 1: listen to my great, great interview with Alan Ball for
27:15
Speaker 1: the twentieth anniversary of six ft Under it was a
27:18
Speaker 1: lot of fun. So UM, Okay, so we're talking about
27:22
Speaker 1: the modern process, Like if you're an embalmer, if you're
27:24
Speaker 1: a restorative artist at whatever you are, if you're Ileana Douglas, UM,
27:29
Speaker 1: you have certain steps that you're going to follow. And
27:32
Speaker 1: apparently everybody is different, which is not really surprising, but
27:36
Speaker 1: I think it's worth pointing out. Like people die in
27:39
Speaker 1: all sorts of different ways, and they arrive at a
27:41
Speaker 1: funeral home in all sorts of different states differ yep.
27:45
Speaker 1: And because of all these differences, how you're approached and
27:49
Speaker 1: the stuff that is UM like the measures taken in
27:52
Speaker 1: the steps undertaken to get you back to UM, something
27:56
Speaker 1: like a peaceful life like presentation. Um, They're just gonna
28:01
Speaker 1: be different for every person, but there are some general
28:04
Speaker 1: steps and categories that everything's gonna fall into. Yeah. My
28:08
Speaker 1: favorite part of this article was when it the UM
28:11
Speaker 1: they interviewed someone who did this and they said, there
28:14
Speaker 1: isn't a standard amount of time. It takes. An embalming
28:16
Speaker 1: takes as long as it takes. I was like, it
28:19
Speaker 1: takes about a third of an episode of six ft
28:21
Speaker 1: under That's all it takes. It's like, I'm a specialist.
28:25
Speaker 1: Uh so the first things and again it's gonna differ,
28:29
Speaker 1: but generally speaking, um, if any you know, because hair
28:32
Speaker 1: can still grow some if you had any facial hair
28:35
Speaker 1: grow after you passed away, or we're just unshaven and
28:39
Speaker 1: are typically clean shaven, uh, they will shave that hair off.
28:42
Speaker 1: If you have a beard or mustache or something, they're
28:45
Speaker 1: gonna leave that obviously. But um, sure, you don't want
28:48
Speaker 1: to like change radically your appearance on your wedding day
28:52
Speaker 1: or your funeral day. Yeah, that's a big if you're
28:58
Speaker 1: planning on getting married, don't let anyone talk you into
29:01
Speaker 1: shaving whatever you have on your face just because it's
29:04
Speaker 1: your wedding day. I mean, both of those are times
29:06
Speaker 1: you want to look like yourself. Look yourself. I do
29:09
Speaker 1: whatever you want, it's your life. Don't want yuck anyone's young,
29:12
Speaker 1: but feel feel you should feel comfortable and looking like yourself.
29:15
Speaker 1: I got a cheesy fifteen year ago goatee on my
29:20
Speaker 1: wedding day that I now look back on. I'm like,
29:23
Speaker 1: why was I wearing that stupid goatee? Yeah, you were
29:25
Speaker 1: in that and some Oakley's backward on the back of
29:27
Speaker 1: your head. Yeah, but that was a weird look for you.
29:31
Speaker 1: You know, you're you're like chewing gum, talking like yeah,
29:37
Speaker 1: my fly was down, that's just me. Uh So you
29:41
Speaker 1: shave that face. If the and imagine the family has
29:44
Speaker 1: you know, some say so if they're like no, like
29:47
Speaker 1: you know, they always had a five o'clops stubble and
29:49
Speaker 1: that was their favorite thing. He was super into George
29:51
Speaker 1: Michael exactly. Alright, p uh so you close the eyes,
29:57
Speaker 1: but those eyes have gotta stay closed. Sure, um so
30:01
Speaker 1: they would. Sometimes they'll use skin glue. Sometimes they use
30:05
Speaker 1: something called an eye cap. It's like a little fleshy
30:08
Speaker 1: oval shaped kind of like your eye that sits on
30:11
Speaker 1: the eye and secures that eyelid in place, because you
30:14
Speaker 1: want those eyes stay closed. Another thing you want to
30:16
Speaker 1: stay closed is the mouth. You don't want it suddenly
30:19
Speaker 1: falling open, as if the cadaver is now going to
30:22
Speaker 1: address everybody at the viewing um. And so they'll do
30:26
Speaker 1: like pretty scary stuff to it, like wiring the jaw shut.
30:31
Speaker 1: If it really wants to stay open, or if it's
30:34
Speaker 1: just kind of like you just want to make sure
30:36
Speaker 1: it doesn't to come open, you can just sew it
30:38
Speaker 1: shut and there's all sorts of sewing techniques. But either way,
30:41
Speaker 1: the mouth is going to stay shut. And then once
30:43
Speaker 1: you have it shut like that, um, you can kind
30:45
Speaker 1: of manipulate it into doing whatever you want, like kind
30:48
Speaker 1: of resting peacefully, smiling a little bit, blowing into a saxophone,
30:54
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Yeah. I think a lot of
30:57
Speaker 1: times they'll put cotton in the mouth before they so
30:59
Speaker 1: or wire or it shut, because I think that just
31:02
Speaker 1: fills it out a little bit. Uh, you know, like
31:04
Speaker 1: Marlon Brando style. M m. Yeah, he actually had a
31:10
Speaker 1: piece made for the Godfather, but did he I think
31:12
Speaker 1: he auditioned with cotton. What a great idea, Like, it
31:16
Speaker 1: just made him that character and not Marlon Brando, even
31:20
Speaker 1: though it's still Marlon Brando. It's one of those really
31:23
Speaker 1: weird times where you can watch it and you're like,
31:25
Speaker 1: I'm watching Brando, but you're also totally buying the character. Yeah.
31:29
Speaker 1: I think he was in his forties when he made that.
31:31
Speaker 1: Dude is crazy. Yeah, that's a good movie. I mean
31:34
Speaker 1: they aged him up obviously, but it's one of those
31:37
Speaker 1: that's one of those things where you realize you're older
31:41
Speaker 1: if you're older than like something in pop culture. Yeah, boy,
31:45
Speaker 1: I remember when that when it hit me. I started
31:48
Speaker 1: watching baseball one season and realized that I was older
31:53
Speaker 1: than like all of the team. That was the first
31:57
Speaker 1: time I ever felt old. And it was only like
31:59
Speaker 1: twenty two, but they were all like nineteen at the time,
32:02
Speaker 1: you know. Or when one of your favorite players, like
32:04
Speaker 1: you're watching their kids play later. Oh yeah, or your
32:06
Speaker 1: favorite player as a manager, it's like, wait, when did
32:09
Speaker 1: that happen? Yeah, totally, it's it's the pits for sure.
32:13
Speaker 1: The other one too, that was going around the internet
32:15
Speaker 1: for a while was when, uh something about you know
32:17
Speaker 1: that moment you realize that you're older than all of
32:19
Speaker 1: the traveling Wilburies were. And they made that out. They
32:23
Speaker 1: seem so old they did. They seemed like they were sixty.
32:26
Speaker 1: They were there in their forties. I think where they really.
32:29
Speaker 1: I mean, I think Orbison was a little older, but
32:32
Speaker 1: maybe not. I don't know. Okay, I'm meant to do
32:34
Speaker 1: that research for this article for this episode, but I forgot. Well,
32:38
Speaker 1: I'll tell you some research I was doing. I talked
32:39
Speaker 1: about blowing into a saxophone with the mouth. I looked
32:42
Speaker 1: high and low for stories like that, because surely somewhere
32:46
Speaker 1: somebody was buried some some sacks. Guy was buried with
32:50
Speaker 1: the sacks. And I couldn't find some like true tales
32:54
Speaker 1: of a mortician, you know, saying like yeah, I did
32:56
Speaker 1: I did that once, or anything even remotely like it.
32:59
Speaker 1: So if you're a mortician or a restorative artist or
33:02
Speaker 1: an undertaker, I would love to hear any story like that.
33:06
Speaker 1: Who was the saxomaphonist from us Murphy? Yeah but he did, Yeah,
33:12
Speaker 1: buried with the saxophone, playing a saxophone and wearing sunglasses
33:16
Speaker 1: and sandals. Alright, so you got the mouth shut, you
33:20
Speaker 1: got the eyes taken care of, and it's right here
33:23
Speaker 1: that we're going to take a break and leave you
33:25
Speaker 1: in suspense on what happens with the rest of the body.
33:27
Speaker 1: How about that? Very nice? All right, So the mouth
33:54
Speaker 1: is shut, eyes are shut. They're gonna stay that way.
33:57
Speaker 1: I'm actually gonna read this part if I may, because
34:02
Speaker 1: I found a great interview with someone who does this
34:04
Speaker 1: for a living, I think from the Guardian, and uh
34:10
Speaker 1: it has a little more detail than the article that
34:13
Speaker 1: we used, and it's just sort of lays it all
34:15
Speaker 1: out there. So thank you to the Guardian for this interview. Uh,
34:19
Speaker 1: they said, They use a scalpel to make an incision
34:21
Speaker 1: near the right collar bone. Uh. And then they're they're
34:25
Speaker 1: looking for the carotid artery and the internal jugular vein
34:30
Speaker 1: and they make a little nick in each of those.
34:32
Speaker 1: And they put these arterial tubes in the artery and
34:35
Speaker 1: you point one towards the heart, and then you do
34:38
Speaker 1: another one towards the head. And then you have a
34:40
Speaker 1: drain tube a k a. Angled forceps and you put
34:45
Speaker 1: that in the vein to facilitate that drainage of the
34:48
Speaker 1: blood because that that blood's got to come out. That's
34:50
Speaker 1: what you're doing basically, is you're pumping in embalming fluid,
34:54
Speaker 1: which we'll get to what that is in a sect,
34:56
Speaker 1: and you're removing all the blood. And that is connected
34:59
Speaker 1: to a misch sen that no longer is like a
35:02
Speaker 1: footpump type of thing. It's it's powered by electricity, uses gears.
35:06
Speaker 1: He's just wooden gear still though. Uh. And then that's
35:09
Speaker 1: connected to the arterial tube directed towards the heart. And
35:13
Speaker 1: then you regulate your pressure and all that stuff and
35:15
Speaker 1: get you the rate of flow going that you need.
35:18
Speaker 1: And you're kind of adjusting everything depending on who it is.
35:21
Speaker 1: And like the body size and how things are going
35:23
Speaker 1: because every case is different. And then that fluid starts
35:27
Speaker 1: going through the hose and it pushes through the art
35:30
Speaker 1: arterial system and the blood is forced out through the
35:34
Speaker 1: jugular vein and then it is washed down the drain
35:37
Speaker 1: and you eventually drink it. Mm hmm. Don't they have
35:41
Speaker 1: to sequest her that stuff? Is it really washed down
35:45
Speaker 1: the regular drain? No way, Just like your poop and p.
35:48
Speaker 1: Blood goes down the drain, into the into the waste system.
35:51
Speaker 1: Poop and p goes down the drain. We did a
35:54
Speaker 1: whole episode on it blood to really yeah they I mean,
35:58
Speaker 1: obviously you have to dispose of the embalming fluid and
36:01
Speaker 1: stuff in a different way, but you were you were
36:04
Speaker 1: literally just draining that blood down the drain. Well. I
36:08
Speaker 1: remember one of our episodes What Can be Done with
36:10
Speaker 1: the dead Body. One of the things they were talking
36:11
Speaker 1: about was using auto license so that it turned you
36:14
Speaker 1: into a goo that could legally be poured down the drain.
36:18
Speaker 1: I didn't realize your blood could be that's insane. Wow. Yeah,
36:22
Speaker 1: there's one six Under episode where they have a clog
36:24
Speaker 1: in their system. Oh yeah, I remember the blood all
36:26
Speaker 1: comes up to the floor horror movie. So, Um, that
36:31
Speaker 1: embalming fluid is uh pretty special stuff. Most people associated
36:36
Speaker 1: with formale hyde, and it definitely does contain formale hyde. Um,
36:41
Speaker 1: but it also contains some other stuff too. UM. When
36:45
Speaker 1: you put it all together, the body is not only preserved,
36:48
Speaker 1: but it's also disinfected, which is not something you would
36:51
Speaker 1: think about. But if say, you know, somebody died of
36:54
Speaker 1: a contagious disease and you're sitting there kneeling on a
36:58
Speaker 1: little kneeler in front of their call, been talking quietly
37:01
Speaker 1: to them. If they hadn't been embalved, you could conceivably
37:05
Speaker 1: catch that infectious disease because it would still be present
37:08
Speaker 1: in their body. Uh. Embalming takes care of that. The
37:11
Speaker 1: formale high that's in the embalming fluid actually um hardens
37:17
Speaker 1: and dehydrates the blood vessels uh that it's put through uh,
37:22
Speaker 1: and then some other stuff like um uh galuta aldehy
37:26
Speaker 1: to believe is one is a disinfectant and it actually
37:29
Speaker 1: kills bacteria in the body and prevents it from coming back. UM.
37:33
Speaker 1: So it's it's preserved, uh, and it's also disinfected too.
37:38
Speaker 1: And that was just the arterial um that you talked about.
37:41
Speaker 1: There's there's another part of the body, the abdominal cavity,
37:44
Speaker 1: that requires a separate additional procedure, right, yeah, and you
37:48
Speaker 1: know we should note that like there again, not to
37:52
Speaker 1: bring up six ft under again, but they really were
37:53
Speaker 1: pretty accurate and how they did it. They're doing like
37:57
Speaker 1: a soapy, gentle massage on the body. They're they're bending
38:01
Speaker 1: the knees and the legs and the elbows and sort
38:04
Speaker 1: of the limbs and this all just sort of helps
38:06
Speaker 1: facilitate the flow through the body. It also restores movement
38:11
Speaker 1: to the body. Again, where after rigorously said in two.
38:14
Speaker 1: But yeah, they'll also sometimes I saw add into embalming
38:18
Speaker 1: fluid dies that kind of tint the skin healthier color. Again,
38:24
Speaker 1: let's let's blue. I guess, let's blue more peach, right, yeah,
38:31
Speaker 1: that's really not but sure. Uh yeah, So the cavity,
38:35
Speaker 1: and this is from the same Guardian article, they suction
38:38
Speaker 1: out the fluid from the hollow organs with something well
38:42
Speaker 1: it's something called a troke car. But you might remember
38:45
Speaker 1: from our episode on the video game what was it
38:48
Speaker 1: Night Trap, Night look Out behind You. So they use
38:52
Speaker 1: an actual choke car and then uh, what he called
38:56
Speaker 1: a very high index fluid, which is the stuff that
38:58
Speaker 1: we're talking about. Um, I think even more high index
39:01
Speaker 1: than what goes through the arteries and the blood vessels.
39:05
Speaker 1: And then the incision is closed with a little circular
39:09
Speaker 1: plastic button called a trocar button. Yeah. That came from
39:12
Speaker 1: a Verge article about a there's supposedly a woman in
39:16
Speaker 1: Russia who was embalmed alive and they got in touch
39:20
Speaker 1: with an actual embalmer, like a third or fourth generation
39:23
Speaker 1: funeral home person. Um and got kind of the skinny
39:27
Speaker 1: on the evolvement process. And his name escapes me right now.
39:31
Speaker 1: But um, if you look up Russian woman embombed alive
39:34
Speaker 1: on the Verge you will find the interview with him
39:36
Speaker 1: was really enlightening interesting. And what did that reference the button? Yeah?
39:42
Speaker 1: That was the person who's talking about the trocar and
39:44
Speaker 1: the trocar button. Oh from the Guardian article. No, from
39:48
Speaker 1: the Verge article. Okay, well I was talking about the
39:52
Speaker 1: guy from the Guardian article. Got okay, yeah, I'm talking
39:55
Speaker 1: about a different guy. Okay, good, good for that person too.
39:59
Speaker 1: Should them off with our two different embalmers? See who wins?
40:03
Speaker 1: That's why I configut what you're talking about. You're like,
40:05
Speaker 1: that's from the thing. I was like, no, that's not
40:06
Speaker 1: what are you talking about. It's from the other thing.
40:08
Speaker 1: You're like that it's from the other thing. Uh. They
40:10
Speaker 1: say in general, although again everybody's different, every process differs,
40:15
Speaker 1: but roughly about a gallon of embalming solution per fifty
40:19
Speaker 1: pounds of body weight, it's what it's gonna take. Yeah,
40:21
Speaker 1: And depending on whether it's the arterial solution, which is
40:24
Speaker 1: pretty low index um, it could be one and a
40:27
Speaker 1: half to five percent from ald hyde or off its
40:29
Speaker 1: high index. It could be from alde hyde for the
40:32
Speaker 1: abdominal cavity, which you said something earlier when we were
40:35
Speaker 1: talking about canopic jars about getting the inners out, And
40:39
Speaker 1: it would make sense you would want to use higher
40:41
Speaker 1: index from alde hyde embalming solution in the abdominal cavity
40:45
Speaker 1: because that's just basically a bag of bacteria in there.
40:49
Speaker 1: So I would guess that's where your decomposition really starts
40:52
Speaker 1: to take off and center from is in your gut,
40:55
Speaker 1: wouldn't you? I would think so. But that's just so
40:58
Speaker 1: mean to the to the microbiome that's kept you alive
41:01
Speaker 1: from now and now finally they get their great reward
41:04
Speaker 1: at the end, and then they're wiped out by formal
41:06
Speaker 1: the hide. Yeah, it doesn't seem fair, I know. Humans. Yeah,
41:12
Speaker 1: forget about the little guy. I guess we should talk
41:16
Speaker 1: about the pros and cons of embalming. Uh. You know,
41:20
Speaker 1: we we already mentioned that. Um, even though I'm not
41:23
Speaker 1: into it, that people still in in America these days,
41:26
Speaker 1: and I guess in Canada and I guess New Zealand
41:28
Speaker 1: want to see the body and it can bring people
41:32
Speaker 1: peace and closure and all the things that we've talked
41:35
Speaker 1: about in all of our other uh funerary podcast episodes. Uh.
41:40
Speaker 1: And that's really the main purposes are to disinfect this body,
41:44
Speaker 1: preserve it, and restore it so people can look at it.
41:47
Speaker 1: So there's a question, though, Chuck, like, do people actually
41:52
Speaker 1: need to see the body foreclosure or is that kind
41:56
Speaker 1: of like a funeral industry hustle. Yeah. I mean I
42:01
Speaker 1: I can only speak personally and saying I do not,
42:05
Speaker 1: and I think it is personal. I don't think it's
42:07
Speaker 1: kind of thing you can quantify. Although I know that
42:10
Speaker 1: you did find a study and there's not a lot
42:12
Speaker 1: of studies like this, but you did find one that
42:15
Speaker 1: followed people after it was sort of a big tragedy
42:18
Speaker 1: and found that people that saw the body UM had
42:21
Speaker 1: better outcomes. But it didn't really say what that meant.
42:25
Speaker 1: I guess happier or more content I believe less regret
42:29
Speaker 1: was one of the was one of the UM qualifiers.
42:32
Speaker 1: UM that they've they felt less um stuck in the
42:36
Speaker 1: grieving process. UM, but it's like you said, it does
42:39
Speaker 1: seem to be personal and UM. What they found interestingly
42:43
Speaker 1: was that people who decided not to see the body
42:47
Speaker 1: and people who decided to see the body, and this
42:50
Speaker 1: includes bodies that are like like we're presented UM long
42:55
Speaker 1: before they ever made it through the funeral home, like
42:57
Speaker 1: through through people who had I d like a family
43:00
Speaker 1: member at the morgue, all right, so they were in
43:03
Speaker 1: like the worst possible state. UM that both of them.
43:07
Speaker 1: Both groups expressed like almost none expressed regret for their decision.
43:14
Speaker 1: So the impression I got is like, whatever your gut
43:17
Speaker 1: is telling you you, you should probably go with it.
43:21
Speaker 1: Like if you just have a gut instinct that you yes,
43:23
Speaker 1: you you need to see the body, even if people
43:26
Speaker 1: try to talk you out of it, and apparently they will, UM,
43:29
Speaker 1: you need to just follow through on it. It's your
43:31
Speaker 1: right to see a deceased loved one. Um, not necessarily
43:35
Speaker 1: to touch it or to be alone in a room
43:37
Speaker 1: with your deceased loved one. Uh, but you have a
43:41
Speaker 1: right to see them, and if you want to, you
43:43
Speaker 1: should be insistent on that, because you could regret not
43:46
Speaker 1: being able to or not deciding not to because you
43:50
Speaker 1: were talked out of it. In the same way some
43:53
Speaker 1: people will tell you like you need to see the
43:55
Speaker 1: body foreclosure, and if your instincts are telling you should
43:58
Speaker 1: not see this body, go with that. That's from what
44:01
Speaker 1: I saw in this British Medical Journal survey of people
44:04
Speaker 1: who had seen or not seen a body of a
44:07
Speaker 1: loved one. That seemed to be kind of like the
44:09
Speaker 1: through line like trust your gut and just just know
44:12
Speaker 1: you made the right decision one way or the other. Yeah,
44:15
Speaker 1: and uh, there's more than one six ft Under episode
44:18
Speaker 1: where they tackle that very issue of either people not
44:21
Speaker 1: wanting to get involved or you know, it's not a comedy.
44:24
Speaker 1: You keep laughing every time I mentioned it, but it's
44:26
Speaker 1: just so funny. Rain Wilson was just such a goofball. Uh.
44:31
Speaker 1: It is really accurate though, as far as I think
44:33
Speaker 1: they tackle so many real situations because there are episodes
44:37
Speaker 1: where people don't want to get involved and they're trying
44:39
Speaker 1: to talk them into it and the reasons why. And
44:42
Speaker 1: you know, I don't see it so much of a
44:44
Speaker 1: hustle as you know, this is their job and they
44:47
Speaker 1: are salespeople. They're selling their service, so they're they're gonna
44:51
Speaker 1: do that. Um. I don't want to be involved, and
44:54
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna be if it's up to me, um
44:57
Speaker 1: and my rights being respected. But uh, I just want
45:00
Speaker 1: to be cremated as soon as possible. I don't. I
45:02
Speaker 1: don't want to be filled full of stuff. If you
45:05
Speaker 1: die with your beard, you want your beard left on, right, Yeah,
45:10
Speaker 1: you burn it up. Although now they I think they're
45:14
Speaker 1: using a I think they're dissolving people more that aren't
45:17
Speaker 1: more but yeah, not not more than uh in numbers, yeah,
45:24
Speaker 1: more than these do. Well. That's so that's the thing.
45:27
Speaker 1: So that auto license process again, go listen to what
45:29
Speaker 1: can be done with the dead body episode, But it's
45:32
Speaker 1: where you basically sterilize the body into Google that could,
45:37
Speaker 1: like I said, be poured down the drain. Um. But
45:40
Speaker 1: even if you're cremated, Chuck, there's a there's a good
45:44
Speaker 1: chance that if you're cremated in the United States, Canada,
45:47
Speaker 1: or New Zealand, you were also embalmed too. And one
45:50
Speaker 1: of the big pushbacks you don't want to be that's true, right,
45:53
Speaker 1: But I'm saying, like, uh, if you didn't state otherwise
45:56
Speaker 1: in your family gave permission that you might have been
45:58
Speaker 1: embolved through the whole funeral process and then at the
46:01
Speaker 1: end of it, rather than being buried, you were cremated um.
46:05
Speaker 1: And the one of the big concerns, aside from religious
46:11
Speaker 1: reasons that people usually have in opposing embalming, is the
46:16
Speaker 1: environmental impact on it. Because we talked about arsenic you know,
46:20
Speaker 1: leaching into the groundwater. Well, there's a good chance that
46:23
Speaker 1: all the formalde hyde and glut aalde hyde and methanol
46:28
Speaker 1: and ethanol and everything else that was pumped into your
46:30
Speaker 1: body um is going to make it into the ground too.
46:33
Speaker 1: And it's not an insubstantial amount of embalming fluid that
46:37
Speaker 1: is put into the ground through burials every year. I
46:41
Speaker 1: think there's enough to to fill eight Olympic sized swimming
46:45
Speaker 1: pools just in America alone every year. That's how much
46:48
Speaker 1: embalming fluid is committed. To the ground in the bodies
46:51
Speaker 1: of people who were involved. But then it also can
46:53
Speaker 1: affect the air quality too, right, because people can be
46:56
Speaker 1: embalved and then cremated and then all that stuff gets
46:59
Speaker 1: released in to the air from the cremation process. Sure,
47:03
Speaker 1: and and you're also working around it if you work
47:06
Speaker 1: in that industry. I think the EPA, the United States,
47:09
Speaker 1: and the World Health Organization list formalde hyde as a
47:14
Speaker 1: probable carcinogen and mutagen, so you know, they take great
47:19
Speaker 1: precautions to do it safely. But you're working around very
47:22
Speaker 1: dangerous materials and like you said, you were burning that
47:25
Speaker 1: stuff into the air or eventually it will go into
47:29
Speaker 1: the ground. So um, it's not like the old wooden
47:33
Speaker 1: box caskets of old as far as how quickly they deteriorate.
47:36
Speaker 1: But like eventually those things will deteriorate too, right, Uh yeah,
47:41
Speaker 1: I mean eventually or the concrete will crack and it'll
47:45
Speaker 1: leach out. Like if it's not an immediate problem now,
47:47
Speaker 1: it's not like it's never going to be, you know
47:50
Speaker 1: what I mean. Yes, and we're running out of space. Yeah,
47:53
Speaker 1: that's another one too. So all good reasons to be
47:56
Speaker 1: um to be cremated I guess to turn into cremated remains,
48:02
Speaker 1: not cremines. Now, remember I think in our cremation episode
48:07
Speaker 1: we said that that was that was not classy. Oh
48:13
Speaker 1: I don't remember that. So a couple of things. You
48:15
Speaker 1: got anything else? I got nothing else. A couple of things.
48:18
Speaker 1: That funeral director was named Caleb Wilde, the guy who
48:22
Speaker 1: was interviewed in the Verge. I want to give a
48:25
Speaker 1: shout out to him. I also want to give a
48:27
Speaker 1: shout out to who is widely believed to have been
48:31
Speaker 1: the best embalmed body of all time, a Chinese noble
48:36
Speaker 1: woman named the Lady Die. That wasn't her name, that's
48:39
Speaker 1: her nickname. She died in b C and you've probably
48:44
Speaker 1: seen pictures of around the internet. Um kind of on
48:49
Speaker 1: like an examination table with you know, class straped over
48:52
Speaker 1: her breasts and genitals for modesty. But other than that,
48:56
Speaker 1: hanging out and for being years old. That she's in
49:00
Speaker 1: a ghastly state. But she's still like her skin still there,
49:04
Speaker 1: it still has you know, kind of some color to her.
49:07
Speaker 1: Her hair is still there. It's it's pretty amazing. So
49:10
Speaker 1: look up the Lady Die if you're dare um. But
49:14
Speaker 1: she's one of the best preserved bodies of all time.
49:17
Speaker 1: Amazing and I do have more more things. Since you
49:19
Speaker 1: looked up your person, I felt like I had to
49:22
Speaker 1: look at my person. Okay, fair enough? Uh? And from
49:25
Speaker 1: the Guardian that is jin Park Mustachio. Oh nice working
49:30
Speaker 1: as a funeral director and embalmer, at least at the
49:32
Speaker 1: time of this writing in New Jersey. I think that's great, Chuck,
49:37
Speaker 1: we did a great job here. Uh. If you want
49:39
Speaker 1: to know more about embalming, I'll ask a restorative artist
49:43
Speaker 1: and see if they look at you weird for calling
49:45
Speaker 1: him a restorative artist. And since I said that, it's
49:48
Speaker 1: time for a listener Mayo, I'm gonna call this email
49:54
Speaker 1: from Ron Swanson of Parks and Wreck. Hey guys, I've
49:58
Speaker 1: been listening to you for years, uh and love your podcast.
50:02
Speaker 1: You always deliver interesting, interesting topics and fun ways. But
50:05
Speaker 1: I gotta say on the latest podcast about Les Pond
50:08
Speaker 1: Leo Fender, you mispronounced the city of Waukesha, Wisconsin. And boy,
50:15
Speaker 1: we've heard it today right and we're going to for
50:18
Speaker 1: months to come. But this is one of those good
50:21
Speaker 1: people of Wisconsin are not having it. No, they're not.
50:24
Speaker 1: They're definitely are kind of up in arms with algia.
50:27
Speaker 1: What do we say wa Kesha and it's Waukeshaw. Yeah,
50:30
Speaker 1: well I think we even made a nod to Kesha
50:32
Speaker 1: and said Waukesha. Oh did we? I think so? Brother,
50:37
Speaker 1: You're like at least I meant to right. Uh, we
50:41
Speaker 1: heard from a lot of folks already, and and it
50:43
Speaker 1: just got dropped like you know, hours ago. Only emailed
50:46
Speaker 1: descrrection because I'm a resident of Walkeshaw and even work
50:49
Speaker 1: for Walksha County and I'm used to hearing it pronounce
50:51
Speaker 1: the incorrect way a lot. It's always also gave me
50:54
Speaker 1: an excuse to find the email you guys to say
50:56
Speaker 1: I'm such a big fan, keep up the great work.
50:58
Speaker 1: Let us from Ron Swanson, who works, believe it or not,
51:02
Speaker 1: at the Parks Department of walker Shot County. Very nice,
51:04
Speaker 1: thanks a lot of Ron. Quite a coincidence, and I'm
51:07
Speaker 1: sure Ron has to hear that all the time. Wait, why? Who? What?
51:13
Speaker 1: What's a coin? What's a coincidence? Ron Swanson? The name
51:17
Speaker 1: sounds very familiar. Is that parks and write? The TV
51:20
Speaker 1: show Nick Offerman's character was Ron Swanson. No, so this
51:23
Speaker 1: guy is Ron Swanson? Actually insane? Wow? That's amazing. Yeah,
51:28
Speaker 1: pretty great. Great, um, well great, thanks for writing in
51:31
Speaker 1: Ron Swanson if it is your real name, and if
51:34
Speaker 1: it is, that's pretty great. Uh. And if you want
51:36
Speaker 1: to be like Ron Swanson and be an amazing coincidence,
51:39
Speaker 1: you can send us an email to Stuff Podcast iHeart
51:43
Speaker 1: radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
51:48
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51:55
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