The body of Thalberg has been thus preserved for the adornment of his widow's drawing-room.*

Dissections having for their object such permanent preparations cannot be made in haste. They require considerable time. So too dissections for a series of lectures on various systems, such as the muscular, the vascular, etc., require that we shall be able to preserve the body unless we go back to the short courses of bygone days. Thus, in Edinburgh, in 1697, in the first course of public lectures, as the felon's body by law had to be buried in ten days, ten lectures were delivered on successive days by as many different lecturers, in which the entire subject was treated. How hurried the course was we may judge, seeing that on one day the brain, spinal cord, and all the nerves were finished, and on another, all of the five senses.† But when we go back to Mondini in 1315, we find him the embodiment of brevity, for he completed the anatomy, physiology, and surgery of the entire body in five lectures.

The first example we have of the use of preservative means is in the now familiar Egyptian mummies. Believing in the immortality of the soul, and that they could retain the soul within the body so long as its form was preserved entire, it was very natural that the Egyptians should endeavor to do by art what nature showed them to be possible in the desiccated mummies of the deserts around them. Various methods

* Med. News and Library, Nov., 1873, p. 183; Med. Times and Gaz., Sept. 6, 1873.

† Edin. Med. Journal, Oct., 1866, p. 294. The meagre number of lectures on important branches in later times also is striking. Thus, Mr. Bronfield, of St. George's Hospital, delivered but thirty-six lectures on anatomy and surgery, Dr. Nicholls, William Hunter's teacher, lectured on anatomy, physiology, pathology, and midwifery in thirty-nine, and Mr. Nource, at St. Bartholomew's, embraced "totam rem anatomicam" in twenty-three lectures. (John Hunter's Life, p. 4, note.) William Hunter enlarged the number of lectures on anatomy alone to eighty-six, about the present length of such a course.

were adopted, of which we have a short description in the embalming of Jacob's body in Genesis,* and at a greater length in Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus. Three principal modes existed, differing chiefly in expense. The cheapest was available to even the poor, the second cost about $450, and the third about $1250.† In the last, having removed the brain and its membranes through the nostrils, by breaking through the ethmoid bone with a curved piece of iron, they made an incision of five inches in the loins, removed the thoracic and abdominal viscera, cleansed them with palm wine and aromatics, and, after a prayer by the priest that all the sins of eating and of drinking might be forgiven, cast them into the river. The abdomen was next filled with every sort of spicery except frankincense, and the body placed for forty days in natrum, an impure carbonate of soda. The heart embalmed apart, having been placed between the thighs, the whole body was then wrapped in cere-cloths with all the exactness of our modern spiral and reverse bandages, and sealed up with wax or bitumen, § and in some cases even gold was used. Bitumen in many instances was used in the body itself. In case the usual means were wanting, honey was used as the sole preservative, as in the case of Alexander the Great. Some seem to have been preserved by tanning, and then enveloped in wax. In fact, the very name of mummy**

*Gen. 1: 2, 3.

Rawlinson's Herod., vol. ii, pp. 119, 120, and notes.

Pettigrew's Hist. of Egyptian Mummies, London, 1834, p. 58.

§ Rawlinson's Herodotus Hist., ii, § 136, and Diodorus Siculus, Bk. I, vol. i, p. 102, § xcii.

One was found in Siberia, wrapped in forty pounds of gold. Pettigrew, op. cit., p. 65.

¶ Statius, lib. iii, Carm. ii, v. 117. Pettigrew, op. cit., p. 86. King Aristobulus's body was similarly preserved. Josephus, Antiq., lib. xiv, cap. vii.

**Rawlinson's Herod., vol. ii, p. 122, note.

is supposed to be derived from the Arabic "mummia," from "mum," "wax."*

The mummies have been put to some curious uses. The Egyptians gave them as pledges for the repayment of bor

* William Hunter, at the close of each session, usually devoted one lecture to teaching his students how to make preparations, and described also a process in imitation of the Eygptian method, which he had put in use. In the case of the wife of Martin Van Butchell (whose body is now in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons) his success was very good, and her husband's own account of it is such a curious document that I give it below. Not satisfied with preserving this treasure, he soon solaced himself with a second wife:

“14 Jan., 1775. At 24 this morning my wife died. At 8 this morning the statuary took off her face in plaster. At half-past 2 this afternoon Mr. Cruikshank injected at the crural arteries, 5 pints of oil of turpentine mixed with Venice turpentine and vermilion.

"15th. At 9 this morning Dr. Hunter and Mr. C. began to open and embalm the body of my wife. Her diseases were a large empyema in the left lung (which would not receive any air) accompanied with pleurisy and pneumonia and much adhesion; the right lung was beginning also to decay, and had some pus in it. The spleen hard and much contracted; the liver diseased called Rata Malpighi. The stomach very sound. The kidneys, uterus, bladder, and intestines in good order. Injected at the large arteries, oil of turpentine mixed with camphored spirits, i. e. 10 oz. camphor to a quart spirits, so as to make the whole vascular system turgid; put into the belly part 6 lbs. rosin powder, 3 lbs. camphor powder, and 3 lbs. of nitre powder mixed with rectified spirits.

"17th. I opened the abdomen and put in the remainder of powders and added 4 lbs. rosin, 3 lbs. nitre, and 1 lb. camphor.

"18th. Dr. H. and Mr. C. came at 9 this morning and put my wife into the box, on and in 130 lbs. wt. of Paris plaster, at 18 pence a bag. I put between the thighs, 3 arquebusade bottles, one full of camphored spirits very rich of the gum, one containing 8 oz. of oil of rosemary, and in the other 2 oz. lavender.

"19th. I closed up the joints of the box lid and glasses with Paris plaster mixed with gum water and spirits of wine.

"25th. Dr. H. came with Sir Thomas Wynn and lady.

"Feb. 5. Dr. H. came with 2 ladies at 10 this evening.

"7th. Dr. H. came with Sir Jno. Pringle, Dr. Herberden, Dr. Watson,

and about 12 more Fellows of the Royal Society.

"11th. Dr. H. came with Dr. Solander, Dr.

3

Mr. Banks, and

rowed money,* the "hypothecated bonds" of the Alexandrian "Bourse." But in the middle ages they were still more curiously employed, as potent remedies in falls, bruises, and other external injuries. "Mummy," says Sir Francis Bacon, "hath great force in staunching of blood, which may be ascribed to the mixture of balms that are glutinous." Francis I always carried with him a little packet of powdered mummy and rhubarb for falls and other accidents.† So great was the demand that as the real article was difficult to obtain, like Waterloo bullets, they were manufactured at enormous profits by avaricious Jews in Alexandria. Ambroise Paré, who was born in 1509, in his book on the mummy,‡ states that having learned this fact from his friend De la Fontaine, who had observed it in Egypt, and also having never seen any good effect from the remedy, he did all in his power to discourage its use both in his own practice and also in all his consultations. He gives us too, in his book on embalming, a method he himself used for the preservation of a body, with very gratifying success, and as it is the earliest of the

another gentleman. I unlocked the glasses to clean the face with spirits of wine and oil of lavender.

"12th. Dr. H. came to look at the neck and shoulders.

"13th. I put 4 oz. camphored spirits into the box at the sides and neck, and 6 lbs. of plaster.

"16th. I put 4 oz. oil of lavender, 4 oz. oil of rosemary, and oz. oil of chamomile flowers (the last cost 4 shillings) on sides of the face, and 3 oz. of very dry powder of chamomile flowers, on the breast, neck, and shoulders."

The body resembles a Guanche mummy rather than an Egyptian, and is, properly speaking, a desiccated rather than an embalmed body. Pettigrew, op. cit., p. 258, note.

*Pettigrew, op. cit., pp. 16 and 17.

† Pettigrew, op. cit., p. 9. Even to-day they are used by the Arabs mixed with honey (p. 12).

The Workes of that Famous Chirurgion, Ambroise Paré, London, 1649, p. 332. Note the capital pun on his name in the motto under his portrait in the frontispiece. "Humanam Ambrosii vere hæc pictura Paræi, effigiem, sed opus continet ambrosiam."