How Embalming Works

The Death Suite continues! In this installment, Josh and Chuck go over what it takes to preserve a human body using chemicals and whether that’s such a good thing to do as far as the environment is concerned.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant and Jerry's here too,
And this is Stuff you should Know part of the
Famed and Legendary Deaths suite, which just rambles on. Yeah,

(00:29):
we talked a little bit about this in a couple
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

(00:51):
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,

(01:15):
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

(01:38):
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

(02:00):
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

(02:20):
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.

(02:41):
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

(03:02):
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

(03:25):
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

(03:46):
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

(04:07):
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

(04:29):
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

(04:53):
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

(05:16):
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

(05:36):
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.

(05:59):
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

(06:21):
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

(06:43):
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

(07:03):
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

(07:24):
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

(07:46):
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

(08:09):
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

(08:29):
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

(08:51):
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

(09:14):
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,

(09:38):
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,

(10:00):
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.

(10:21):
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

(10:42):
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

(11:05):
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

(11:27):
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,

(12:05):
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

(12:25):
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.

(12:46):
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

(13:08):
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.

(13:29):
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?

(13:51):
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

(14:12):
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

(14:34):
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

(14:56):
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,

(15:18):
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

(15:39):
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

(16:00):
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

(16:21):
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

(16:44):
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

(17:07):
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,

(17:29):
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

(17:51):
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,

(18:15):
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.

(18:38):
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

(19:01):
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

(19:22):
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

(19:42):
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

(20:06):
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.

(20:27):
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

(20:48):
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.

(21:09):
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

(21:31):
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

(21:54):
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

(22:15):
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

(22:36):
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

(22:57):
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

(23:18):
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

(23:44):
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

(24:06):
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

(24:27):
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

(24:47):
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,

(25:10):
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

(25:33):
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,

(25:53):
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

(26:16):
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.

(26:40):
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.

(27:03):
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

(27:24):
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.

(27:45):
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

(28:08):
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,

(28:29):
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

(28:52):
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,

(29:12):
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,

(29:37):
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

(30:01):
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

(30:22):
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

(30:43):
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

(31:04):
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,

(31:25):
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,

(31:45):
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

(32:06):
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.

(32:29):
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

(32:50):
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,

(33:12):
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

(33:54):
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

(34:15):
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

(34:35):
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,

(34:56):
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.

(35:18):
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

(35:41):
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

(36:01):
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,

(36:22):
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

(36:45):
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

(37:05):
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

(37:26):
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

(37:48):
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

(38:11):
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,

(38:31):
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

(38:52):
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

(39:16):
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

(39:36):
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.

(39:59):
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

(40:19):
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

(40:41):
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

(41:01):
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

(41:23):
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,

(41:44):
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,

(42:05):
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.

(42:25):
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

(42:47):
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.

(43:07):
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,

(43:29):
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

(43:50):
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

(44:12):
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

(44:33):
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

(44:54):
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

(45:17):
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

(45:40):
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

(46:01):
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

(46:23):
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

(46:45):
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

(47:06):
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

(47:29):
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

(47:50):
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

(48:13):
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

(48:36):
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

(49:00):
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

(49:22):
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

(49:43):
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

(50:05):
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.

(50:27):
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

(50:49):
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?

(51:13):
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

(51:34):
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

(51:55):
to your favorite shows.