The Business of Mourning in the Civil War
As the casualty lists from the front lines grew, the private industry of embalming rose to meet a grim public need in Olympia and across the nation.
The embalmment of those of our brave volunteers who have died in the service of their country has lately been a source of great consolation to sorrowing relatives and is extensively practiced. Those who are engaged in the pursuit grade their charges according to the rank of the deceased, varying from fifteen to one hundred dollars. The body of a private soldier is embalmed for fifteen dollars, and sent home in a coffin for fifteen more. The process is simply to make an incision in any one of the arteries and inject therein a liquid invented by Dr. Sucquet, of Paris, which is a secret to the operators. A body dying through sickness is thus prepared in three hours; but when wounds have been received a much longer time is required. An ordinary mode of conducting this operation has been to inject arsenic in the veins, as is done to preserve corpses for dissection, but this is only temporary in its effects, and, moreover, renders a corpse poisonous. It thoroughly pervades the surface of the skin, which if kissed by relatives creates illness, and often death. The embalming fluid of Sucquet exercises a remarkable effect, indurating the flesh, rendering it exceedingly hard and of marble whiteness.
“It thoroughly pervades the surface of the skin, which if kissed by relatives creates illness, and often death.”
During the Civil War, embalming transformed from a medical necessity for dissection to a commercial service that allowed the war's death toll to reach back into private homes. This intersection of industrial technology and grief prefigures the modern funeral industry, which still balances the intimacy of loss with the logistics of bodily preservation.
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