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more dilute the embalming fluid, the softer and more natural-appearing the guest of honor. Therefore, the usual procedure is to embalm with about enough preservative to ensure that the body will last through the funeral—generally, a matter of a few days. “To the ancient embalmer permanent preservation was of prime importance and the maintenance of a natural color and texture a matter of minor concern; to us the creation and maintenance of a lifelike naturalness is the major objective, and post-burial preservation is incidental.… The Egyptian embalmer’s subjects have remained preserved for thousands of years—while the modern embalmer sometimes has to pray for favorable climatic conditions to help him maintain satisfactory preservation for a couple of days.” The same textbook, The Principles and Practices of Embalming, cautioning the neophyte embalmer on the danger of trying to get by with inadequate embalming, says, “But if we were to approach the average embalmer and tell him that the body he had just embalmed would have to be kept on display for a month or two during the summer, what would his reaction be? To fall in a dead faint from fright, no doubt.”

No matter what the more gullible customers may be led to believe about eternal preservation in the privacy of the arrangements-room conference, undertakers do not try to mislead the serious investigator about this. They will generally admit quite readily that their handiwork is not even intended to be permanent.

If long-term preservation is not the embalmer’s objective, what then is?

Clearly, some rather solid-sounding justifications for the procedure had to be advanced, above and beyond the fact that embalming is good business for the undertaker because it helps him to sell more expensive caskets.

The two grounds chosen by the undertaking trade for defense of embalming embrace two objectives near and dear to the hearts of Americans: hygiene, and mental health. The theory that embalming is an essential hygienic measure has long been advanced by the funeral industry. A much newer concept, that embalming and restoring the deceased are necessary for the mental well-being of the survivors, is now being promoted by industry leaders; the observer who looks closely will discover a myth in the making here. “Grief therapy,” the official name bestowed by the undertakers on this aspect of their work, has long been a second line of defense for the embalmers.

The primary purpose of embalming, all funeral men will tell you, is a sanitary one, the disinfecting of the body so that it is no longer a health menace. More than one writer, soaring to wonderful heights of fantasy, has gone so far as to attribute the falling death rate in this century to the practice of embalming (which, if true, would seem a little shortsighted on the part of the practitioners): “It is a significant fact that when embalming was in its infancy, the death rate was 21 to every 1,000 persons per year, and today it has been reduced to 10 to every 1,000 per year.” The writer magnanimously bestows “a great deal of credit” for this on the medical profession, adding that funeral directors are responsible for “about 50 percent of this wonderful work of sanitation which has so materially lowered the death rate.” When embalmers get together to talk among themselves, they are more realistic about the wonderful work of sanitation. In a panel discussion reported by the National Funeral Service Journal, Dr. I. M. Feinberg, an instructor at the Worsham College of Mortuary Science, said, “Sanitation is probably the farthest thing from the mind of the modern embalmer. We must realize that the motives for embalming at the present time are economic and sentimental, with a slight religious overtone.”

Whether or not the undertakers themselves actually believe that embalming fulfills an important health function (and there is evidence that most of them really do believe it), they have been extraordinarily successful in convincing the public that it does. Outside of medical circles, people who are otherwise reasonably knowledgeable