The American Way of Death Revisited - Jessica Mitford [35]
In an effort to sift fact from fiction and to get an objective opinion on the matter, I sought out Dr. Jesse Carr, chief of pathology at San Francisco General Hospital and professor of pathology at the University of California Medical School. I wanted to know specifically how, and to what extent, and in what circumstances, an unembalmed cadaver poses a health threat to the living.
Dr. Carr’s office is on the third floor of the San Francisco General Hospital, its atmosphere of rationality and scientific method in refreshing contrast to that of the funeral homes. To my question “Are undertakers, in their capacity of embalmers, guardians of the public health?” Dr. Carr’s answer was short and to the point: “They are not guardians of anything except their pocketbooks. Public health virtues of embalming? You can write it off as inapplicable to our present-day conditions.” Discussing possible injury to health caused by the presence of a dead body, Dr. Carr explained that in cases of communicable disease, a dead body presents considerably less hazard than a live one. “There are several advantages to being dead,” he said cheerfully. “You don’t excrete, inhale, exhale, or perspire.” The body of a person who has died of a noncommunicable illness, such as heart disease or cancer, presents no hazard whatsoever, he explained. In the case of death from typhoid, cholera, plague, and other enteric infections, epidemics have been caused in the past by the spread of infection by rodents and seepage from graves into the city water supply. The old-time cemeteries and churchyards were particularly dangerous breeding grounds for these scourges. The solution, however, lies in city planning, engineering, and sanitation, rather than in embalming, for the organisms which cause disease live in the organs, the blood, and the bowel, and cannot all be killed by the embalming process. Thus was toppled—for me, at least—the last stronghold of the embalmers; for until then I had confidently believed that their work had value, at least in the rare cases where death is caused by such diseases.
Dr. Carr has carried on his own campaign for a decent, commonsense approach to cadavers. The morgue in his hospital was formerly a dark retreat in the basement, “supposedly for aesthetic and health reasons; people think bodies smell and are unhealthy to have around.” Objecting strongly to this, Dr. Carr had the autopsy rooms moved up to the third floor along with the offices. “The bodies aren’t smelly, they’re not dirty—bloody, of course, but that’s a normal part of medical life,” he said crisply. “We have so little apprehension of disease being spread by dead bodies that we have them up here right among us. It is medically more efficient, and a great convenience in student teaching. Ten to twenty students attend each autopsy. No danger here!”
A body will keep, under normal conditions, for twenty-four hours unless it has been opened. Floaters, explained Dr. Carr in his commonsense way, are another matter; a person who has been in the Bay for a week or more (“shrimps at the orifices, and so forth”) will decompose more rapidly. They used to burn gunpowder in the morgue when floaters were brought in, to mask the smell, but now they put them in the Deepfreeze, and after about four hours the odor stops (because the outside of the body is frozen) and the autopsy can be performed. “A good undertaker would do his cosmetology and then freeze,” said Dr. Carr thoughtfully. “Freezing is modern and sensible.”
Anxious that we not drift back to the subject of the floaters, I asked about the efficacy of embalming as a means of preservation. Even if it is very well done, he said, few cadavers embalmed for the funeral (as distinct from those embalmed for research purposes) are actually preserved.
“An exhumed embalmed body is a repugnant, moldy, foul-looking object,” said Dr. Carr emphatically. “It’s not the image of one who has been loved. You might use the