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American necrospecialists: the modernartisans of deathIngrid FernandezPublished online: 08 Jul 2013.

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American necrospecialists: the modern artisans of death

Ingrid Fernandez*

The principal goal of this project is to trace how the nineteenth-centurynecrospecialist transformed a French import into a staple of American death-care services, overcame initial stigma, and branded himself as performing acrucial task within the social body. Professionalization of the funeral industry inthe USA as we know it today took place in the nineteenth century. The reasonswhy the American necrospecialist occupies a unique position as compared to hisequivalent in France involves his separation from the medical profession,regulatory bodies, and the widespread acceptance of the business side of death-care management by the public. I will examine the development and legitimiza-tion of the American funeral industry during the nineteenth century, from themanner in which the technology crossed the Atlantic and inspired Americaningenuity to the rhetorical strategies utilized by those engaged in death-careservices to create a cultural mandate. I am using the case study of French chemistand inventor Jean-Nicolas Gannal as a point of comparison with the case studiesof what I consider his American equivalents, Carl Lewis Barnes, CharlesMcCurdy, and Auguste Renouard. This method allows us to analyze the wayin which these different individuals viewed their social role and promotedthemselves as trustworthy guardians of the dead. It also presents how theirsuccess or failure comes as a result of specific cultural and political trends in thenineteenth century.

Keywords: American funeral industry; nineteenth century; embalming;memorialization; corpses; preservation technology

The emergence of the necrospecialist

Given the pervasiveness of the American funeral industry model, the principal goal

of this project is to trace how a group of American individuals from various quasi-

scientific and medical backgrounds in the nineteenth century reframed the death-

care industry based upon a French import � the art of embalming at an affordable

cost. As with other imports, embalming as part of the funeral ritual had to be

socialized through a particular rhetoric created by these pioneers and still relevant to

the American funeral industry as we know it today. These necrospecialists, caretakers

of the corpse, overcame stigma and carved a crucial role for themselves as part of the

larger community. What constitutes the role of the necrospecialist in nineteenth-

century America? He allows extended intimacy between the corpse and the survivors

and facilitates the ritual of disposal. Part of this involves interpreting the

phenomenon of death for the bereaved and transforming it into a significant event

that can be streamlined without the loss of the individuality of the corpse. During the

nineteenth century, the American necrospecialist goes from being a quasi-specialist

not held in the highest esteem to a full-fledged professional endowed with significant

*Email: ingridf@stanford.edu

Atlantic Studies, 2013

Vol. 10, No. 3, 350�383, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2013.813164

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prestige. The reasons why the American necrospecialist occupies a unique position as

compared to his equivalents in European countries, specifically the case of France,

involves his separation from the medical profession, the government and clergy, and

the widespread acceptance of the business side of death-care management by thepublic. I use the case of France because it is the country in which the notion of

affordable embalming for memorialization first emerges, although quickly black-

listed. Unlike in France, the growth of the American funeral industry resulted from

the lack of involvement of centralizing medical and governmental regulatory bodies,

which did not strongly come into being in the USA until the last two decades of the

nineteenth century. The separation from a medical regulatory body and state

intervention are crucial to the legitimization of the profession, which relies on

the testimony and work of those practicing embalming as well as the development ofcutting-edge technology for the preservation of human bodies as part of the

memorial ritual. The American necrospecialist reframes his work as an aesthetic

practice with moral value rather than a purely scientific or medical one. In the USA,

undertakers, embalmers, and, toward the end of the century, funeral directors,

rapidly emerged because of a demand for prolonged intimacy with the corpse which

called for practices of preservation and relocation. In contrast to those who dealt

with preservation of organic specimens in France, the American necrospecialist was

not necessarily trained in medicine or expected to be sanctioned by a nationalgovernment-appointed body or a medical board. This shapes the format of funerals

in the USA as compared to those in France from the nineteenth century to the

present.

Staging remembrance: the visuality of the dead and the corpse as final memory image

Cultural and psychological studies of death have focused on the identity of the dying

and the ramifications of the process of death on the survivors. These include theworks of Kathy Charmaz, Elizabeth Hallam, and Allan Kellehear among others.

Post-modernist theory has been applied to death as the excluded element in an

exchange value system by philosophers such as Jean Baudrillard and Zygmunt

Bauman. Finally, country-specific studies of dying and death also abound. In the

case of the USA, we have the work of Geoffrey Gorer on the disappearance of death;

James Farrell on the characteristics of the ‘‘American way of death;’’ Lewis Saum on

dying in nineteenth-century America in relation to popular culture; and Gary

Laderman on American attitudes toward death, with one text completely dedicatedto the nineteenth century and another to the twentieth century. One can characterize

these works under the subject of thanatology, ‘‘the description or study of the

phenomena of death and of psychological mechanisms for coping with them.’’1

Although thanatology also applies to forensic aspects of bodies, including signs of

death and changes during post-mortem decomposition, literature on this matter is

not as common as in-depth analyses of social practices in relation to the dead, which

continue to primarily focus on the living.

Death involves a physical and spiritual dimension and at different points inhistory, the division between the two is not clear. For instance, the tradition of the

vanitas as well as the popularity of memento mori and images of la danse macabre (the

dance of death) suggest a desire for extended meditation on the passage from life to

death and its impact on both the body and the spiritual fate of the deceased. The

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Christian worldview at the core of medieval life emphasized the physicality of life as a

journey towards material dissolution. This involved a corpse tinged with mortality,

one that prompted reflection on the human as progressive, accumulating traits of

virtue that would lead to redemption through anxious confrontations with visual

imagery that at times deformed the body into foreign matter, such as cases where

worms attack the dead body. The living used the figuration of the corpse not only as

a reminder of the vulnerability and fallen status of mortal man, but also as animpetus for identification with the state of future death as inevitable, grounding an

imperative of somber anticipation into the fabric of everyday life. French historian

Philippe Aries conceptualizes the ‘‘good death’’ in terms of these theological

considerations. Two figurations of the ‘‘good death’’ appear during medieval times.

The first consists of the emphasis on the deathbed as the integral moment

determining the fate of the deceased, during which the dying as well as other

members of the family and the community intercede for mercy and good providence.

The second figuration, prevalent in the later part of the middle ages, places

preparation for death as a life-long task and removes the focus from the moment of

death as one primarily taking place at the deathbed. Aries observes a trend toward

less conspicuous and more ritualized practices in the disposal of the dead as well as a

more controlled and private expression of grief that continue to crystallize from the

seventeenth century on.2 Once we get to the eighteenth century, explicit images of

bodies undergoing decomposition are replaced by clean skeletons, often animated

and socialized, and allegorical emblems including mirrors, time-keeping devices and

fleeting visions of the death’s head. Unlike the more physical confrontation of earliertimes, Aries describes the more pensive and distanced attitude towards death and the

corpse of the eighteenth century as indulgence in melancholy for its own sake, one

that ‘‘expressed a permanent sense of the constant though diffuse presence of death

at the heart of things. [. . .] The death of this later era of the macabre was both present

and remote’’.3 The sentimental interest in death as the final abode from ‘‘the troubled

seas and the quaking earth’’ continued throughout the eighteenth century and

gradually morphed into the great enamoring with death, darkness and the sublime of

the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century present in the traditions of

German and British Romanticism and later, American Romanticism. During this

period of time, interpretations of life from a natural history perspective additionally

forged a strong tie between human existence and cyclical Nature, with a range of

resulting changes in perception. On the one hand, death increasingly figured as a part

of the natural order in the guise of wild nature. On the other hand, this same

application of science to death also subjected it to categorization and objectification,

which opened the possibility of human mastery over the natural. The significance of

this shift for Aries is quite great as it stands as the precursor of modern death and the

beginning of the end of a culture more in tune with this stage of life. I would like tocomment on the problems with this particular approach to the evolution of death,

although without discounting the validity of some of Aries’ insights.

To begin with, the movements Aries identifies as distinct and period-specific did

not follow each other in a linear manner, but must be seen as the process of the

accumulation of various strategies of knowledge about death and the dead that

encompass the larger history of our mortal awareness, our ability to control the terms

of our passing and the relationship constructed between the realms of the living and

the dead, which stages the passage from one mode of ‘‘being’’ to another. Secondly,

352 I. Fernandez

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while there is no argument that rituals and practices in the treatment of dying change

from the Middle Ages to our present time, some of the essential issues concerning the

management of death continue to resonate throughout the centuries, as the work of

Kellehear demonstrates. Further, the agency of the deceased, the community and the

death-care specialists is more complicated than Aries admits. One of the major

problems with Aries’ historical narrative stems from its difficulty in reconciling

opposite or varying tendencies that occur simultaneously. In his attempt to create a

clean evolution of death with time-specific configurations or stages, he neglects the

negotiation and heterogeneity informing cultural narratives on the subject of dying,

which tend towards disparity, re-emergence of previous figurations, and re-

configuration of both individual and collective agency. This oversight is particularly

relevant in comparing the American and French cases during the nineteenth century.

According to Aries, the openness toward meditation on the physicality of death

that would affect each individual and the ethos promoting identification with the

corpse and realization of the transient nature of life radically change beginning in

the eighteenth century with the Age of Enlightenment, when human reason figures as

the opponent of death, with the latter increasingly taking a less prominent role in

everyday life. For many scholars following the work of Aries, the ‘‘turn of the tide’’

that leads to modern death as a process requiring distance, invisibility, and utmost

discretion emerges in the eighteenth century and completely solidifies in the

nineteenth century with the institutionalization and medicalization of the human

body and its natural processes. In fact, the nineteenth century stands as a period of

transition regarding attitudes and practices in the treatment of disease and death that

eventually leads to the disappearance of death. This is quite evident in the schema

presented by Aries, who describes the late eighteenth century as a culture exhibiting

death nostalgia in which mysticism and medicine coexist, with corpses, albeit in less

frightening terms, reaching the status of fetish objects. In contrast to this figuration

of the dead body as possessing a type of personality and vitality:

Nineteenth century medicine was to abandon this belief and adopt the thesis that deathdoes not exist in itself but is merely the separation of the soul and the body, thedistortion or absence of life. Death became pure negativity. It would no longer have anymeaning beyond the disease � identified, named, and classified � of which it was a finalstage.4

Aries pairs this stigmatized view of death with the aesthetic mechanization of the

phenomenon of dying through the emergence of the funeral industry and death-care

professionals. The funeral industry, which becomes significantly organized and

institutionalized in the mid-to-late nineteenth century represents another path

towards the denial of death, in this case, one mixing the scientific and the theatrical.

Aries supports his thesis with the example of funeral rituals in the USA as resembling

art installations. Within this death-denying culture, Aries locates the reversal of the

‘‘good death,’’ in which the individual was conscious and prepared, to the modern

death in hospitals, which he defines as what formerly stood for the accursed death,

‘‘the mors repentina et improvisa, a death that gives no warning.’’5

The second major factor at play in Aries’ historical evolution of death concerns

the agency of the dying individual. While in the Middle Ages, the individual was

responsible for the majority of activities concerning his/her death, modern death

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relinquishes this control to professionals, with the deceased and the survivors heavily

relying on medical experts, funeral directors, and insurance agents in the preparation

for death, the manner in which the dying hour occurs, and the rituals for the disposal

of the remains. Bauman, following the highly influential theories of Michel Foucault

and Aries’ historical narrative, also locates emancipation from the chains of

mortality in the Enlightenment as part of its imperative of progress and reason

that finally allows humankind to be rid of the necessity of negative qualities ineveryday life, prompted by ignorance, parochiality, exploitation, and poverty. In

building culture as a vehicle of immortality, modernity deconstructs mortality,

leaving it ‘‘unadorned, naked, stripped of its significance,’’ a mere ‘‘waste in the

production of life; a useless leftover, the total stranger in the semiotically rich, busy,

confident world of adroit and ingenious actors.’’6 Bauman proposes individuals learn

to deal with the unknown factor posed by the death of the self by presenting the

creation of culture as the primary means for the transcendence of the human species

in the face of immanent biological finitude. He defines transcendence as the

culmination of two functions of culture: survival, in terms of extending the duration,

content and meaning of biological life and immortality, a future-oriented process of

creation that disavows the vulnerability and lack of value of the individual when

confronted with death. Cultural narratives of immortality thus give way to a life

‘‘forgetful of death, life lived as meaningful and worth living, life alive with purposes

instead of being crushed and incapacitated by purposelessness [. . .] a formidable

human achievement.’’7 Here, Bauman creates an antagonistic relation between

nature and culture, the former death-affirming and the latter death-denying, in whichthe only way to preserve life involves a level of naıvete and self-deception that ignores

the biological dimension of our existence in the world. Culture becomes the safe-

house of a delusional form of existence out of tune with the flow of the universe that

by privileging one life form and a limited definition of liveliness based on

consciousness and forward progress, discards all other impersonal forms as secondary

and inconsequential. Death finds expression in metaphorical language or images of

the dead that connote rest and sleep, such as that seen in memorial photography in

late nineteenth-century America as well as in the careful embalming of the corpse to

remain life-like and recognizable to the survivors through the restoration of bodily

boundaries and the semblance to the pre-mortem identity of the deceased.

Kellehear identifies models of the evolution of death that are less linear and more

subject to variance and in which historical changes � especially this pre-medical/post-

medical segmentation � are not as clear-cut as in the works of Aries and Bauman and

also problematize the division between nature and culture that is taken for granted in

these works. Kellehear proposes two areas crucial to any study of the evolution of

death: the amount of control of the individual and those around him/her, or in otherwords, anticipation versus sudden death, and the evaluation of the process of dying

based on the space in which it occurs, whether in a worldly or other-worldly realm.

Nature and culture come together through the creation of a personal approach to

death, in which the individual sees himself/herself as part of a larger process. Of

highest consequence, death rituals figure as cultural narratives constructed by the

human imagination dating back to the beginnings of civilization. Kellehear notes

early Western rituals exhibit an approach to dying that involves the post-mortem

vitality of the remains as a significant element in the transition from life to death. The

corpse was first interred, expected to undergo decay and disarticulation, and finally,

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disinterred and removed to a site closer to the survivors, such as under the residence or

at the entrance. Within this context, ‘‘community rites support the ‘dying person’

during their dying as otherworldly journey.’’8 Dying was seen as a transformation of

the self at two levels. The corpse underwent biological deterioration in the

intermediate post-mortem state. In addition, the biological deterioration was under-

stood as part and parcel of the liberation of the soul from the body. The two processes,

bio-degradation and spiritual liberation, occurred simultaneously and were dependenton the post-mortem life cycle of the corpse. This treatment of dying constituted a

significant amount of cultural activity in the development of the post-death journey of

the corpse, which places nature and the spirit as major players in this process of

transformation. Such cultural projects attempted to resolve the unknown and

unstable characteristics related to dying. Early communities in the West accepted

death as an inevitable part of life. However, this did not prevent them from seeking

greater knowledge of it in order to more effectively manage it and put it off as long as

possible. In other words, this type of response is not exclusive to the Age of

Enlightenment and modernity. As in ages to come, knowledge creation and

technology served two main purposes when dealing with death. First, awareness of

mortality required the investigation of signs of death that could be used to better

prepare for it. Secondly, technologies to improve one’s chances of extended survival

also reflected the desire to ward off death, without necessarily denying it. Kellehear

rebukes Bauman’s principle that culture serves to create immortality and instead views

it as a complex system to ‘‘assist and anticipate [death’s] eventuality in another place

beyond this life.’’9 I would even take it a step further by insisting that both Kellehearand Bauman’s claims can co-exist and point to similar end goals. Immortality

encompasses the building of a place or mode of being beyond this life, one greater than

the biological life span of the individual. It is a strategy to contextualize dying in

human terms in order to emotionally and functionally prepare for its eventuality. This

preparation can be religious and secular in nature depending on the beliefs popular at

a particular point in time. Narratives of dying alluding to immortality of the life force

or the essence of the self (i.e. as soul or part of Universal Spirit considered within the

cycles of nature) can be readily found in all time periods Kellehear considers.

Kellehear views the move towards modernity as steadily continuing to attempt to

resolve the uncertainty associated with dying in terms of anticipation and

preparation. As a result, medicalization is only part of the story and the agency of

the individual does not disappear but takes a different form. Modernity has brought

about an expansion of the administration of dying to include regulatory models

concerned with health education and grief management both for the dying individual

and the survivors. Some of these are due to increased knowledge and technological

advance, which affect the biological dimension of dying. Others point to culturalshifts in response to increased secularization and skepticism about the existence of an

afterlife, which reconfigure the concept of the endurance of the essence of the self. In

both cases, anxieties over death are managed in the context of the here-and-now,

which would imply the opposite of a culture of death denial. In fact, one can

interpret the masking of the corpse in memorialization as part of a culture’s version

the ‘‘good death.’’ In both France and the USA, memorialization rituals attempt to

deal with these abject elements of dying by restoring a ‘‘wholesome,’’ ‘‘natural,’’

‘‘peaceful,’’ and ‘‘slumbering’’ appearance of the corpse, which in turn constructs the

type of relation the living have with their dead.

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In order to identify what stands for the ideal death, visual models must be placed

in a comparative context. This explains how death-care services become a cultural

institution to begin with as well as subsequent development. As Hallam has noted,

once the social identity of the person is replaced by the abject corpse, the materialreality of embodied death must be hidden through the memorialization ritual. In

other words, the boundaries of the ‘‘social’’ body, in the physical sense, must be

reconstructed.10 The visual transformation of corpse into the last memory image

becomes labor for a particular set of individuals, the thanatopracteurs in France and

the necrospecialists in the USA. The final product of this labor and the role played

by the individuals in the death-care profession are dependent upon cultural context.

Death-care services in the USA slowly became institutionalized and emerged as a

respectable profession during the nineteenth century. Several steps led to legitimiza-tion. As Rachel Sherman and others have argued, ‘‘before practitioners of new

occupations can attempt to establish limited jurisdictions using institutional

supports, they must acquire a ‘cultural mandate’.’’11 A culture mandate translates

into the acceptance of an occupation as a form of work worthy of remuneration.

Nineteenth-century necrospecialists built a discourse legitimizing their work through

their adherence to the ‘‘good death’’ in both a physical and moral sense.

Capitalization on nationalist practices during and after the Civil War also aided

their rise to the rank of professionals. As far as how the cultural mandate influencesthe visual presentation of the dead in the form of what is expected of the

professional, one major difference in the cases of France and the USA deal with

the desire to view or hide the dead body. Embalming techniques as part of death-care

services succeeded in the USA because of a culture that saw proximity to the corpse

as key to memorialization. In contrast, the French did not value the presence of the

corpse (in fact, saw it as morbid showmanship) as part of memorialization. Aries’

opinion as a French historian is a prime example. In discussing American funerals,

he ridicules the entire format of memorialization, including the exposure of thecorpse, stating: ‘‘In the tableaux vivants of the funeral parlour, people have

recognized the effects of a systematic denial of death in a society dedicated to

technology and happiness.’’12 For the French survivors and the public in the case of

prominent figures, the pre-death testimony and the focus on the last memory image

(in the simulacra of the death mask or portrait) of the individual while he/she was

alive become the markers of the identity of the deceased, the boundaries that need to

be restored. Embalming was unnecessary and more importantly, not a commodity in

demand when it came to death-care services.

The French thanatopracteur

The case in France was precisely the opposite of the USA in terms of freedom to

explore a fruitful commercial segment of the economy � that presented by the need

to dispose of the dead. Regulation of medical and scientific practices served to

maintain the prestige of Paris as ‘‘an international center for medical study and a

major exporter of clinical and public health ideas and practices.’’13 From the onset,the French Academy of Medicine remained skeptical of what they termed ‘‘secret

remedies,’’ processes or products that would be utilized to treat the human body

outside of standard medical practices. In the few cases approved, the government

became involved in obtaining the property rights of the remedy or treatment upon

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the request of the Academy. This rigidity served to exclude individuals who were not

part of the medical elite, the ‘‘princes of Paris,’’ from practicing.14 Specialization

prevented cross-pollination among scientific disciplines. A chemist could never

assume his expertise, however wide, would accredit him as a medical doctor. This

extended to the treatment corpses. The famous Paris Morgue, for instance, was run

by forensic doctors. Their practices, as we will see, did not include embalming the

corpse.

As in the USA, death-care services became a profession in France due to demand

for disposal and memorialization. But its development tells a very different story. The

French funeral industry never quite recovered from its controversial beginnings.

Bodily preservation and viewing were not considered primary factors within the

industry. Rather, its focus laid in funeral pomp, hence the name pompes funebres,

which involved a multiplicity of accessories to be used during the funeral procession

from the home to the cemetery. This being the case, the profession was highly

commercialized during the nineteenth century and various authorities fought to keep

it under their jurisdiction. The early incarnation of the thanatopracteur (who was

more of a merchant than a technician) had to be approved by the city and worked

with authorities through a contract for specific services. Because a sizable profit

could be made, a certain ruthlessness characterized the type of characters attracted

to this business. Two examples affirm this position. Frochot’s decree of 1801 required

the professional be state-appointed, restricted his services to procuring an orderly

procession to the cemetery and a burial ceremonial, but did not regulate costs

associated with ‘‘accessories’’ and ‘‘presentation fees.’’15 The decree purposely

remained ambiguous when it came to the type of individuals who could provide

these services. This was not an oversight. M. Bobee, manufacturer of funeral

paraphernalia, served as a consultant in the drawing of the legislation. After the

decree, the Department of the Seine granted Bobee an exclusive contract for the

provision of ‘‘accessories’’ for funerals in Paris for a period of nine years. Soon,

another manufacturer, M. Bigot, muscled in to provide materials for funerals, an

action that went without reprimand from the State. The interminable, heated

disputed between Bobee and new rivals like Bigot undermined morals claims related

to the role of the thanatopracteur. Parishes also bitterly fought for a profit margin in

this booming business. All parties accused the others of dishonorable manipulation

of the family in mourning and indecency to the memory of the dead. These battles

prominently appeared in newspapers, revealing all the sordid details. For instance,

two competitors could not resolve the issue of who was the primary service provider

for a particular funeral. Neither side budged. To place the issue of provider privilege

in the eyes of the authorities, the corpse was left in the middle of the street for three

days. The sanitary authorities were forced to resolve this glaring conflict. However,

this was not an isolated event. As a result, it is not surprising that the public,

although it had accepted the idea of commercial funerals, did not fully embrace the

social role of these emerging, business-savvy thanatopracteurs. Final reform to

protect the consumer was passed in 1904, granting cities complete regulation over the

individuals who could participate in the local funeral industry. The thanatopracteur

as a professional who is part of the State, upon the recommendation of the Academy

of Medicine, continues to be the dominant model for death-care services in

contemporary France.16

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The American necrospecialist

In the USA, the prestige of the medical profession was not a primary concern.

During most of the nineteenth century, this profession was highly divided in terms of

both perspective and types of practices and lacked an authoritarian body. This

allowed characters of dubious academic backgrounds and training to openly serve

the public as medical doctors in all capacities, including services for the dead. The

necrospecialist was not primarily an expert in the medical sciences, but rather an

inventor and entrepreneur.The quality of his work � as seen on the treated corpse � substituted for a

background in medicine. In some cases, like that of Auguste Renouard, this

professional developed his skills by chance and through trial and error. In other

cases, he possessed knowledge in chemistry and anatomy, but never regarded himself

as part of the medical profession. In fact, necrospecialists like Renouard and Barnes

resisted the medicalization of the corpse and took an approach to death the combined

emotion in the face of human loss as well as professional pragmatism. These

intermediaries between the living and the dead intricately understood the necroculture

of nineteenth-century America. As a result, they addressed the needs of their time by

finding a solution that allowed extended intimacy with the corpse. In a time when

modernization geographically distanced members of families and with the situation of

Civil War soldiers dying away from home, these innovators brought about a

revolution in the technology of bodily preservation that restored the traditional

figuration of the ‘‘good death.’’ One might ask the question, what was the intent of the

American necrospecialist? This is a complex line of inquiry involving public and

private interests. As a member of the necroculture of nineteenth-century America, this

individual understood the public demand and emotional need for the beautification of

the corpse as part of the ritual of disposal. Death-bed scenes and elaborate viewing of

the dead constituted experiences common to the average person. In conjunction to

this, he can also be seen as an opportunist. Bodies abounded for experimentation with

new technology, families did not question the business side of the profession or its

processes, solemnity rapidly replaced early scandal, and government regulation was

practically non-existent. These conditions allowed the American necrospecialist to

become a true scientific entrepreneur. Moreover, a personal interest and pride in

perfecting the technology drove many of these men to continue experimentation to

make the process of displaying cadavers as aesthetically pleasing as possible (Figure 1).

In contrast, experimentation with embalming technology in France was linked to

advances in chemistry and not an element present in common social exchange tied to

the aesthetics of memorialization. French chemists like Francois Chaussier and

Louis Jacques Thenard followed in the footsteps of renowned Dutch botanist and

anatomist, Frederik Ruysch, in creating formulas to better preserve anatomical

specimens.17 Neither chemist, least of all Ruysch for that matter, would have thought

to apply their invention to human bodies for memorialization. The two realms were

incompatible. Because of the limited scope of their profession as chemists and not

physicians, embalming techniques were constrained to the laboratory. These

individuals would have never imagined their invention could be streamlined and

made affordable as a part of the funeral ritual of the average person. Only French

chemist and inventor Jean-Nicolas Gannal possessed the capacity to visualize the

potential commercialization of embalming technology as part of the funeral

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ceremony, which, as we will see, he was unable to carry out. It is fair to say that

between heavy regulation and public distrust, Gannal never had a chance to begin

with. It was not a question of ingenuity, but one related to geographical location.

Gannal was an innovator in a system not particularly open to difference. One can see

him as a rebel, someone who challenged the French Medical Academy for its lack of

vision, as well as a business man � one who miserably failed and, ironically, his

popularity in the USA is perhaps his highest achievement. In France, at the most, as

a 1938 article suggests, Gannal was regarded as no more than un curieux personnage

of the nineteenth century (see Figure 2).In the USA, the necrospecialists’ responsibilities took concrete form as social

agents with loose ties to the hard sciences. Even if they practiced as scientists, or for

that matter, physicians, they were first and foremost the caretakers of the dead. These

individuals were tasked with orchestrating a ritual signifying a ‘‘good death,’’ which

meant a peaceful-looking or slumbering corpse not showing signs of disfiguration

through either the circumstances of the death or the processes of preservation. At the

same time and due to their specific application of embalming technology, the

founding fathers of the American funeral industry created a necro-etiquette for rites

of memorialization, producing manuals that taught the average individual the proper

way of undertaking the profession, from a firm knowledge of basic anatomy to

behavioral codes for dealing with the survivors during the ceremony. Finally,

nineteenth-century American necro-etiquette was characterized not so much in terms

of professional certification, but in relation to character traits, once again breaking

away from the scientific origins of the technology.

Occupational specialty and legitimization

American necrospecialists were often well-known in the community and trusted as

guardians of the dead, despite their lack of scientific knowledge. Communities relied

Figure 1. Experimentation and innovation. From The Art and Science of Embalming (1896),

p. 24.

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on this intimate connection between their members as a stabilizing force for the

rooting of ancestry and legacy. In the American case, the issue of trust by the

community largely contributed to the acceptance and success of the necrospecialist.

Preparation of the dead, once performed by the family, was turned over to this

Figure 2. The eccentric M. Gannal, newspaper story, 1938. Courtesy of NYPL Digital Gallery.

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professional. However, in order for the profession to develop, the survivors needed to

feel the necrospecialist was ‘‘one of the family’’ � an individual who would faithfully

represent their vision of the ‘‘good death’’ and create a beautiful setting for the

survivors to view the departed one last time and be impressed with a pleasant final

memory image. Technological advancement and entrepreneurship in the preservation

of bodies, along with the desire for the experience of the ‘‘good death,’’ and Civil War

casualties combined to create a significantly higher demand for death-care services

around mid-century. In the formation of necrospecialization, embalming, the

imported cornerstone of the American funeral industry well into the present, held

a prominent role as part of the process of creating the ‘‘good death.’’ The

opportunity for innovation had no limits. In fact, government intervention during

the Civil War to regulate the profession came too late and had little effect. As a

result, necrospecialists obtained carte blanche to come up with a plausible and often

local cultural mandate. In the case of France, state intervention and scandal tainted

the possibility of a cultural mandate in which a new type of practice with a sound

moral basis supported by the entire community could emerge.

Prior to the mid nineteenth century, the USA, much as other countries in Europe,

regarded embalming as a practice to preserve anatomical specimens for scientific

instruction and research. Harold Oatfield notes the appropriation of this practice

and set of skills for the purpose of memorialization by offering two definitions of the

technique. According to Oatfield, on the one hand, ‘‘[e]mbalmment refers to old-style

preservation of the body, soaking and packing the cavities with chemicals, followed

by natural or induced dehydration.’’ On the other hand, embalming ‘‘refers only to

the modern method of preservation through arterial injection of chemicals.’’18 In the

USA, individuals with backgrounds in medicine and chemistry and familiar with

‘‘embalmment,’’ began experimenting with ‘‘embalming’’ for preservation of corpses

in rituals of memorialization. This application of the practice was not an American

innovation as many assume, but crosses the Atlantic through the translation of

Gannal’s History of Embalming by Richard Harlan in 1840. Gannal came up with

the ingenious idea of utilizing embalming techniques to preserve and beautify

corpses for funeral rituals. Because his methods were rejected and his public image

tainted, the widespread acceptance and re-formulated use of his invention once it

crossed the Atlantic have erased his contribution, making it seem an exclusively

American discovery that continues to define the American ‘‘way of death.’’

Embalming techniques emerging in nineteenth-century America addressed the

need of a necroculture privileging extended exposure and intimacy with the corpse.

At the level of aesthetics, the process not only preserves the body but also hides signs

of ravaging diseases and scarification. It restores the flexibility and tinge of the skin

and enhances natural pigmentation through the use of chemicals like arsenic to

accentuate a reddish color in the cheeks. During the Civil War, embalming became

the most effective way to maintain and transport bodies of dead soldiers to their

homes when they died in the field. Once the corpse returned home, the ‘‘good death’’

could be recreated and staged through the viewing portion of the memorialization

ritual. At the onset, embalmers forged partnerships with undertakers and commer-

cial manufacturers of embalming products. By the end of the nineteenth century, the

undertaker and embalmer had given way to the more prestigious profession of the

funeral director, a figure that continues to represent the American funeral industry.

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It is a great error to think the profession bloomed naturally and without difficulty.

Embalming as part of death-care services allowed individuals to profit from the

prevalence of death and also experiment on and commercially use unclaimed corpses

of soldiers. Being a technological innovation at the time, it was not unusual for greedyindividuals to heavily charge for this service and exploit the emotional vulnerability of

the survivors. For instance, while at the beginning of the war, the price of embalming

stood at $50 for an officer and $25 for an enlisted man, these quickly rose to $80 and

$30, respectively.19 Embalmers with notorious reputations could charge up to $150 for

their services, not including the receptacle for transportation of the corpse. Some

necrospecialists even made their own coffins as well as preservatives. Others, mainly

those with shops, utilized unclaimed bodies as visual forms of advertisement and

prominently displayed corpses dressed in the finest clothes to attract passers-by.Although the public expressed fascination for the wonders of the technology,

Americans were a bit skeptical of innovative methods of preservation when these

were to be applied to their loved ones. The visual presentation of beautified corpses as

key to the ‘‘good death’’ rapidly changed perception.

Early scandal also hindered public acceptance of the profession. During the

harsh times of the Civil War, the army felt the need to place restrictions on

necrospecialists because it felt their self-promotion had a demoralizing effect on the

troops and their relatives. With increasing cases of fraud and extortion, the WarDepartment issued General Order Number 39, ‘‘Order Concerning Embalmers,’’ in

March 1865. This order requiring licensing for necrospecialists based on ‘‘proof of

skill and ability as embalmers,’’ regulated the process of disinterment and fixed a

price scale for services. As James Lee observes, it constituted the first effort at

regulation of the funeral industry in the USA, yet individual states and practitioners

themselves did not achieve extended uniformity for another 30 years. The problem

here is obvious. By the time the government feebly intervened, the crisis was over.

Given this amount of early misgivings, how did American necrospecialists obtain a‘‘culture mandate’’ and justify their work in the eyes of the public? The answer

contains elements that are material and spiritual. Individuals associated with death-

care underwent a process of self-regulation and public instruction, disseminating the

crafting of the ‘‘good death’’ as a professional service in line with a democratic and

egalitarian discourse popular at the time. The nature of the industry was one of

collaboration with manufacturers endorsing instruction courses and the more

representatives of the profession offering lectures and courses. Mentoring, manuals,

private workshops, and assistantships formed the necrospecialist’s body of instruction.This easily stood in for professional certification. Above all, American nineteenth-

century necrospecialists achieved success because of this blurry type of expertise,

which was more aesthetic in quality than technical. They constructed a connection to

the natural sciences as well as ‘‘the will of God’’ in literature promoting their role as

key members of the social body with major emphasis on the beautification of the

corpse as the key feature in a ritual designed to peacefully let go of the dearly departed.

The making of the American necrospecialist

In his article ‘‘Embalmed Vision,’’ John Troyer argues that due to the prominent

presence of embalming, the locomotive to carry corpses from place to place, and

finally, the technology of photography applied to memorialization:

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the dead body was placed in a space of death stripped of any adverse smells,appearances, and ultimately of human death itself. The corpse was no longer controlledby biological death in the late nineteenth century; rather, human control over the corpseand the ‘‘death’’ it presented became mediated by human actors.20

While the proposition that the ‘‘beautiful death’’ corresponds to the ‘‘good death’’ in

nineteenth-century America is plausible, there is more at stake in the way the corpse

becomes the focal point for a diverse set of individuals. Given the preference for

intimacy with the dead prior to the Civil War and the overwhelming presence of death

during the war � which the public did not shy away from � America was far from being

a death-denying culture. I suggest the opposite is true. The emphasis on a ‘‘good

death’’ pervaded the collective sensibilities of the time, but it does not amount to a by-

passing of biological death. In the nineteenth century, the public was consistently

attracted to ‘‘scientific’’ and even ‘‘quasi-scientific’’ practices in the handling of

corpses. Medical museums and photography exhibits demonstrating the casualties of

the war (including typology of injuries) enjoyed great popularity and patronage.

Moreover, diffusion of information about the embalming process reached the public.

American necrospecialists went to great lengths to promote their products and

services, sometimes even in conjunction with manufacturing companies and the new

‘‘embalming schools’’ that taught the average individual how to reach professional

specialization. As a result of this publicity, embalming became a booming occupation.

Following the steps of French entrepreneur Gannal, American necrospecialists

such as Auguste Renouard, Charles McCurdy, and Carl Lewis Barnes produced

handbooks and detailed guides on the nature of their services. The texts explicitly

delineated every step of the not-too-gentle physical reality of embalming, which

required removing the blood and organs and forcibly stuffing the body with

preservative fluid. Some necrospecialists surfaced in a highly public role, becoming

renowned as originators, innovators, and instructors. Renouard travelled the country

offering short-term workshops for future necrospecialists, often sponsored by the

manufacturers of preservation products. Barnes created his own school. McCurdy

promoted the embalming technique as a break with the past and a step toward

progress and modernity. Unlike in France, the nineteenth-century necrospecialist was

not interested in medicalizing the body or making his services too technical to be

understood by the lay public.21 The rhetoric was anti-elitist. In fact, many of the

instruction manuals were meant to be reader-friendly reference guides for individuals

who might or might not have a medical background. American necrospecialists were,

above all, entrepreneurs who shared a common interest in subtly displaying their

craft on corpses. They understood corpses were valuable materials of culture. Unlike

in European embalming case studies (usually reserved for the famous and

monarchs), their focus was democratic in nature. The materials of culture consisted

of the body of the common man as well as that of the elite. The participants in

cultural role came from the same stock as their customers. As a result, their approach

to the profession was simultaneously pragmatic and emotive, although soberly so.

American necrospecialists contributed a unique product � the treated cadaver at an

affordable cost. They prolonged the physical interaction between the living and the

dead and effectively informed the public as to how they were achieving these results.

They never denied the presence of biological death on bodies and the utilization of

artifice, but opened public discourse on it and justified it as a way to create a positive

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last memory image of the deceased that would in turn assist the survivors in

overcoming the loss.

Nineteenth-century American necrospecialists possessed an attunement to public

demand for a model of dealing with dying and death, one obsessed with the surface

of the body as a marker of moral character. To fulfill this need, they developed

memorialization rituals placing death on display. Accounts from nineteenth-centuryfuneral viewings reveal a fascination with the treated corpse as an object of beauty.

Viewing the dead did not represent a denial of death or the disappearance of the

physical body. The image of the treated corpse stood for the inevitable acknowl-

edgement of the presence of death in life, which did not hinder the possibility of

spiritual immortality of the soul. The necrospecialist relied on a rhetoric combining

his adherence to Nature/the natural as well as the divine. He promoted the profession

as one with the ability to connect all the parts � individual and universal, mortal and

divine, past and present � through ritualistic grace in the corpse’s treatment.

In France, attention to the condition of the corpse prior to burial was negligible.

Even in the cases of great figures, the bulk of attention remained on the funeral

procession and the burial ceremony, both involving closed caskets. The death scene

was not unlike that in the USA. Especially in cases of wealthy or notorious families,

the death-bed scenario played for a number of days and allowed those who were

simply curious or wanted to pay their last respects to populate the site, although

(important to note) not the interior of the home.22 Nonetheless, the corpse did notfigure as the major player in death-bed rituals. Constant reports as to condition of the

individual about to die reached the public and this element constituted what was

newsworthy. This rhetoric does not involve discourse on the abject corpse, but the last

glory of the living individual in the style of the Romantic death. Victor Hugo serves as

a case study of the death of a person of interest who was also an artist. In the last

throes of life, Hugo composed beautiful prose describing his physical and spiritual

condition. Newspapers enthusiastically published his death-bed agonies. Like the

average individual, once he expired, the corpse was left to begin the process of decay in

the death chamber. For the affluent or in the case of major cultural figures like Hugo,

the equivalent of bodily preservation through embalming was attained through the

skill of a respectable artist who preserved the memory image by faithfully rendering

the character of the great man through the creation of a death mask or a portrait of

the dead.23 This simulacrum, a stand-in for the corpse, completely substituted the

latter. The death mask or portrait became the image venerated at the funeral,

published in the press, and reproduced in souvenirs. Unlike the Americans, the French

did not find much value in staring real death (a real corpse) in the face.Death on display remained morbid and associated with spectacle for the lower

classes. Real corpses, including those of murder victims, were put on display at the

Paris Morgue until these reached a state of decomposition that would, if allowed to

proceed further, prevent an autopsy.24 The Paris Morgue afforded the inquisitive a

grand spectacle of fleshy death on display behind a large glass window covered by a

curtain, which would reveal the latest specimens, seven days a week, from dawn to

dusk.25 It is important to note that this served as a display of scientific innovation

and invention, a lecture hall/entertainment hall for the average Parisian as well as

tourists. Unlike in the USA, corpses were not meant to arouse awe, admiration, or

solemnity. They served as curiosities among amounting curiosities brought about

through rapid technological innovation.

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Necro-wisdom: reading the necrospecialists

J. N. Gannal: egalitarian bodily preservation and institutional resistance

It might be difficult to believe that the American ‘‘way of death’’ is, in essence, an

import. Embalming in Europe, at least from the fourteenth century onward, had a

specific use. It was employed to preserve the bodies of royalty and famous figures

expected to be on display. Its other application consisted of anatomical embalming

for pedagogic and research purposes. Only medical specialists had access to this

knowledge, with formulas often kept secret. The case of France serves as a worthy

comparative example for analyzing the development of the necrospecialist in the

USA. What we consider modern embalming began in the nineteenth century with

innovations in chemistry, primarily the work of French chemist and inventor Gannal.

Gannal diverged from traditional embalming practices in three ways. He did not

belong to the medical establishment. In fact, his initial presentation and promotion

of the technology was seen as an affront to the medical community. Secondly,

Gannal patented the process in 1837 and applied it to rites of memorialization. As

Trompette and Lemonnier note, he pioneered ‘‘the practice of embalming to corpses

destined to be buried.’’26 Thirdly, Gannal aimed to democratize the practice not only

by training individuals without a medical background, but by making the process

affordable. It will not come as a surprise that Gannal quickly came into conflict with

the French Medical Board. Not only did physicians question the purpose of Gannal’s

studies, but they reproached his lack of a medical degree as scandalous and

disreputable, denouncing his patent to the extent of black-listing it.27 As we have

seen, the scientific disciplines in France, unlike in the USA, did not frequently

overlap, and medical specialties excluded hybrid individuals like Gannal. Moreover,

the Medical Academy approached Gannal as a mere charlatan, a procurer of the

‘‘secret remedies’’ they wanted to bring to light through complete disclosure or

altogether disregard as anti-scientific. The business side of Gannal’s proposition was

at odds with the ‘‘pure’’ medical advancement sanctioned by the Academy. Lastly,

Gannal was a shameless self-promoter, very far from the model of objectivity

expected of a man of medical training. In sum, his rhetoric failed due to character

flaws at a point in time of high scrutiny, both by the medical and scientific

communities and the public. As a result of these factors, the practice of embalming

would only gain popularity in France in the 1980s, with Gannal’s innovation

forgotten for over a century. Nonetheless, this eccentric and pioneering inventor

deserves credit for inspiring American necrospecialists. His formula for preservation

fluid became the basic model for embalming in the USA. But although Gannal and

the American necrospecialist shared the purpose of democratizing the technology,

the former presented his place in history and social role in a completely different light

from the practitioners in the USA.

Gannal’s History of Embalming and of Preparations in Anatomy, Pathology, and

Natural History (1838) remains mostly theoretical. As the title suggests, it was not

meant as a guide for the amateur embalmer or presented cases from ordinary life.

Rather, it is a historical work, filled with anecdotes tracing the origin of the practice

and its use to preserve the bodies of remarkable characters. Further, despite his

publicized democratic intentions, Gannal maintained his formula secret. He justified

his withholding because as an inventor rather than a scientist, he did not feel

obligated to share his discovery. Gannal consistently presented himself as a specialist

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in competition for profit, arguing, ‘‘I have consequently abstained from giving in

totality the means employed in this operation, reserving to myself the care of this

process on the request of families and physicians.’’28 He carved out a unique role for

his services by labeling himself as an ‘‘artist’’ following two principles: nature and the

noble sentiments of affection, respect, and veneration in the treatment of cherished

bodies ‘‘snatched from affection by the hand of death.’’29 Gannal used this text to

present his invention to the Board of Physicians. Given this already hostile audience,

he legitimized his work by placing himself in a long history of death-care specialists

beginning with the Guanches and the Ancient Egyptians. He then traced European

embalming practices in the studies of Clauderus, Derasieres, Debils, Ruysch, and

Swammerdam.30 Gannal followed a self-serving rhetoric in his narration of history.

He detailed each of his forefathers’ methods and immediately pointed to their

inadequacy. He objected to methods that resulted in ‘‘superficial embalming,’’

processes that failed because of their limited duration. Gannal additionally

condemned the mutilation of the body during the process as not following the

ways of nature. While ‘‘[n]ature covers with a little snow the traveler who scales the

mountain, then, after centuries, returns the body unaltered,’’ man ‘‘mutilates in vain

their inanimate spoils; in vain he penetrates with aromatics and preservative juices,

remains, which putrefaction reclaims and seizes.’’31 Subsequently, he established

himself as the finder of a solution through progress in organic chemistry, a field, he

argued, that should be elevated to an exact science. He constructed his vocational

‘‘calling’’ into an art based on the sciences of the natural world and removed from

the banality of everyday life. Gannal was always larger than life. Part of Gannal’s

self-promotion rested on his practical knowledge of embalming obtained in the

course of his experiments, which he details at length. In the end, according to his

text, he discovers the ideal process, one involving: ‘‘[a] substance easy to manage

without danger to the operator;’’ affordable tools and preservation fluid; an

operation that can be completed in half an hour; no mutilation of the corpse; and

finally, ‘‘[i]n place of a substance discolored, leathery, and dried, reserving more or

less the human form, my process preserves the subject, such as it is, at the moment of

death, with the color and suppleness proper to each tissue.’’32 Despite his claims to

perfection, Gannal, as Harlan later noted, often exaggerated and close inspection of

his specimens revealed the limits of his innovations. This potentially explains the

rejection of his invention by the Board.

The second theme of Gannal’s manuscript relates to the need for the

medicalization of the human body as a source of knowledge. He emphasized the

inappropriateness of artificial anatomical models used as learning tools, the type that

‘‘can never support a comparison with the proper matter of the organs.’’33 The

human body presented the perfect object for technological innovation. With such

statements, he invalidates his initial claim of noble sentiments, and depersonalizes

human bodies in the description of his experiments. In other words, he follows the

extreme medicalization of the corpse as a source of knowledge that was the norm in

Europe. Quoting from his precise notes, he informs the reader:

On the 16th of August, I injected a subject with eight quarts of acetate of alumine attwenty degrees. This corpse, placed upon the table without any other preparation, waspreserved perfectly well for the period of one month; at the end of this period, it mightbe perceived that the nostrils, the eyelids, and the extremities of the ears, commenced

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drying, as well as the hands and feet. In order to remedy this inconvenience, I coveredone half of the subject with a layer of varnish. At the end of two months, it was easy toremark, that the part subjected to the action of the air had considerably diminished involume, and was less useful for dissection. Finally, at the end of January, 1836, thevarnished parts, not dissected, were still well preserved, whilst the rest was completelydried, mummified.34

Several factors stand out in this description. Gannal always refers to the person he

experiments on as a subject, a corpse, or a set of parts. He does not mention gender,

age, manner of death, or anything that would humanize his specimen. This lack of

interest in the personhood of the corpse is accentuated by his precision regarding

numerical values such as the temperature, amount of fluid injected, and period of

exposure. Once the specimen begins to decompose and does not react to his methods,it becomes less useful not only to Gannal in his quest for improved preservative fluid,

but for dissection in general. It has been wasted. Notice Gannal always utilizes first-

person narration, with the manuscript centering on his achievements rather than the

organic biological material he works upon. Gannal’s continued self-referencing

sharply contrasts with a manuscript he characterizes as summarizing the feats of

other embalming specialists who have left ‘‘interesting documents up to the present

time scattered throughout so many works.’’35 It also problematizes the conceptua-

lization of his social role as a specialist in death-care services because Gannal’sremarks are often inconsistent. He concludes the introduction to the text by claiming

‘‘a duty I owed, to place at the disposition of my fellow citizens the means of

continuing some relations with the remains of persons whom they had held dear.’’36

Gannal gives us an interpretation of the necrospecialist as communicator between

the living and the dead, which is not unlike that of the American necrospecialist.

That said, his description of method later in the text contrasts with the sober, dutiful,

unselfish tone he takes in the introduction. Always chasing notoriety, he positions

himself at the center of the text with the technology and the corpses acting assupporting cast. The show can never proceed without Gannal. As we will see, the

American necrospecialist goes to great lengths to minimize his presence in the text,

more generally discussing the profession and procedures associated with it. Further,

he does not feel the need to justify his role through a connection to history, but

privileges character traits. The American necrospecialist, unlike Gannal, continu-

ously emphasizes the moral duty his services fulfill for the survivors and in

preserving the integrity of the corpse. The essence of his practice consists in the

inconspicuous orchestration of the interaction between the living and the dead.Gannal could never play a supporting role when discussing his grand innovation.

Carl Lewis Barnes: the moral duty of the necrospecialist

Gannal provided the formula for embalming fluid. Historians locate the origins of

modern embalming in the patents of American ‘‘physician’’ Thomas H. Holmes, who

notoriously prepared the corpse of Colonel Ellsworth, the first casualty of the

American Civil War.37 Holmes’ medical background, like that of other necrospecia-lists, is debatable. After successfully embalming for some time during and after the

war, Holmes returned to Brooklyn and engaged in various business enterprises,

including a health spa that eventually bankrupted him. Even though he can be

viewed as the founding father of modern embalming, he never wrote on the novelty

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of the practice and considered it, first and foremost, a business enterprise. Carl Lewis

Barnes, however, wrote and taught extensively. He represents one of the strongest

proponents for professionalization of the necrospecialist in American nineteenth-

century culture as a major institution that could self-regulate and serve an important

need (both pragmatic and emotional) involving all members of the community. A

physician by trade, Barnes not only invented embalming tools and improved

preservation fluids, but also initiated the largest chain of death-care services schoolsin the USA, with branches in New York, Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis, and

Dallas.38 Most fascinating in this social context are his meditations on the

significance of his profession and the manner he inserted his practice into cultural

discourses of the time through his publications. Barnes, unlike Gannal, approached

innovation cautiously and without much pomp and circumstance. His demeanor, at

once pragmatic, emotionally attuned to the needs of his clients, and humble, is

distinctively American. It will come as no surprise that Barnes praised Gannal’s

ingenuity but severely denounced the latter’s lack of moral duty to the occupation.

Published in 1896, The Art and Science of Embalming: Descriptive and Operative

constitutes a work of encyclopedic dimension. The manuscript’s subheading

summarizes this ambitious endeavor, ‘‘[a] practical and comprehensive treatise on

Modern Embalming, together with a description of the Anatomy and Chemistry of

the Human Body.’’ Barnes’ piece serves many purposes. As he describes in the preface

to the first edition, his undertaking of the work is prompted by ‘‘[t]here being no work

in the field which completely covered all the different topics necessary to complete acourse in embalming.’’ At the time, the book acted as a guide to the more complex,

scientific aspects of the trade with: an overview of death, putrefaction, human

anatomy, chemistry of the human body, cavity embalming, arterial embalming, needle

embalming, treatment of special cases, sanitary science, contagious and infectious

diseases, preservative solutions, rules for the transportation of the dead, dissection

wound and the danger of blood poisoning for the specialist, the rigors of funeral

directing, a self-scoring quiz, and a ‘‘self-pronouncing’’ dictionary. As a practicing

necrospecialist, Barnes understood many in the profession had been impeded from

attending college ‘‘on account of business cares.’’ His manual allowed these

individuals ‘‘by consulting a practical work on embalming [to] become acquainted

with the modern ideas and the late discoveries which have been put forward in the last

five years.’’ He later emphasizes the utilitarian purpose of the book by mentioning his

target audience: the student, the beginner, the practitioner, and the expert. The book

omits complex language occluding meaning, and includes detailed photographs and

engravings that ‘‘would appeal more direct to the mind’’ (see Figures 3 and 4).

The text is user-friendly and distances itself from medical pedagogical literature.Diverging from Gannal’s model, Barnes’ manual completely ignores the more

technically rigorous audience, separating the profession from the field of medicine.

Finally, Barnes does what Gannal would consider the unthinkable. He removes

himself from center-stage by humbly submitting the manuscript to ‘‘the judgment of

the embalmers of America,’’ the market that should rightfully determine the success

or failure of his publication.39

Barnes’ introduction to the second edition demonstrates the hybrid nature of the

American necrospecialist and testifies to the various forces that came to shape the

funeral industry, both governmental and non-governmental. It mentions the first

edition’s success and approval by such diverse groups as the specialists themselves,

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the Presidents of State and National Funeral Directors Associations, the Presidents

of State and National Embalmers Associations, and learned authorities on the

subject including anatomists, members of State Boards and prominent scientific

innovators. In the French case, as we saw, legitimization was solely obtained

thorough the institution of medicine. Not so for Barnes. The market for the text goes

beyond the field of medicine and its sanctioning, or lack thereof, and in no way

interferes with continuous innovation in this related, but separate field. The second

edition of Barnes’ text included color plates to enhance the appeal of ‘‘ocular

demonstration.’’ Significant reference to the multidisciplinary nature of the ideal

necrospecialist appears in the final chapter, ‘‘The Funeral Director Himself.’’ In

defining the funeral director, Barnes insists on the quality of being a ‘‘thorough

gentleman [. . .] one who has the skill of the anatomist, the nerve of the surgeon, the

untiring patience and ingenuity of the chemist; in all, a broad-minded, well-informed

man.’’ Barnes privileges character traits over professional qualifications given by an

institutionalized body. In short, the American necrospecialist is a man of honor who

dedicates his life to carrying out a duty to society. Despite the more difficult aspects

he encounters, he does ‘‘not exchange his role for any other part of life’s drama.’’40

Unlike Gannal, Barnes seldom breaks from third-person narration. He is an

observer of practices rather than the dominant player in the story. His style is casual.

Barnes begins the first chapter with anecdotes of masterpieces composed under the

strain of dying, including English painter Hogarth’s last work, ‘‘The End of All

Things’’ and Mozart’s ‘‘Requiem.’’ He then indulges the reader with a generic

meditation on the human instinct to apprehend the coming of death, with scientific

and literary case studies. Both Dr. John Hunter, who had designed a model of death

based on the inevitable self-destruction of living organisms, and playwright William

Shakespeare, receive the same weight as possible insiders on the human condition.

Barnes mentions historical examples briefly, serving as illustrations of the continuous

Figure 3. Detailed photograph arterial injection. From The Art and Science of Embalming

(1896), p. 231.

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challenge of facing death. Unlike Gannal, he does not particularly see himself as part

of this history. His prose reads more like a running commentary than a claim of

historical knowledge, at times bringing in religious allusions, as when he mentions

that the body is destined to be ‘‘entirely reduced to the dust from which it came.’’41

Death figures as a normal part of life. In the ideal death, Barnes proposes, ‘‘[d]ivine

nature, I believe, intended that we should go out of the world as unconsciously as we

came into it.’’42 Notice the appeal to the collective with the utilization of ‘‘we’’ as well

as identification with the dying in the wish for a painless death. The medical

distancing of specialist from corpse as specimen does not seem as prominent as in

Gannal’s text. The only time Barnes refers to corpses as ‘‘subjects’’ is when discussing

extreme cases.

Like Gannal, Barnes includes case studies by notable innovators, although

instead of a linear historical path, he finds it more useful to place them according to

the typology of the corpses treated (bodies in water, bodies in dry climates, drowned

bodies). The manuscript concentrates on the description of anatomy, bodily states,

instruments, and step-by-step procedures of embalming. He mostly refers to the

Figure 4. Plate 7. Heart and great vessels (numbered guide on opposite page). From The Art

and Science of Embalming (1896), p. 104.

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corpse as the body, especially in its ideal form for treatment, one of ‘‘suppleness, so

that nothing will impede the circulation at any point.’’43 Barnes mentions these

conditions as if these corpses continued to possess liveliness, whether on their own

through protest and impediment to the work of the specialist or through the

chemicals themselves, which restore circulation to the body. Barnes never figures as

the central character of his text, except when he introduces his own invention, ‘‘The

Barnes Needle Process,’’ over halfway into the manuscript (see Figure 5).

In the most history-heavy section of the text, he states:

Nations as widely separated, geographically, as the Assyrians and Persians, in the oldworld, and the Mexicans and Peruvians, in the new world, have attempted to preservethe bodies of their dead. Each nation employed its own peculiar method, and the successwhich they attained varied, not with the intelligence of the people, but with the climatepeculiar to the country.44

The passage gives us insight into what Barnes deemed important. He identifies a

necrophilic sensibility common to various nations in the desire to preserve not ‘‘the’’

dead, but ‘‘their’’ dead. This constitutes an emotive appeal that creates a collective

human imperative standing as the basis of the profession. The human involvement

with their dead is nonetheless particular and tied to the nationalistic practices of each

community. Not only is the local human presence involved in the preservation of the

dead, but even the geographical climate leaves its imprint on the corpse. Barnes does

not pass judgment on the practices of others, but only notes the lack of uniformity in

the practice after ‘‘the days of the Egyptian embalmer came to a sudden halt and the

art was lost.’’45 From the time of the Greeks onward, the imperative to preserve the

dead is tested by ‘‘theory coupled to theory, fact coupled to fact’’ and hence, ‘‘a

scientific truth was born.’’ Although he perceives a sense of the artistic in the

practice, it is more of a naturalistic and intuitive type of art driven by an emotional

need. While Gannal paints a grand, personal masterpiece, Barnes traces one in the

continuity of manners of confronting death throughout history. The constant and

earnest search for perfection by Barnes as well as his colleagues endows this art with

a social purpose, trading the role of artist for that of craftsman.

Barnes stresses the collaborative nature of the profession. In discussing advances

in embalming fluids, he notes the ‘‘very high degree’’ of experimental success and

credits some of the progress to discoveries in bacteriological science. In promoting

his own discovery, he de-emphasizes his role and presents it as a common-sense

answer to challenges plaguing the treatment of corpses, mainly the possibility of

mutilation and disfigurement. Barnes will, from this point on, refer to his invention

by its name and treats his own case studies not as experiments but as circumstances

when the process was useful, as in the case of an individual who had died from

apoplexy. His invention does not comprise the sole alternative. Unlike Gannal, he

never finds the perfect solution because the material he must work with is quite

unstable. The pre-mortem condition of the body and the manner of death frequently

affect the options the necrospecialist has as well as the decisions he makes. In this

reading of the corpse, control over the body is still desirable, but acknowledged as

improbable.

Barnes visualized a very specific role for the necrospecialist within the larger

social body. In his chapter on Arterial Embalming, he analyzes the moral duties of

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the professional, a subject Gannal very briefly touches upon. This method, he tells

the reader, was first practiced by Ruysch. But Ruysch failed in his duty to culture

because ‘‘on account of his selfish nature, he died without leaving the world with the

secret of his process or the chemicals employed.’’46 He then denounces the selfish

attitude of Gannal, who, as we saw, kept many of his processes secret. Although

Gannal is relevant to Barnes because he awakens interest in the practice, Suquet, who

disputed some of Gannal’s claims and was credited with the latter’s innovations,

emerges as the real hero in this battle for occupational legitimacy. Such judgment is

justified, Barnes continues, because ‘‘any person making a discovery that is of so

much importance to the whole world, who jealously keeps it secret, is not deserving

of the honor of being the discoverer.’’47 The duty of the specialist requires a

contribution to the local level of knowledge and to future generations. It represents

a true fatherhood within this ancestral model. The theme of occupational

foundation-building remains essential to Barnes’ concept of moral duty. The

collective archive that crystallizes as ‘‘the profession’’ takes precedence over any

individual, however gifted.

Figure 5. The Barnes Needle Process. From The Art and Science of Embalming (1896), p. 251.

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Barnes defines the necrospecialists’ cultural mandate as the bearers of the burden

of mortality. It is in this aspect of his specialty that he finds the link to the rest of the

social body. The last chapter of the book extensively explores the nature of this moral

and social obligation. The American necrospecialist does not attempt to hide the

reality of death. In the case of Barnes, he sees himself in partnership with the

bereaved family, although he is clear in his affirmation that the necrospecialist should

never be a mourner but a coordinator who tangibly marks the passage from life to

death. Barnes expounds upon the relationship between the survivors and the

necrospecialist, in this case in the more complex figure of the funeral director:

The undertaker should [. . .] relieve the bereaved family of all responsibility, and should,as early as prudent, learn the desires and arrangements they wish made, and thus relievethem of a burden they should under no circumstances carry, in addition to the onealready upon them.48

Barnes refers to the caretaking of the corpse as an element that exacerbates the

family’s grief. The encounter with death by the survivors is part of the process of

memorialization. The bereaved family cannot escape the burden of the loss and

awareness of mortality. The necrospecialist interprets the survivors’ wishes in relation

to the corpse and carries these out as part of the rite of passage. In many ways, the

necrospecialist appears as an extension of the family. He takes up where the family

leaves in the construction of the memorial ritual. Moreover, he stands as a

foundational figure in the larger context of the community. As such, his cultural

mandate encompasses on the one hand, the human needs of the survivors, but also a

spiritual intuition validated by God. Religious language is not encountered in

Gannal’s text because the empirical imperative should come from following nature,

in adherence to a philosophical tradition that separates the natural and the spiritual.

For Barnes, this required and, in some sense, divine attunement is emphasized in the

following passage:

The undertaker should, like the old family physician whom the entire community‘‘swear by,’’ have the confidence of the people. He must show himself a man not simplyapproved by men but by God, one whom they can turn their dead and loved ones overto in perfect confidence, knowing-not wishing or hoping, but knowing-they will becared for as tenderly as if done by a member of the family, and with just as muchreverence and respect.49

Barnes legitimizes his role in the community through an appeal to the collective. He

begins by placing himself at the same level as the more accepted profession of

the physician and, like the latter, his duty is to the people. Part of his cultural

mandate also originates with the will of God. More than anything else, the

necrospecialist must earn a reputation as a trusted man, who tenderly and

meticulously cares for the corpse. Corpses figure as crucial to the cohesion of the

whole community. Barnes even goes a step further in the egalitarian spirit of

American nation-building in the next paragraph, when he addresses the issue of class.

The moral duty of the necrospecialist includes a leveling of the playing field that

mirrors the function of death. He takes it upon himself to ensure ‘‘that the wife of a

poor peasant is as dear to him as was Victoria, in all her crowned honor and

gorgeous attire, to the lamented Prince Albert.’’50 In other words, a figure like Queen

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Victoria, who happens to be one of the most famous embalming cases in history,

should not be treated any differently than the corpse of a common individual when it

comes to the dignity of the remains and the specialist’s craftsmanship upon the body.

Like Gannal, Barnes saw embalming as democratic and part of his moral duty was tomake it available to all despite economic status. The treated corpse is more than a

mere object; it symbolizes the first step towards equality and the valorization of rich

cultural material that is deposited into history as the ancestral background and point

of reference for future generations.

Barnes identifies humility as the most significant dimension of the necrospecia-

list. A comparison to Gannal is unnecessary in regard to this quality. The American

necrospecialist takes on a significant task as the guardian of the dead. Barnes’

individual expresses this self-appointed mandate through reticence, sober demeanor,and the staged appearance of genteel poverty. The necrospecialist’s behavior attests

to his moral duty as a public figure and his occupational legitimacy because ‘‘[t]he

public looks upon [him] as a person singled out and set apart and worthy of an

esteem not accorded [to] persons engaged in the ordinary business of life.’’51 As such,

he figures as the humble stage director who, although self-consciously undercutting

his presence in the ritual, constantly accentuates the practical need for his services

and expertise in the process of mourning.

Charles McCurdy: the break with the past through technology

Charles McCurdy, although coming from a background in chemistry, enacted a

rhetorical strategy similar to that of Barnes. His reliance on the state-of-the-art

emerging from scientific research places him close to Gannal. McCurdy was one of

the first figures in American history to offer a compendium of the literature on

embalming. He drew a specific place for the practice independent from the medical

profession, or for that matter, the past. Like Barnes’ book, his 1896 article,‘‘Embalming and Embalming Fluids,’’ begins with a generic meditation upon the

ubiquitous presence of death in all aspects of life. Individuals, through a common

element of their nature, ‘‘seem to pay greater respect to man in death than in life.’’

One does not achieve an untarnished image until one ‘‘joins the silent majority.’’ In

making a case for embalming, McCurdy appeals to a collective post-mortem

veneration that he feels unites all nations. His remarks upon his historical precedents

are rather broad and abstract, lacking the precision of Gannal’s tracing of a legacy.

McCurdy conceives of burial grounds as containing, ‘‘[t]he ancestry of man, thisearth! Who can compute its dwellers.’’52 He provides a description of embalming

early in his text, comparing the ancient and the modern rationale for the practice. He

states, ‘‘[e]mbalming in Oriental thought signifies to preserve, to bituminize, to

mummify; in modern language it means to impregnate with poison, or aromatics; to

prevent or arrest putrefaction.’’53 This summarizes the main premise of his work.

McCurdy is a disciple of scientific advancement, a cutting-edge necrospecialist who

desires to break with the limitations on embalming that he sees as belonging to the

past. Similar to Gannal’s argument, the craft of his predecessors, even closepredecessors, can be improved upon. The manuscript briefly presents a historical

evolution of the ‘‘lost art’’ outlining the technology used at different points in history.

But McCurdy makes clear that reference to the Egyptian methods of embalming and

those emerging after the spread of Christianity belong to a distant era. As soon as he

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describes modern embalming, he informs the reader of the deity he worships with

manifesto-like rhetoric:

But enough of the past with its blackened mummies, its disjointed history, and itsmystified theology! Passing over the interim we come now to the full brightness offuneral science and medical skill in the dawn of the twentieth century.54

McCurdy establishes a need for a newly anointed specialization � not undertaking,

which retains its connection to cabinet-making � but funeral science. The structure of

his argument reminds us of Gannal’s positioning. The past acts as a foil, one literally

represented by darkness � blackened mummies � as well as ignorance and lack of

order. Then, there emerges the sublime brightness of scientific development. One of

the most bizarre parts of this manuscript revolves around McCurdy’s own status.

Even though he mentions medical skill, he was himself not a doctor but a professor

of chemistry. In addition, McCurdy had only served as an assistant embalmer when

he wrote this article. He divulges this detail later on in the text, when he admits to a

deficiency in practical knowledge and extended experience, and relates his relevant

duties as an assistant to ‘‘masters in the art.’’55 His claim to legitimacy cannot be

based on personal experience, as was the case of Gannal and Barnes and will be the

case with Renouard. Perhaps this explains why his rhetoric focuses on the inferiority

of the past in contrast to ‘‘the scientific model,’’ which he associates with modernity

and his own attitudes.

Like Gannal, McCurdy utilizes scientific novelty as the basis of his moral

‘‘calling.’’ He informs the reader that embalming should not be seen as feat of past

generations. Rather, he turns to his own time, arguing:

In fact, the methods of embalming as taught and practiced in the present, demand ahigher order of intelligence, a more thorough knowledge of the anatomy of the body, asteadier judgment, and a more skillful hand that was at any time required of orpresented by the ancients who relied upon atmospheric influences for the preservation of

their dead.56

McCurdy bases the success of the necrospecialist not so much on professional

certification, but personal qualities and the intuitive ability to follow the scientific

method. He promotes a regime of personalized learning and self-discipline. McCurdy

devotes an entire section of his article to resources available for those interested in

joining what he calls ‘‘progressive’’ undertaking. These include manuals and

periodicals, short-term courses in embalming schools, lectures by masters of the

practice, and publications relating the latest scientific advances.

Both McCurdy and Gannal divulge a desire to undercut their competitors.

McCurdy returns to manifesto-like language in separating the modern professional

from the recent past, which he terms the ‘‘era of the ice-box.’’ He delineates two

elements justifying the profession. The era of the intelligent use of chemicals is upon

us and beckons us to move forward. What is the alternative? We have the physicality

of the corpse in its most negative form, ‘‘the slow putrefaction, the obnoxious stench,

the miasmic effluvia, the poisonous gases of contagious diseases and plagues.’’57

McCurdy promotes ease of use and the affordability of the technology not in

relation to individuals from the lower classes accessing the services but to allow the

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under-privileged to become practitioners and earn a decent living. Although he lacks

the passion and emotive appeal of Barnes’ rhetoric, his confidence and extreme break

with the past reveal a flourishing industry which welcomes interdisciplinarity and

self-discipline as the norm and reduces the importance of certification by aninstitutionalized board. McCurdy stands as a perfect example of the hybridity of

methods possible at this time.

Auguste Renouard: lessons in necro-etiquette

Auguste Renouard figures as an ideal necrospecialist because of his professional

development, attitude towards his services and role in the community and social

body, utilization of language and appeal to audience, and finally, success andpopularity as one of the fathers of the modern funeral industry. The most remarkable

aspect of this individual was his complete lack of affiliation to any field of science

and his education as a jack-of-all-trades. This separates him from all individuals

considered up to this point because of the possibility of the complete absence of any

connection to science or medicine. Renouard was born on a plantation in Point

Coupee Parish, Louisiana. His formal training has remained murky. Some accounts

have him attending medical school in St. Louis. But, like many other American

necrospecialists, the bulk of his experience began with odd jobs taken during the CivilWar and after. Renouard briefly worked as a pharmacist before obtaining permanent

employment as a bookkeeper for a furniture store that also specialized in

undertaking. A large part of this business’ clients required long-distance preparation

of corpses for shipment back to the family after treatment. From the onset,

Renouard developed an interest in the preparation of corpses as a type of hobby. Not

satisfied with the more imperfect work of other specialists at the company, he was

allowed to experiment with arterial embalming and reconstructive services. His

represents a traditional rags-to-riches story. Renouard’s techniques soon earned hima reputation for creating beautiful corpses. This led to the establishment of a

correspondence course, the status of expert contributor to the industry journal The

Casket, and the 1878 publication of The Undertaker’s Manual, the first embalming

textbook written and published in the USA after Harlan’s translation of Gannal’s

text.58 Renouard, like Barnes, would go on to open his own embalming school. He

also became one of the founders of the National Funeral Directors Association in

1882, which was to determine the progression of the industry not only in the late

nineteenth century, but throughout the twentieth century.The introduction to the book, written by fellow specialist Thomas Gliddon,

outlines the positioning of the American necrospecialist in contrast not only to the

past, but also similar professions in Europe. He presents Renouard’s text as occupying

‘‘an original and unique field in American literature.’’59 This is especially true in the

treatment of the subject matter. Unlike more abstract and grandiose manuscripts on

death-care services like those of Gannal and McCurdy, Renouard compiles a practical

manual delineating ‘‘the duties and amenities of the undertaker.’’60 The book is

directed at the student, foregrounding readability and unburdened with unnecessarytechnical terms.61 Above all, it de-emphasizes the need for a scientific background

and privileges day-to-day experience. Gliddon summarizes Renouard’s ‘‘fascinating’’

contribution as a guide that ‘‘will materially assist [undertakers and their assistants]

in becoming more proficient in their profession.’’62

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Renouard’s own introduction, titled ‘‘To the Profession,’’ gives us a palpable

sense of his intended audience. Rather than attempting to find a place in history for

his craft, he presents his compilation to ‘‘the American undertaker’’ with ‘‘the object

[. . .] to instruct, [. . .] create interest in the profession,’’ and ‘‘to promote the avocation

of an undertaker to the rank which it deservedly ought to occupy.’’63 He highlights

the relation of necrospecialist to corpse. The first thing a necrospecialist requires in

his education is an understanding of ‘‘the conditions of the body after death, as

governed by circumstances which may affect it, and thereby modify the treatment

thereof � admitting that different modes of treatment are required by different

cases.’’64 Like Barnes, Renouard proposes practices based on the capacity to observe

natural bodily processes and deal with the limitations these impose upon

the professional. The necrospecialist develops a relation to the corpse based on the

exchange of activity from specialist to corpse and vice-versa. The body under

consideration is anything but inert, or the passive subject we find in Gannal’s text.

Renouard highlights the need for insight into the properties and composition of the

constituents of the human body as key for any attempt to preserve it. The

necrospecialist does not so much impose his will upon the corpse, but must rather

have a thorough knowledge of the formation of elements affecting the rate of

putrefaction, a battle he needs to prepare for.

Renouard writes entirely in the third-person, also positioning himself as an

observer rather than the main character. He does not present himself as the greatest

inventor on earth like Gannal or the cutting-edge progressive like McCurdy. Unlike

Barnes, who was writing when the profession had become more solidified, or Gannal

and McCurdy, who focused on a move toward modernity, Renouard creates a

cultural mandate by addressing the public’s early misrepresentation of the social role

of the necrospecialist. Renouard delicately treads upon this path by countering a

pervasive and ill-placed negative association with the caretakers of the dead:

To great many the business of the undertaker has something dreadful and appallingabout it; and without very well understanding themselves the nature of the feeling, it isalways associated with the horrible. [. . .] Undertakers, as a class, are men useful tosociety; their calling, far from being horrible and loathsome, as the ignorant and shallowminded are pleased to call it, is one which requires a great deal of self-denial, and whichoften brings to the surface the finest traits of human nature.65

Renouard foregrounds the inevitable human hostility towards death, a subject which

is not fully understood in the cosmic sense. The necrospecialist becomes relevant

precisely because he can move beyond the instinct of apprehension and fear of death.

Part of his ‘‘calling’’ involves a moral duty in which he surpasses his own limitations

and embraces this stage of the life-cycle with utmost soberness and etiquette. The

value of the necrospecialist is quite material and grounded in practice. According to

Renouard, his text does not simply list mere speculations or recipes picked at

random, but the fruits of his own prolonged exposure to dying and death.For Renouard, the embodied character traits of the necrospecialist define the

success he achieves in the profession. Professional experience and scientific knowl-

edge do not count for much if not paired with etiquette. Etiquette starts with the self.

The ideal necrospecialist guards against a slovenly appearance because ‘‘a man who

does not care for his personal appearance seldom possesses much regard for anything

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else.’’66 Renouard continues this line of reasoning by insisting the profession requires

constant attention to detail and moral self-awareness, qualities which separate the

necrospecialist from other laborers. His first chapter, ‘‘Undertaking,’’ defines the

profession as the job of a specific class of men. Belonging to this group demands a

pragmatic but also emotional involvement. The profession requires flexibility and

hybridity, much in the way Barnes constructs the specialist as a ‘‘gentleman,’’

although Renouard’s emphasis on personal traits is much greater. Success entails

skill, but also tact and emotional vigilance. Pragmatically, the necrospecialist ‘‘must

be quick of perception and ready of expedients,’’ possess ‘‘a clear head and a cool

judgment,’’ and carry himself as ‘‘urbane and affable in his manners.’’67 In fact, his

character will be reflected upon the surface of the corpse by the quality of his craft.

Here we find the most palpable dimension of necro-etiquette in death-care services.

Good taste on the part of the necrospecialist contributes to the presentation of a

proper corpse, with an ‘‘easy, informal laying out of the remains; the attitude of

repose devoid of the conventional rigidity of limbs; in the chaste trimmings of the

casket, rich with elegance, but without overloading with useless ornaments.’’68 Much

like Barnes, Renouard expounds upon an intuitive quality in the necrospecialist by

which ‘‘everything will work without bluster or any noise which may grate harshly

upon the ears of the sorrow stricken friends or parents.’’69 This reticence extends to

social role and image. As a public servant, the necrospecialist should not advertise his

wares, but convey his righteousness through the manner in which he operates his

establishment, his deportment in public, the integrity of his character, and finally, his

punctuality. In other words, he plays a highly identifiable role in the community, not

only marked through his services, but most of all, his low-keyed discretion.

Renouard’s characterization of the professional is far removed from that of Gannal,

the man with the germinal idea that fueled an entire industry in the USA.

According to Renouard, the other dimension of the profession depends on

suppressing emotion while still appearing empathetic. The necrospecialist must carry

the burden of the solemnity and high level of responsibility his calling requires. His

matter-of-fact willingness to be constantly exposed to grief and not show its impact

on his demeanor expresses the highest form of self-sacrifice. Like the physician, he

possesses the most delicate of social contracts � the entrustment of ‘‘the care of the

beloved remains, relying entirely upon his experience and good judgment in such

matters, to carry out in a manner becoming to this age of christian [sic] feeling, the

ceremonial of sepulture with the deferential respect due to the dead.’’70 By extension,

the remains must be an object of love to the necrospecialist, one based on spiritual

feeling (note Renouard does not capitalize the word ‘‘christian’’), and the obligation

to the dead on the part of the living. The latter constitutes recognition of the

inevitability of death and identification with the corpse as representative of a

collective human condition. Renouard utilizes this pragmatic but also emphatic

appeal to justify the treatment of corpses and create a cultural mandate. He tenderly

assuages the reader with a mixture of utilitarianism and the sublime that becomes

naturalized through the technology of preservation:

Our present object in preparing bodies is two-fold: in the first place we desire to keepperfect for a certain length of time the remains of those who have been dear to us whileliving; but when desiccation has begun, when the roundness of the lines loses itself intothe more angular shrinkage of the tissues, then we may take, and without any feeling of

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horror, a last look at the body, and consign it, not to the slow, foul corruption, but to thegradual drying of the organic substances, without the horrible accessions of decay and

putrefaction.71

The passage is collective in nature, marked by the use of ‘‘we.’’ The focus away from

first-person narrative is consistent on the part of the American necrospecialists in

contrast to Gannal. Renouard’s statement divulges an obsession with the need to

look at the dead, both in the state of the neo-mort but also once the corpse begins to

exhibit signs of ‘‘being dead.’’ Unlike Gannal, putrefaction is not a catastrophe � a

waste of a specimen that could have been dissected � but has a place in the

necrospecialist’s craft. Renouard qualifies the sagging of the roundness of the lines of

the body and shrinkage as normal in the gradual drying of the organic substances,

hence a process that should be accepted because it is ‘‘natural.’’ Preparation of the

body entails the removal of signs of decay and putrefaction that might be offensive to

the senses. Although the presentation of the body preserves the remains in a form

easily identifiable by the survivors, it does not hide the reality of death. Rather, it

presents a body that while not formless, is still part of the final ritual as a tangible

presence, one that allows close inspection without horror or despair. Gannal

beautifies corpses though his art; Renouard utilizes his skills as craftsman to create

an image of the dead that can provide practical comfort to the survivors without

denying the material presence of death.

As we examined, Gannal often treated corpses as passive subjects, materials to be

utilized in the name of technological advancement. Interestingly enough, for

Renouard, necro-etiquette does not only appear during the memorial ceremony

and in public life (his interaction with the living), but also in the preparation of the

corpse (his interaction with the dead). Some of his language can at times remind the

reader of someone following a manual on how to shop for shoes, rather than

preparing to embalm a corpse. For instance, in discussing instruments, Renouard

insists:

Undertakers will find it to their advantage to possess instruments of the best materialsand make; they are always cheaper in the end, as they will resist the wear and tear to agreater extent, and will not be liable to get out of order when most needed. [. . .]Especially in injecting apparatus should a great amount of care be exercised about theselection. [. . .] It must be well remembered, that upon the working of the apparatus

depends, to a great extent, the good or poor success of embalming.72

The passage reads like a maxim and emphasizes an almost obsessive formality.

Renouard’s necro-etiquette delineates specific behavior on the part of the specialist

when treating the corpse. It includes being on one’s best behavior and finding an

appropriate location for the procedure. A first-class necrospecialist must not have an

ordinary cooling board, but one ‘‘provided with a rim, extending all around, and

raised about one inch above the level of the board’’ and with ‘‘longitudinal grooves

running the full length of the board. [. . .] This will do away with soiling the floor or

carpet, as is often the case with the common board in use.’’73 Even while engaged in

the process, one should carefully handle the corpse, performing the injection in ‘‘a

slow, regular manner.’’74 Embalming figures as a pre-memorialization ritual � one

taming the vitality of the corpse through adherence to a strict behavioral code

determining the actions of the specialist and the specifics of the materials utilized for

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preservation. As a ritual, embalming is subject to the highest sense of self-imposed

private etiquette. That comprises Renouard’s ideal necrospecialist. He continues to

endorse the code of behavior throughout the text, stating for instance, that ‘‘[t]he

laying out, washing, dressing, etc., of a corpse, under any and every circumstance,

ought to be so systematized and arranged, that either the undertaker or his assistant

may be able to perform these duties alone and singly, with ease and promptness.’’75

In contrast to his counterparts, who emphasized personal artistry, anatomicalknowledge, and the use of cutting-edge technology, Renouard created a cultural

mandate for his profession by placing himself into the ritual as keeper of proper

social etiquette. This represents one of the first steps toward the formalization and

institutionalization of the American funeral industry as a service-oriented business

enterprise as opposed to a venue for experimentation with novel technology (which

although not emphasized by Renouard, accounts for much of the innovation).

The American funeral industry that we recognize today is the product of cultural

shifts in the nineteenth century that allowed a group of highly inventive and

culturally attuned individuals to recognize a national necrophilic sensibility and

capitalize upon it. Gannal was the originator of the democratization of the

embalming process for the purposes of memorialization of the average citizen.

Unfortunately, due to his shady character, questionable medical training (hybridity

and cross-pollination of scientific disciplines in particular), and public and

institutional exposure to the much-publicized scandals and bitter quarrels of the

first batch of French thanatopracteurs, his invention was quickly blacklisted bymedical authorities. In conjunction, embalming never surfaced as a priority in the

French memorial ceremony. Images or sculptures of death masks and elaborate

ornamentation surrounding the closed casket and hearse substituted the decompos-

ing corpse as the focus of the discourse of dying and the dead. The birth and

development of the American funeral industry owes a huge debt to Gannal, one not

often fully credited. But Gannal failed to do what his American counterparts

accomplished � establishing a cultural mandate that allowed for the full acceptance

of the process by both the authorities and the public. The American necrospecialists

created various rhetorical strategies to legitimize the need for a professional

occupying the role of guardian of the dead and, in so doing, enter the private lives

of members of the community. The development of the American funeral industry

progresses through a non-linear pattern involving the contribution of experts from a

wide range of fields and backgrounds, from the most trained scientists to untrained

but gifted amateurs. Unlike in countries like France, the industry develops

independently of medical and State boards in general although appropriating

medical knowledge in subjects like anatomy and chemistry as well as techniques

previously utilized to preserve specimens. The imperative of the Americannecrospecialist is not to objectify the corpse as a subject for inspection, as in the

case of the famous image of the exposed, dissected corpse with medical students

(neatly lined up and labeled with their names in the background) in Foucault’s Birth

of the Clinic, which reveals the interior of the human body to the scientific lens.76

Gannal’s treatment of corpses, despite the veneer of sentimentality regarding the care

of the precious remains in the introduction of his text, follows the medicalization of

corpses and emphasis on pathology well underway in France by the nineteenth

century. The contrasting cases of the American necrospecialists reveal a doctrine

against medicalization of the corpse and in tune with an aesthetic vision of the ‘‘good

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death’’ permeating public opinion. In reading the works of some of the most

prominent American necrospecialists of the nineteenth century, we witness the

emergence of an occupational calling that addresses practical needs and democratizes

the event of the veneration of the dead. It is the extension of Gannal’s vision in a

language that appeals to the average individual who, in the end, determines the

stability and success of the profession. This promotional endeavor combined

practicality with emotion and a sense of collectivity in which the necrospecialist plays

a crucial role in the community. For the profession to proliferate, death-care services

were presented in a mode that did not deny or pathologize death, but promoted sober

acceptance and proximity to the treated corpse as necessary steps in the ritual of the

final viewing and the management of loss. Over a century later, the basis of this

operational model, the concretization of death as corpse or ashes, remains intact.

Notes on contributor

Ingrid Fernandez received her PhD from the Program in Modern Thought and Literature atStanford University. Her interests include bio-politics and bio-ethics; photography and arthistory; representation of cadavers in literature, art, film and television; and forensic sciences.She currently teaches and writes in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Notes

1. Merriam-Webster Online.2. Aries, The Hour of Our Death, 327.3. Ibid., 331.4. Ibid., 360.5. Ibid., 587.6. Bauman, Mortality, Immortality, and Other Strategies, 131�134.7. Ibid., 7.8. Kellehear, A Social History of Dying, 24�25.9. Ibid., original italics, 58.

10. Hallam et al., Beyond the Body: Death and Social Identity, 24�25.11. Sherman, ‘‘Time is Our Commodity,’’ 85.12. Aries, The Hour of Our Death, 600.13. La Berge, French Medical Culture in the Nineteenth Century, 1�2.14. Ramsey, ‘‘Academic Medicine and Medical Industrialism,’’ 25, 29.15. Kselman, Death and the Afterlife in Modern France, 226�229.16. Ibid., 258.17. Ajmani, Embalming, 24�25.18. Oatfield, ‘‘Literature of the Chemical Periphery,’’ 114.19. Lee, ‘‘Humble Undertaker,’’ np.20. Troyer, ‘‘Embalmed Vision,’’ 35.21. Trompette, ‘‘Funeral Embalming,’’ 14.22. Ben-Amos, Funerals, Politics, and Memory, 278�280.23. Ibid., 291�292.24. For more detail about this operational model at the Paris Morgue, see the case of ‘‘Le

mystere de la rue Vert-Bois,’’ described by Schwartz.25. Schwartz, Spectacular Realities, 46.26. Ibid., 13.27. Ibid.28. Gannal, History of Embalming, 8.29. Gannal borrows this language from Bory de Saint Vincent’s Essays on the Fortunate

Islands: Embalming of the Guanches. Throughout his historical detailing of past cases, hecites the descriptions of other authors, journalists, and eyewitnesses verbatim.

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30. Ibid., 28.31. Ibid., 35.32. Ibid., 139.33. Ibid., 144.34. Ibid., 208�209.35. Ibid., 19�20.36. Ibid., 20.37. Ajmani, Embalming, 28, 30�31; ‘‘Funeral Embalming,’’ 14.38. Ibid., 43.39. Barnes, Art and Science of Embalming, vi.40. Ibid., 361.41. Ibid., 10.42. Ibid., 5.43. Ibid., 227.44. Ibid., 243.45. Ibid., 243.46. Ibid., 223.47. Ibid., 223�224.48. Ibid., 362.49. Ibid., 363.50. Ibid.51. Ibid., 364.52. McCurdy, ‘‘Embalming and Embalming Fluids,’’ 176.53. Ibid., 177.54. Ibid., 189.55. Ibid., 200.56. Ibid., 190, original italics.57. Ibid., 199.58. Ajmani, Embalming, 39.59. Renouard, Undertaker’s Manual, iii�v.60. Ibid., iii.61. Ibid., iii�v.62. Ibid., 5.63. Ibid., 7.64. Ibid., viii.65. Ibid., 10.66. Ibid., xiii.67. Ibid., 6�7.68. Ibid., 7�8.69. Ibid., 8.70. Ibid., 11.71. Ibid., 13�14.72. Ibid., 191�192.73. Ibid., 49.74. Ibid., 55.75. Ibid., 151.76. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the practice of dissection for medical

instruction became required for medical students in the USA. For a history of thepractice, please see Warner and Edmonson’s Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passagein American Medicine: 1880�1930.

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