MetaFilter posts tagged with embalming

I suppose what my brother in law does for a living gives a lot of people the creeps

maudlin — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 08:47:53 -0800

"He shaves Lady X in swift, efficient strokes, and there is something gentle about this, something almost ancient. Like the ritualistic washing of a body in some cultures. It looks tender, at least until Joe uses a small hose to aim a stream of water down Lady X’s face to remove the cream — that somehow reminds me of the rinse cycle in a carwash."

Italian mummies

euphorb — Sun, 11 Jul 2004 22:57:09 -0800

Long ago in the town of Palermo in Sicily some monks got together and decided that they wanted to start praying to one of their own after he had passed to the Great Beyond so they embalmed him. Four hundred years and 8,000 corpses later you can see the Capuchin Catacombs for yourself.

Dead Uncle Henry Coming Back to Get You

crawdad — Thu, 25 Mar 2004 11:31:56 -0800

Research on civil war era embalming techniques up until the 1900's shows that arsenic, a primary component of embalming solutions, is leaching into our groundwater. Do you live near a cemetery?