In the London Medical Gazette, for December, 1839, there is a memoir of Dr. Thomas Marshall, on the same subject, who thinks he has discovered a much cheaper and more effectual method--which consists in puncturing the surface of the body very generally with needles or scissors, &c., and brushing over the body with acetic acid, specific gravity 1.048, which must be brushed into it slowly and repeatedly, the same acid slightly diluted with water, to be introduced into the great cavities. This process, the author asserts, has not only preserved bodies perfectly sweet for months; but is capable of restoring the natural colour to parts already gangrenous.
To use the author’s own words, “two days’ application in this way, will beautify any subject.” The face of a corpse thus punctured, and supplied with compresses moistened with this acid, would be preserved, or even restored to its natural appearance, when discoloured by incipient putrefaction. John Hunter and other contemporaneous surgeons were in the habit of using diluted nitric acid for this purpose, but we have frequently seen this application fail, in our climate, when puncturation was omitted.
Most beautiful specimens of _natural skeletons_ may be obtained by employing _tadpoles_; the animal must be divested of its skin, and the bones roughly cleaned of their flesh, and then suspended in water, exposed to the depredations of the tadpoles, who delicately remove, atom by atom, the softened flesh still adhering to the skeleton, by means of their suction mouths, in the course of a few hours, during warm weather; when the preparation is to be placed in position and dried. The aid of the ant has also been successfully invoked for a similar purpose. A small quadruped prepared as above, is placed in a box, and deposited in the vicinity of an ant’s nest; these industrious operatives rapidly remove the flesh from the bones.
As approaching the nearest to natural objects, we can securely recommend the accurate anatomical preparations in _Carton_, of Dr. Azoux, of Paris: the annual course of popular anatomy which he delivers, and which we have had the satisfaction of attending, are admirably and accurately illustrated by this means.