June 23, 2023 • 30 mins
The one guarantee in life is that it will end—we can anticipate that, and we have tried to cope with that truth forever. But when the suffering overextends itself, we’ve always tried to find ways to adapt.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
The Capuchin Friars thought they knew something about the dead.
After all, their holy order was entrusted with caring for
the sick and dying in their community of Palmero, Italy.
They had been at it for decades and were considered
resident experts on postmortem care. But when it came to
their own dead, it turned out that nothing would go
according to plan. In fifteen thirty four, when they relocated
(00:27):
from far off Albacina, they immediately got to work constructing
a collective below ground cistern like crypt. This particular monastic
order practiced a tradition called the second burial. When a
person died, they would be allowed to decompose unburied for
some time. That was the first burial. When a Friar died,
his body would be laid on a shelf to drip dry,
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draining himself of all of his liquid. Then, once the
soft bits like flesh and other tissues were gone, the
dried bones would be taken and installed within the holy
walls of the order's church. That's the second burial. So
as the years went on, the Friars stashed more and
more of their own bodies in their crypt, waiting for
the day the space would hit max capacity. The brothers
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planned to eventually go collect the bones for Fase two,
where they'd be brought up into the church. In October
of fifteen ninety nine, some Friars descended down into the
belly of their crypt. Here they found something that had
been whispered about over the years. These bodies hadn't fully
decomposed at all. In fact, it seems that their decomposition
had simply been arrested. How could this be? Instead of
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finding skeletons, they recognized their friends. It seemed that God
had intervened on their plan for the dead. They took
it all in to decide what it could mean. They
closely inspected all of the forty five bodies meticulously preserved
before them, and the Capuchin Friars believed they were witnessing
a miracle. They interpreted this moment as an act of
divine intervention. So the Friars decided to put the bodies
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on display as holy relics. They hoisted them from below
and installed them around the church with wire and placards,
up behind the high altar and in nooks all around
the walls. And in all of this they continued on
with their day to day lives, they kept caring for
the sick and caring for the dead. They continued to
fill their underground crypt with the bodies of their newly
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past members, and they noticed that these bodies, too were
not decomposing. It was determined that they would get the
same treatment as the others. The Friars got into the
practice of installing the dead in their final resting or
maybe standing place. Over the years, the order built additional
rooms for these bodies. They added multiple corridors for their
ever expanding collection of mummies. What we know now is
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that Palermo has an excellent environment for mommification. The air
is dry and the humidity is low. The Capuchin's underground crypts,
which often utilized the natural made caves, were made of limestone,
which harbors incredible drying properties. Over the years, the Friars
began taking a more active role in the miracle making,
that is, preservation. They began to work with the addition
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of vinegar, lime, chalk, and arsenic which they found to
aid in the process. Now, at first these catacombs were
an exclusive club for the resident Friars, But who doesn't
want to rub elbows with the divine right. Taking money
in exchange for holy services is historically fraught, but these
catacombs needed to be maintained, and the way that could
be done was through donation. So in time the catacombs
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opened up to everyone, mostly to those who could pay
for the privilege of being in proximity to something seemingly miraculous. Today,
the Capuchin Catacombs are the final resting place of eight
thousand well dressed corpses, and for about five bucks you
can go see them. While it might seem like a
macab spectacle to some, to others, it's a comforts and
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an honor to be in the physical midst of so
many who have passed through this life before. So often
the dead are hidden from us. In the not so
recent past, folks in the Western world tended to their
dead at home and buried them close by. Life was
experienced by all from the cradle to the grave until
a radical shift happened. For thousands of years across time
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and place, we have been tending to and preserving are
dead because when our attempts at healing the body fail,
humans have to turn to the next task figuring out
exactly what to do with that body. I'm Aaron Mankee
and welcome to bedside manners. When the opportunity to heal
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a body has passed us by, there is still healing
to be sought for the living. That is, for those
who love the deceased. It can be a great comfort
to know that they've handled their loved ones with as
much care as they can muster, and that they are
giving them a proper sendoff. Throughout the centuries, humans have
derived rituals for death and the remains of their dead,
and among the many practices, there's one that shows up
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time and time again, embalming. We can trace our earliest
examples of embalming back to about five thousand years ago
in ancient Egypt. It's possible that the first mummies had
no human intervention but were accidentally cured by the hot,
dry climate in shallow sandy graves. Around twenty six hundred BC, though,
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it seems that mummification became more intentional. While we can't
know exactly how the first methods of mummification came to be,
we can't infer that early embalmers borrowed techniques from the
preservation of animal meat. Over the years, different technologies and
methods came into use, But what remained true over the
course of centuries was that these embalmers played a revered
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role in the fabric of their communities. This act of
preservation was to ensure the dead would make it into
the afterlife intact and with everything they needed to carry
on on the next plane. Around five hundred BC, how
you chose to be embalmed in ancient Egypt boiled down
to a three tier service model. Your selections of a basic, deluxe,
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or premium package all depended on your sensibilities and your savings.
To illustrate which package you were purchasing in bombers would
show shoppers three wooden models of corpses, all distinct from
one another. Each was illustrated with various incisions included or
not included in the purchase, as well as a list
of other lux add ons. At the bottom tier, the
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body got a washing, assaulting, and perhaps an injection of
cedar oil. At the top, the body would be anointed
with an array of delicious smelling powders and oils, with
organs fully removed save for the heart. Of course, Embalming
became a means of one final capture of life in
a corpse it helped to sand down the rough edges
between life and death for survivors. The ritual has become
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part of our customary response to death ever since. Eventually,
the expansion of Christianity would create waves in regards to
burial customs of the world. As our concept of afterlife changed,
so too did the means required to get this. Embalming
fell out of fashion just for a while. By the
Middle Ages, embalming again gained favor, being seen as a
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practical solution to some earthly problems. The pendulum began to
swing back. At this time, it was often reserved for
high ranking military men killed in action who needed to
be sent home with some semblance of recognizability. But with
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries rising interest in anatomy and
all of the lessons it had to teach us, more
bodies were needed for dissection practice. Anatomists toyed with different
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recipes and embalming techniques in the same way that the
alchemists are. Proto chemists that we met earlier in this season,
worked in their labs, cooking up solutions both physical and
metaphorical in nature. Practitioners used all kinds of things and Honestly,
they're things that you'd probably think would make some nice
smelling potpourriaut of rose and cammameal and cedar in various
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combinations and forms, and sometimes turpidine and lime and ash
and wax and alcohol. Through the years, they developed different
techniques for preservation and washing and drying, submerging, extracting organs
and draining blood, pumping a deflated body up with linen
or straw, and adding pigments for a living likeness. These
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recipes were sometimes proprietary trade secrets, and there was a
competition among embalmers as to who could make the most
beautiful corpses. Speaking of there was one such corpse whose
after life outlasted her mortal life that I'd like to
tell you about today, and that was a woman named
Mary von Butchell, who died on January fourteenth of seventeen
seventy five. She had been married to a man named Martin,
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a bizarre yet wildly successful dentist in London. He traveled
on a painted horse, wore flamboyant outfits, and somehow managed
to offend the general populace. Even still, his patients loved
him and kept his practice afloat for over twenty years.
He had been a pupil of John Hunter, remember him, who,
along with his brother William, became two of the most
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revered anatomists of their age. With this particular training, Martin
had an idea. He would have her embalmed and then
place her in his dental office window for all to see.
This was for advertising, of course, but Madman's don draper
he was not, so he called up his old friend
William Hunter to execute his idea. Now, scholars still debate
why he did this. One doesn't often use the body
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of their deceased spouse to inspire public affection. One idea
was that this was a final jab to get back
at her for some transgression in life. On the contrary,
some believed that this was a gesture of great care
and affection, having called upon one of the most esteemed
anatomists in the world to help him. So, alongside William,
Martin embalmed Mary. It was a deeply intimate act, one
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that required much time and attention to care for and
preserve her remains. They opened her up for autopsy and
inspected her organs for telltale signs of what had gone wrong.
From there, they began the first of a three stage
embalming process. First, they injected her arteries with a mixture
of turpentine and vermilion and let it set. This would
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eventually help them drain her blood, which came in the
second step, along with the removal of her organs. The
third step found them washing her body with water and alcohol,
before filling her cavities with a mixture of camphor, niter
and resin. She was then stitched up with care, washed, dried,
and anointed with oils. She was then laid in a box,
her body set in quick drying plaster, ready for the
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curious eyes of the general public. Words circulated quickly, as
you might imagine, and people wanted to see Mary's mummy exactly,
it seems what he set out to do. He took
a blurb in the local paper imploring people to come
only at certain times, which, of course the cynic might
say was just another way to stir up interest. It
also seems that Mary's body long found a post mortem
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home in the house they shared, even after he remarried.
When Martin died in eighteen fourteen, the Board of Curators
of the Royal College of Surgeons received a letter from
his son Martin was interred in the ground, but there
was no final rest for Mary. Her embalmed remains had
been in Martin's care while he was alive. Now his
son wanted to know did the Royal College have any
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interest in putting Mary's body on display? They sure did,
so there she was. Mary, once an attraction in her
own home, was now accessible to the greater public in
the curio room at the College, where she stayed for
over one hundred and thirty years. His body arrived at
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the train platform in the middle of the night, passing
from one set of strangers hands to the next. At
about eleven pm on Saturday night, December seventeenth of eighteen
fifty nine, the now dead John E. Cook arrived in
Jersey City via the Express train North. He was received
by his brother in law and a local undertaker, just
another stop on the journey home. It was late or early,
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if that's how we're counting. By the time the group
arrived in New York City, the night sky had broken
open and let loose to hohrents of rain, soaking our
faithful chaperones to the bone. They were able to catch
an express wagon, though, and John was loaded in his
final destination was a secret one, and traveling in the
dark helped them keep it this way. Their schedule was
something of a formality, but it also was a pure
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function of the situation. John had recently been executed in
Virginia for treason, and his body had to move swifter
than the decay that threatened to overtake him. Curious folks
who managed to find out where John had ended up
were turned away when they called, but his young wife
pleaded to be the first to see his remains. When
they arrived, the undertaker promised her that this would happen,
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but changed his mind once he saw just how badly
decomposed John appeared. Doctor Thomas Holmes, one of New York's
coroners and most skilled embalmers, got to work on the
body that lay before him. He got the arterial injection
site prepared and started, taking about forty five minutes to
get the four courts of liquid passed through the body,
but the newspapers noted that in about half the time,
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Cook's face began to regain its natural color. The next morning,
it said that he didn't even smell. John E. Cook,
the flamboyant co conspirator of John Brown and his rebellion
at Harper's Ferry was held the following Tuesday at the
personal residence of the city Clerk. The political nature of
John's death and the criminal stigma around his hanging kept
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local churches from opening their doors to him and his
loved ones. Only a handful of people were allowed to
see the body in the Crowd control at the actual
funeral limited attendees to a guided, single file line. After
the last visitor was led out through the basement of
the home, John's remains were taken to Cypress Hills Cemetery.
A reverend gave a short address before John was put
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into the grave. After all of this was put to rest,
the good doctor Holmes dusted his hands and cleaned up
his embalming lab. He knew that the tides of how
Americans writ large were caring for the dead were changing,
but little did he know that the treatment of John E.
Cook's body would be the telltale canaar in the coal mine.
Holmes was an anatomist and surgeon by trade, and was
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deeply unsettled by the preservation of specimens, and by specimens,
I mean corpses that he saw come through his lab.
He was also well aware of the significant toxicity of
the chemicals his fellow practitioners had gotten into the habit
of using. Over the past few years. In the hopes
of stopping the spread of diseases harbored in the corpses,
they had treated them with arsenic and mercury based compounds.
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Holmes had experienced studying Egyptian mummies, though, and he believed
that there were other and less deadly ways forward. For
the most parts, up until this point, the work of
death wasn't handled by professionals. The work was largely a
labor of the domestic space, and the most intimate tasks
of caring for the dead were carried out by women.
But by the mid eighteen hundreds, America was on its
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way to creating a systemaized market for newly minted death specialists.
These tasks of caring for the dead were beginning to
be outsourced to paid strangers, consolidated into industries, and given
the shiny new ven year of professionalism, and doctor Holmes
was part of this movement. Having gained notoriety for developing
a safe embalming fluid, it was sold not just to
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his fellow ananimius, but to the burgeoning class of undertakers
who were popping up all over the country. Even still,
the larger public often found it horrifying. That was until
the outbreak of the Civil War. Doctor Holmes had the
great distinction of embalming Elmer E. Ellsworth in eighteen sixty one.
A Union Army colonel in life, he had been close
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with President Lincoln. When the doctor heard this, he visited
the President and offered to embalm his friend. Newspaper accounts
praised the doctor's methods, extolling this idea that men who
were killed far from home could be embalmed locally and
preserved enough to make it home for a proper burial.
Thousands came to see Elmer lying in his coffin, and
all who looked upon his face were said to be
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taken by how utterly lifelike he remained. A short time later,
the Army Medical Corps decided that they would employ the
doctor's services to embalm all of the Union's dead. It
was a symptom of wishful thinking, though, because they thought
that the war would soon be over and the number
of casualties low, They had no idea the carnage they
were about to see and the undertaking that they were
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about to embark upon. As America's Civil War exploded through
small towns, into the forests, and onto the open fields,
doctor Holmes and his colleagues embalmed thousands of bodies. The
practice established itself in the midst of this horrific mass casualty,
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which amounted to a bloodier conflict than any they'd ever
experienced before. For the first time in American history, scores
of people were dying far from where they were born.
According to one statistic, just in the South, one in
five Southern men died during this conflict. Everyone seemed to
know someone or some ones, and try as we might,
the psychic toll incurred is unlike anything we've seen in
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our own lifetimes. The practice of embalming then became both
practical and sentimental. It gave grieving families one last chance
to look upon their loved ones, even if sometimes they
were hardly recognizable. And while it's true that some embalmers
were motivated by care and compassion for their fallen countrymen,
the others were motivated by the hustle and the profit
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to be made off the dead. Even in the midst
of tragedy, or, as so often happens, because of it,
the opportunists had arrived. It said that those who had
taken up the embalming trade following the outbreak of the
war stalked the Union and Confederate armies around the country,
staking out battlefields and recruiting prospective clients while they were
still living with the generous offer of pre paid embalming
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coverage and transportation plans. These men were hawking their wares
in showman's style and with only a hint of sensitivity.
You can only imagine what that did to the morale
of the troops on the front line. Some embalmers, too,
were charged with more or less holding bodies of the
dead hostage until their families could pay what amounted to
a ransom. The craft was wildly on regular but in
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years to come it would be codified and organized with
laws and degrees as a mechanism of control. In all,
around forty thousand were embalmed and sent home. It was
a practice that seemed ghastly to so many in the
years leading up to the war, but like many things,
that war might change our collective attitude towards death and
how to manage the care of it. Became one of them.
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President Abraham Lincoln, who had been at the country's helm
for this entire conflict, died on April fifteenth of eighteen
sixty five after being shot at Ford's Theater in Washington,
d C. By a Confederate sympathizer. His body was quickly
moved to the local embalming firm of Brown and Alexander,
who just three years before had embalmed the president's young son.
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It was collectively decided by the powers in Washington that
the president was going to be sent on one last tour.
He had belonged to the people in life, and he
would belong to them still in death. Lincoln had commissioned
a stately presidential railcar, and it would now serve as
his nine car funeral train, spending twenty days and seventeen
hundred miles crossing the country from Washington, d C. To Springfield, Illinois,
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and it stops along the way. His black bedecked train
was met by thousands of mourners who wished to see
the president one last time. He was accompanied by loved
ones and over one hundred and fifty attendants, including a
resident embalmer. The latter worked alongside local undertakers to ensure
that the president was looking as fresh as possible, even
as Lincoln's face began to sink and discolor in the heat.
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The conductor of the train was quoted as saying that
he looked as if he were asleep in pleasant dreams.
And like I said before, this concept of embalming the
dead like this was something that people had to get
used to. But any disgussed discomfort or unease experienced firsthand
by these curious onlookers was far surpassed by Lincoln's body
as a symbol. They witnessed that his embalming gave him
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a chance to still be among them, if only for
a little while longer, and in doing so, he helped
to cement the powers of human preservation in the public's imagine.
Within a few short years, the practice changed how the
country would go on to live with death. Lincoln himself
gave the practice his stamp of approval when he said
that it helped to bind the nation's wounds, to care
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for him who shall have borne the battle, and for
his widow and his orphan. They saw that this new
technology readily available to everyone, from foot soldiers to presidents.
As a balm to ease the ache of broken hearts.
It was a panacea, a form of care in the
shape of pickling chemicals, one last act of caring on
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the part of an enbalmer and by extension, a family
before someone was laid down for good. In the wake
of the Civil War, the nation began to rebuild itself.
Life in the fractured country would never return to how
it had once been, but a new normal would establish itself.
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Day by day. As the living returned home, the need
for embalmers and their services began to side. People could
now die from where they came and be summarily returned
to the ground. Not to be dissuaded by a good
thing they had going on, though, a group of professionals
mobilized as a collective, staking their claim as the new
mediators between the living and the dead. America's thriving, booming
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free market had created a place for them, and they
were going to claim it. The cottage industries around deaf
care had cropped up during the war, saw a permanent
and necessary place for themselves and started creating barriers for entry,
such as certifications and training programs that turned dying from
something utterly domestic into a cog in capitalism's machine. Embalming,
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it seems, was here to stay. But the same can't
be said for our faithful Doctor Holmes. You see, in
the later years of the nineteenth century, Doctor Holmes would
be arrested for keeping a body on his property for
more than two months. He was studying the effects of
his preservation, not just on this corpse, but on others
in his sprawling anatomical collection. He was summarily relief based
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on the grounds of no wrongdoings, but it's easy to
think that some may have been unsettled by his experiments.
For years, he kept an embalmed dog in the front
window of his shop. At another point, he announced that
in the future, marble would no longer be necessary to
create sculptures from, but that he had found the exact
chemical cocktail that would help turn formerly living human beings
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into marble for display. Today, arterial embalming is commonplace in
the Western world, and there are many misconceptions around it.
One does not have to be embalmed in order to
be buried. There are no laws that require it. Jewish
and Muslim religious traditions also continue to consider embalming taboo.
Since it pollutes the body's natural state. According to one study,
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there are over eight hundred thousand gallons of formaldehyde running
through the veins of the dead that are buried in
the ground each year. The environmental costs alone are high,
never mind the other mechanisms of the funeral industry complex
that have people making financial, environmental, and spe spiritual calculations
for their loved ones final days. Doctor Holmes died on Monday,
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January eighth of nineteen hundred. The byline of the newspaper
called him eccentric, but admitted that his creations were undeniably
valuable to mankind. His final wish, according to the Brooklyn
Times Union, was not to be embalmed. I'll be the
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first to admit that death can be a really hard
thing to talk about, and it's so interesting to think
that our relationship with it has changed so much over
the past one hundred and fifty years. It makes me
think a lot about not just where we come from,
but where we're going. If you stick around through this
brief sponsor break, my teammate Robin Minitter will tell you
a story about one man in his ideas about exactly that.
(23:50):
Oh and seeing as this is the final episode of
Grim and Maal Presents Season three. We thought you'd enjoy
a sneak peek at season four, so be sure to
stick around after the epilogue story for an exclusive listen
to the new trailer ahead of the general public.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
It's hard to pinpoint exactly when it was that humans
decided that living forever might be possible. Stories about immortality
are seen in the foundational myths, legends, and religions across
the world. We see God speaking of eternal life, legendary
characters who experienced suspended animation, and we found ourselves in
the never ending search for the Fountain of Youth. More recently,
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even America's own Ben Franklin believed that if only his
body could be preserved in ava of wine upon his death,
he might have a shot at being reanimated in just
a few more hundred years. In the summer of nineteen
thirty one, a young boy in Detroit, Michigan, by the
name of Robert Ettinger was flipping through his favorite science
fiction magazine. He came across a story about a scientist
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who engineered a way to preserve his body after he died.
The scientist decided that upon his death, he'd have his
body put into a capsule and launched into space. His
plan was to be plucked from orbit in about forty
million more years, where his brain would then be transplanted
into a mechanical body back here on Earth. Robert was
utterly taken by this idea, and he never forgot it.
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Years later, he came home battered from the Second World
War and then used his GI bill to earn a
master's degree in math and physics. He continued to read
and write the same science fiction stories that he loved
so much Little Boy, and decided that he might be
the one to make all of it come to life.
In nineteen sixty four, Robert published what he claimed to
be the first solution to death. His magnum opus, The
(25:37):
Prospect of Immortality, spoke with conviction about the possibility of
long term preservation and future reanimation. He believed that death
wasn't a single event, but was actually broken up into
a set of stages that could be paused and reversed
with the right technology. And it just so happened that
this tech didn't exist yet, but he wanted to be
the one to find it. What's important to note here
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is that while some wanted to brush Robert off, there
were so many others who wanted to believe him. They
were living in the space age, after all, and the
turn of new technology and how it could change lives
just seemed limitless. His book sold over one hundred thousand copies,
and he started appearing on television, the radio, and in magazines.
Central to his argument was the idea that both metabolism
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and decay could be suspended just as long as the
body was kept sufficiently chilled. He wanted to essentially press
pause on what he saw as the liminal space between
life and death, something of a scientific technology infused deep
hibernation period for each and every cell. With this in mind,
Robert cut the ribbon for his cryonics Institute in nineteen
seventy six. It was a seven thousand square foot warehouse
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and a very average looking industrial park outside of Detroit,
and to this day anyone still can become a member.
Today it costs one two hundred and fifty dollars to join,
with the additional ask of twenty eight thousand dollars to
be paid upon a member's death. One way to bank
this investment would be, as they suggest, to make the
Institute a beneficiary of a life insurance policy included in
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this price is also another very interesting offering. With a
network of mortuary relationships, the Cryonics Institute can often deploy
specially trained death care workers at a moment's notice to
prepare and transport a body for its deep freeze. In
nineteen seventy seven, Robert's mother was deanimated and put into storage.
Since then, Robert's first and second wives have also been preserved.
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To do this. First, the blood was drained from their bodies. Next,
they're pumped full of anti freeze, and for the third
and last step, they were put into a vat of
liquid nitrogen, all in the anticipation of what science might
be able to do for them in just a few
more hundred years. And not only was Robert not alone
in his desires and usings, but there were then and
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remain today enough enthusiastic clients who are hoping for the
second chance at life. As for Robert, he deanimated in
twenty eleven and was similarly put into the deep fries.
Maybe we'll see him again someday, but I'm just not
sure I'll be around to do so. Myself.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Grim and mild Presents Bedside Manners was executive produced by
Aaron Manke and narrated by Aaron Mankey and Robin Minitter.
Writing for this season was provided by Robin Miniter, with
research by Sam Alberty, Taylor, Haggridorn and Robin Minitter. Production
assistance was provided by Josh Thain, Jesse Funk, Alex Williams,
(28:32):
and Matt Frederick. You can learn more about this show
the Grim and Mild team and all the other podcasts
that we make over at Grimandmild dot com, and as always,
thanks for listening. It was the scene that any of
us could picture today in our mind's eye. Two groups
(28:55):
of rivals set against each other by grudges big and small,
with a bit of small town politics thrown in for
good measure. To call it a ticking time bomb would
be an understatement. On one side were the Cowboys, a
band of ranchers turned criminals who had plagued the town
for years. On the other for lawmen, and their names
(29:15):
are the ones you'd recognize, Virgil Morgan and Wyatt Earth
alongside their good friend Doc Holliday. The resulting shootout that
day in Tombstone, Arizona, known today as the gunfight at
the Ok Corral only lasted thirty seconds, but the market
left on the popular imagination has held on for nearly
(29:36):
one hundred and fifty years. Why because Americans have never
stopped being fascinated with the wild West. This July, Grimm
and Mile Presents turns its gaze westward. Join us for
a trek into the unknown, the misunderstood, and the forgotten
tales of America's westward expansion, from the early explorers and
(29:57):
the indigenous peoples they encountered, to the gunslingers of legend
and everything in between. This is your chance to learn
just how complicated our move into western North America really was,
and why so many of the assumptions we have about
it are dead wrong. So pack your sense of adventure
and childhood love of the unexplored, and get ready to
(30:19):
make a journey. Grimm and Mild Presents The Wild West
sets off on Friday, July seventh. Subscribe today on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Learn more at Grimminmild dot com. Slash Presents
The Capuchin Friars thought they knew something about the dead.
After all, their holy order was entrusted with caring for
the sick and dying in their community of Palmero, Italy.
They had been at it for decades and were considered
resident experts on postmortem care. But when it came to
their own dead, it turned out that nothing would go
according to plan. In fifteen thirty four, when they relocated
(00:27):
from far off Albacina, they immediately got to work constructing
a collective below ground cistern like crypt. This particular monastic
order practiced a tradition called the second burial. When a
person died, they would be allowed to decompose unburied for
some time. That was the first burial. When a Friar died,
his body would be laid on a shelf to drip dry,
(00:48):
draining himself of all of his liquid. Then, once the
soft bits like flesh and other tissues were gone, the
dried bones would be taken and installed within the holy
walls of the order's church. That's the second burial. So
as the years went on, the Friars stashed more and
more of their own bodies in their crypt, waiting for
the day the space would hit max capacity. The brothers
(01:10):
planned to eventually go collect the bones for Fase two,
where they'd be brought up into the church. In October
of fifteen ninety nine, some Friars descended down into the
belly of their crypt. Here they found something that had
been whispered about over the years. These bodies hadn't fully
decomposed at all. In fact, it seems that their decomposition
had simply been arrested. How could this be? Instead of
(01:32):
finding skeletons, they recognized their friends. It seemed that God
had intervened on their plan for the dead. They took
it all in to decide what it could mean. They
closely inspected all of the forty five bodies meticulously preserved
before them, and the Capuchin Friars believed they were witnessing
a miracle. They interpreted this moment as an act of
divine intervention. So the Friars decided to put the bodies
(01:55):
on display as holy relics. They hoisted them from below
and installed them around the church with wire and placards,
up behind the high altar and in nooks all around
the walls. And in all of this they continued on
with their day to day lives, they kept caring for
the sick and caring for the dead. They continued to
fill their underground crypt with the bodies of their newly
(02:17):
past members, and they noticed that these bodies, too were
not decomposing. It was determined that they would get the
same treatment as the others. The Friars got into the
practice of installing the dead in their final resting or
maybe standing place. Over the years, the order built additional
rooms for these bodies. They added multiple corridors for their
ever expanding collection of mummies. What we know now is
(02:40):
that Palermo has an excellent environment for mommification. The air
is dry and the humidity is low. The Capuchin's underground crypts,
which often utilized the natural made caves, were made of limestone,
which harbors incredible drying properties. Over the years, the Friars
began taking a more active role in the miracle making,
that is, preservation. They began to work with the addition
(03:02):
of vinegar, lime, chalk, and arsenic which they found to
aid in the process. Now, at first these catacombs were
an exclusive club for the resident Friars, But who doesn't
want to rub elbows with the divine right. Taking money
in exchange for holy services is historically fraught, but these
catacombs needed to be maintained, and the way that could
be done was through donation. So in time the catacombs
(03:25):
opened up to everyone, mostly to those who could pay
for the privilege of being in proximity to something seemingly miraculous. Today,
the Capuchin Catacombs are the final resting place of eight
thousand well dressed corpses, and for about five bucks you
can go see them. While it might seem like a
macab spectacle to some, to others, it's a comforts and
(03:46):
an honor to be in the physical midst of so
many who have passed through this life before. So often
the dead are hidden from us. In the not so
recent past, folks in the Western world tended to their
dead at home and buried them close by. Life was
experienced by all from the cradle to the grave until
a radical shift happened. For thousands of years across time
(04:09):
and place, we have been tending to and preserving are
dead because when our attempts at healing the body fail,
humans have to turn to the next task figuring out
exactly what to do with that body. I'm Aaron Mankee
and welcome to bedside manners. When the opportunity to heal
(04:36):
a body has passed us by, there is still healing
to be sought for the living. That is, for those
who love the deceased. It can be a great comfort
to know that they've handled their loved ones with as
much care as they can muster, and that they are
giving them a proper sendoff. Throughout the centuries, humans have
derived rituals for death and the remains of their dead,
and among the many practices, there's one that shows up
(04:58):
time and time again, embalming. We can trace our earliest
examples of embalming back to about five thousand years ago
in ancient Egypt. It's possible that the first mummies had
no human intervention but were accidentally cured by the hot,
dry climate in shallow sandy graves. Around twenty six hundred BC, though,
(05:18):
it seems that mummification became more intentional. While we can't
know exactly how the first methods of mummification came to be,
we can't infer that early embalmers borrowed techniques from the
preservation of animal meat. Over the years, different technologies and
methods came into use, But what remained true over the
course of centuries was that these embalmers played a revered
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role in the fabric of their communities. This act of
preservation was to ensure the dead would make it into
the afterlife intact and with everything they needed to carry
on on the next plane. Around five hundred BC, how
you chose to be embalmed in ancient Egypt boiled down
to a three tier service model. Your selections of a basic, deluxe,
(06:01):
or premium package all depended on your sensibilities and your savings.
To illustrate which package you were purchasing in bombers would
show shoppers three wooden models of corpses, all distinct from
one another. Each was illustrated with various incisions included or
not included in the purchase, as well as a list
of other lux add ons. At the bottom tier, the
(06:23):
body got a washing, assaulting, and perhaps an injection of
cedar oil. At the top, the body would be anointed
with an array of delicious smelling powders and oils, with
organs fully removed save for the heart. Of course, Embalming
became a means of one final capture of life in
a corpse it helped to sand down the rough edges
between life and death for survivors. The ritual has become
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part of our customary response to death ever since. Eventually,
the expansion of Christianity would create waves in regards to
burial customs of the world. As our concept of afterlife changed,
so too did the means required to get this. Embalming
fell out of fashion just for a while. By the
Middle Ages, embalming again gained favor, being seen as a
(07:07):
practical solution to some earthly problems. The pendulum began to
swing back. At this time, it was often reserved for
high ranking military men killed in action who needed to
be sent home with some semblance of recognizability. But with
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries rising interest in anatomy and
all of the lessons it had to teach us, more
bodies were needed for dissection practice. Anatomists toyed with different
(07:30):
recipes and embalming techniques in the same way that the
alchemists are. Proto chemists that we met earlier in this season,
worked in their labs, cooking up solutions both physical and
metaphorical in nature. Practitioners used all kinds of things and Honestly,
they're things that you'd probably think would make some nice
smelling potpourriaut of rose and cammameal and cedar in various
(07:51):
combinations and forms, and sometimes turpidine and lime and ash
and wax and alcohol. Through the years, they developed different
techniques for preservation and washing and drying, submerging, extracting organs
and draining blood, pumping a deflated body up with linen
or straw, and adding pigments for a living likeness. These
(08:11):
recipes were sometimes proprietary trade secrets, and there was a
competition among embalmers as to who could make the most
beautiful corpses. Speaking of there was one such corpse whose
after life outlasted her mortal life that I'd like to
tell you about today, and that was a woman named
Mary von Butchell, who died on January fourteenth of seventeen
seventy five. She had been married to a man named Martin,
(08:34):
a bizarre yet wildly successful dentist in London. He traveled
on a painted horse, wore flamboyant outfits, and somehow managed
to offend the general populace. Even still, his patients loved
him and kept his practice afloat for over twenty years.
He had been a pupil of John Hunter, remember him, who,
along with his brother William, became two of the most
(08:55):
revered anatomists of their age. With this particular training, Martin
had an idea. He would have her embalmed and then
place her in his dental office window for all to see.
This was for advertising, of course, but Madman's don draper
he was not, so he called up his old friend
William Hunter to execute his idea. Now, scholars still debate
why he did this. One doesn't often use the body
(09:17):
of their deceased spouse to inspire public affection. One idea
was that this was a final jab to get back
at her for some transgression in life. On the contrary,
some believed that this was a gesture of great care
and affection, having called upon one of the most esteemed
anatomists in the world to help him. So, alongside William,
Martin embalmed Mary. It was a deeply intimate act, one
(09:40):
that required much time and attention to care for and
preserve her remains. They opened her up for autopsy and
inspected her organs for telltale signs of what had gone wrong.
From there, they began the first of a three stage
embalming process. First, they injected her arteries with a mixture
of turpentine and vermilion and let it set. This would
(10:00):
eventually help them drain her blood, which came in the
second step, along with the removal of her organs. The
third step found them washing her body with water and alcohol,
before filling her cavities with a mixture of camphor, niter
and resin. She was then stitched up with care, washed, dried,
and anointed with oils. She was then laid in a box,
her body set in quick drying plaster, ready for the
(10:23):
curious eyes of the general public. Words circulated quickly, as
you might imagine, and people wanted to see Mary's mummy exactly,
it seems what he set out to do. He took
a blurb in the local paper imploring people to come
only at certain times, which, of course the cynic might
say was just another way to stir up interest. It
also seems that Mary's body long found a post mortem
(10:45):
home in the house they shared, even after he remarried.
When Martin died in eighteen fourteen, the Board of Curators
of the Royal College of Surgeons received a letter from
his son Martin was interred in the ground, but there
was no final rest for Mary. Her embalmed remains had
been in Martin's care while he was alive. Now his
son wanted to know did the Royal College have any
(11:08):
interest in putting Mary's body on display? They sure did,
so there she was. Mary, once an attraction in her
own home, was now accessible to the greater public in
the curio room at the College, where she stayed for
over one hundred and thirty years. His body arrived at
(11:31):
the train platform in the middle of the night, passing
from one set of strangers hands to the next. At
about eleven pm on Saturday night, December seventeenth of eighteen
fifty nine, the now dead John E. Cook arrived in
Jersey City via the Express train North. He was received
by his brother in law and a local undertaker, just
another stop on the journey home. It was late or early,
(11:54):
if that's how we're counting. By the time the group
arrived in New York City, the night sky had broken
open and let loose to hohrents of rain, soaking our
faithful chaperones to the bone. They were able to catch
an express wagon, though, and John was loaded in his
final destination was a secret one, and traveling in the
dark helped them keep it this way. Their schedule was
something of a formality, but it also was a pure
(12:16):
function of the situation. John had recently been executed in
Virginia for treason, and his body had to move swifter
than the decay that threatened to overtake him. Curious folks
who managed to find out where John had ended up
were turned away when they called, but his young wife
pleaded to be the first to see his remains. When
they arrived, the undertaker promised her that this would happen,
(12:38):
but changed his mind once he saw just how badly
decomposed John appeared. Doctor Thomas Holmes, one of New York's
coroners and most skilled embalmers, got to work on the
body that lay before him. He got the arterial injection
site prepared and started, taking about forty five minutes to
get the four courts of liquid passed through the body,
but the newspapers noted that in about half the time,
(13:00):
Cook's face began to regain its natural color. The next morning,
it said that he didn't even smell. John E. Cook,
the flamboyant co conspirator of John Brown and his rebellion
at Harper's Ferry was held the following Tuesday at the
personal residence of the city Clerk. The political nature of
John's death and the criminal stigma around his hanging kept
(13:21):
local churches from opening their doors to him and his
loved ones. Only a handful of people were allowed to
see the body in the Crowd control at the actual
funeral limited attendees to a guided, single file line. After
the last visitor was led out through the basement of
the home, John's remains were taken to Cypress Hills Cemetery.
A reverend gave a short address before John was put
(13:43):
into the grave. After all of this was put to rest,
the good doctor Holmes dusted his hands and cleaned up
his embalming lab. He knew that the tides of how
Americans writ large were caring for the dead were changing,
but little did he know that the treatment of John E.
Cook's body would be the telltale canaar in the coal mine.
Holmes was an anatomist and surgeon by trade, and was
(14:04):
deeply unsettled by the preservation of specimens, and by specimens,
I mean corpses that he saw come through his lab.
He was also well aware of the significant toxicity of
the chemicals his fellow practitioners had gotten into the habit
of using. Over the past few years. In the hopes
of stopping the spread of diseases harbored in the corpses,
they had treated them with arsenic and mercury based compounds.
(14:26):
Holmes had experienced studying Egyptian mummies, though, and he believed
that there were other and less deadly ways forward. For
the most parts, up until this point, the work of
death wasn't handled by professionals. The work was largely a
labor of the domestic space, and the most intimate tasks
of caring for the dead were carried out by women.
But by the mid eighteen hundreds, America was on its
(14:47):
way to creating a systemaized market for newly minted death specialists.
These tasks of caring for the dead were beginning to
be outsourced to paid strangers, consolidated into industries, and given
the shiny new ven year of professionalism, and doctor Holmes
was part of this movement. Having gained notoriety for developing
a safe embalming fluid, it was sold not just to
(15:09):
his fellow ananimius, but to the burgeoning class of undertakers
who were popping up all over the country. Even still,
the larger public often found it horrifying. That was until
the outbreak of the Civil War. Doctor Holmes had the
great distinction of embalming Elmer E. Ellsworth in eighteen sixty one.
A Union Army colonel in life, he had been close
(15:29):
with President Lincoln. When the doctor heard this, he visited
the President and offered to embalm his friend. Newspaper accounts
praised the doctor's methods, extolling this idea that men who
were killed far from home could be embalmed locally and
preserved enough to make it home for a proper burial.
Thousands came to see Elmer lying in his coffin, and
all who looked upon his face were said to be
(15:50):
taken by how utterly lifelike he remained. A short time later,
the Army Medical Corps decided that they would employ the
doctor's services to embalm all of the Union's dead. It
was a symptom of wishful thinking, though, because they thought
that the war would soon be over and the number
of casualties low, They had no idea the carnage they
were about to see and the undertaking that they were
(16:12):
about to embark upon. As America's Civil War exploded through
small towns, into the forests, and onto the open fields,
doctor Holmes and his colleagues embalmed thousands of bodies. The
practice established itself in the midst of this horrific mass casualty,
(16:32):
which amounted to a bloodier conflict than any they'd ever
experienced before. For the first time in American history, scores
of people were dying far from where they were born.
According to one statistic, just in the South, one in
five Southern men died during this conflict. Everyone seemed to
know someone or some ones, and try as we might,
the psychic toll incurred is unlike anything we've seen in
(16:55):
our own lifetimes. The practice of embalming then became both
practical and sentimental. It gave grieving families one last chance
to look upon their loved ones, even if sometimes they
were hardly recognizable. And while it's true that some embalmers
were motivated by care and compassion for their fallen countrymen,
the others were motivated by the hustle and the profit
(17:15):
to be made off the dead. Even in the midst
of tragedy, or, as so often happens, because of it,
the opportunists had arrived. It said that those who had
taken up the embalming trade following the outbreak of the
war stalked the Union and Confederate armies around the country,
staking out battlefields and recruiting prospective clients while they were
still living with the generous offer of pre paid embalming
(17:38):
coverage and transportation plans. These men were hawking their wares
in showman's style and with only a hint of sensitivity.
You can only imagine what that did to the morale
of the troops on the front line. Some embalmers, too,
were charged with more or less holding bodies of the
dead hostage until their families could pay what amounted to
a ransom. The craft was wildly on regular but in
(18:01):
years to come it would be codified and organized with
laws and degrees as a mechanism of control. In all,
around forty thousand were embalmed and sent home. It was
a practice that seemed ghastly to so many in the
years leading up to the war, but like many things,
that war might change our collective attitude towards death and
how to manage the care of it. Became one of them.
(18:22):
President Abraham Lincoln, who had been at the country's helm
for this entire conflict, died on April fifteenth of eighteen
sixty five after being shot at Ford's Theater in Washington,
d C. By a Confederate sympathizer. His body was quickly
moved to the local embalming firm of Brown and Alexander,
who just three years before had embalmed the president's young son.
(18:42):
It was collectively decided by the powers in Washington that
the president was going to be sent on one last tour.
He had belonged to the people in life, and he
would belong to them still in death. Lincoln had commissioned
a stately presidential railcar, and it would now serve as
his nine car funeral train, spending twenty days and seventeen
hundred miles crossing the country from Washington, d C. To Springfield, Illinois,
(19:05):
and it stops along the way. His black bedecked train
was met by thousands of mourners who wished to see
the president one last time. He was accompanied by loved
ones and over one hundred and fifty attendants, including a
resident embalmer. The latter worked alongside local undertakers to ensure
that the president was looking as fresh as possible, even
as Lincoln's face began to sink and discolor in the heat.
(19:28):
The conductor of the train was quoted as saying that
he looked as if he were asleep in pleasant dreams.
And like I said before, this concept of embalming the
dead like this was something that people had to get
used to. But any disgussed discomfort or unease experienced firsthand
by these curious onlookers was far surpassed by Lincoln's body
as a symbol. They witnessed that his embalming gave him
(19:50):
a chance to still be among them, if only for
a little while longer, and in doing so, he helped
to cement the powers of human preservation in the public's imagine.
Within a few short years, the practice changed how the
country would go on to live with death. Lincoln himself
gave the practice his stamp of approval when he said
that it helped to bind the nation's wounds, to care
(20:13):
for him who shall have borne the battle, and for
his widow and his orphan. They saw that this new
technology readily available to everyone, from foot soldiers to presidents.
As a balm to ease the ache of broken hearts.
It was a panacea, a form of care in the
shape of pickling chemicals, one last act of caring on
(20:33):
the part of an enbalmer and by extension, a family
before someone was laid down for good. In the wake
of the Civil War, the nation began to rebuild itself.
Life in the fractured country would never return to how
it had once been, but a new normal would establish itself.
(20:54):
Day by day. As the living returned home, the need
for embalmers and their services began to side. People could
now die from where they came and be summarily returned
to the ground. Not to be dissuaded by a good
thing they had going on, though, a group of professionals
mobilized as a collective, staking their claim as the new
mediators between the living and the dead. America's thriving, booming
(21:16):
free market had created a place for them, and they
were going to claim it. The cottage industries around deaf
care had cropped up during the war, saw a permanent
and necessary place for themselves and started creating barriers for entry,
such as certifications and training programs that turned dying from
something utterly domestic into a cog in capitalism's machine. Embalming,
(21:38):
it seems, was here to stay. But the same can't
be said for our faithful Doctor Holmes. You see, in
the later years of the nineteenth century, Doctor Holmes would
be arrested for keeping a body on his property for
more than two months. He was studying the effects of
his preservation, not just on this corpse, but on others
in his sprawling anatomical collection. He was summarily relief based
(22:00):
on the grounds of no wrongdoings, but it's easy to
think that some may have been unsettled by his experiments.
For years, he kept an embalmed dog in the front
window of his shop. At another point, he announced that
in the future, marble would no longer be necessary to
create sculptures from, but that he had found the exact
chemical cocktail that would help turn formerly living human beings
(22:20):
into marble for display. Today, arterial embalming is commonplace in
the Western world, and there are many misconceptions around it.
One does not have to be embalmed in order to
be buried. There are no laws that require it. Jewish
and Muslim religious traditions also continue to consider embalming taboo.
Since it pollutes the body's natural state. According to one study,
(22:43):
there are over eight hundred thousand gallons of formaldehyde running
through the veins of the dead that are buried in
the ground each year. The environmental costs alone are high,
never mind the other mechanisms of the funeral industry complex
that have people making financial, environmental, and spe spiritual calculations
for their loved ones final days. Doctor Holmes died on Monday,
(23:05):
January eighth of nineteen hundred. The byline of the newspaper
called him eccentric, but admitted that his creations were undeniably
valuable to mankind. His final wish, according to the Brooklyn
Times Union, was not to be embalmed. I'll be the
(23:27):
first to admit that death can be a really hard
thing to talk about, and it's so interesting to think
that our relationship with it has changed so much over
the past one hundred and fifty years. It makes me
think a lot about not just where we come from,
but where we're going. If you stick around through this
brief sponsor break, my teammate Robin Minitter will tell you
a story about one man in his ideas about exactly that.
(23:50):
Oh and seeing as this is the final episode of
Grim and Maal Presents Season three. We thought you'd enjoy
a sneak peek at season four, so be sure to
stick around after the epilogue story for an exclusive listen
to the new trailer ahead of the general public.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
It's hard to pinpoint exactly when it was that humans
decided that living forever might be possible. Stories about immortality
are seen in the foundational myths, legends, and religions across
the world. We see God speaking of eternal life, legendary
characters who experienced suspended animation, and we found ourselves in
the never ending search for the Fountain of Youth. More recently,
(24:32):
even America's own Ben Franklin believed that if only his
body could be preserved in ava of wine upon his death,
he might have a shot at being reanimated in just
a few more hundred years. In the summer of nineteen
thirty one, a young boy in Detroit, Michigan, by the
name of Robert Ettinger was flipping through his favorite science
fiction magazine. He came across a story about a scientist
(24:53):
who engineered a way to preserve his body after he died.
The scientist decided that upon his death, he'd have his
body put into a capsule and launched into space. His
plan was to be plucked from orbit in about forty
million more years, where his brain would then be transplanted
into a mechanical body back here on Earth. Robert was
utterly taken by this idea, and he never forgot it.
(25:15):
Years later, he came home battered from the Second World
War and then used his GI bill to earn a
master's degree in math and physics. He continued to read
and write the same science fiction stories that he loved
so much Little Boy, and decided that he might be
the one to make all of it come to life.
In nineteen sixty four, Robert published what he claimed to
be the first solution to death. His magnum opus, The
(25:37):
Prospect of Immortality, spoke with conviction about the possibility of
long term preservation and future reanimation. He believed that death
wasn't a single event, but was actually broken up into
a set of stages that could be paused and reversed
with the right technology. And it just so happened that
this tech didn't exist yet, but he wanted to be
the one to find it. What's important to note here
(25:59):
is that while some wanted to brush Robert off, there
were so many others who wanted to believe him. They
were living in the space age, after all, and the
turn of new technology and how it could change lives
just seemed limitless. His book sold over one hundred thousand copies,
and he started appearing on television, the radio, and in magazines.
Central to his argument was the idea that both metabolism
(26:20):
and decay could be suspended just as long as the
body was kept sufficiently chilled. He wanted to essentially press
pause on what he saw as the liminal space between
life and death, something of a scientific technology infused deep
hibernation period for each and every cell. With this in mind,
Robert cut the ribbon for his cryonics Institute in nineteen
seventy six. It was a seven thousand square foot warehouse
(26:43):
and a very average looking industrial park outside of Detroit,
and to this day anyone still can become a member.
Today it costs one two hundred and fifty dollars to join,
with the additional ask of twenty eight thousand dollars to
be paid upon a member's death. One way to bank
this investment would be, as they suggest, to make the
Institute a beneficiary of a life insurance policy included in
(27:07):
this price is also another very interesting offering. With a
network of mortuary relationships, the Cryonics Institute can often deploy
specially trained death care workers at a moment's notice to
prepare and transport a body for its deep freeze. In
nineteen seventy seven, Robert's mother was deanimated and put into storage.
Since then, Robert's first and second wives have also been preserved.
(27:31):
To do this. First, the blood was drained from their bodies. Next,
they're pumped full of anti freeze, and for the third
and last step, they were put into a vat of
liquid nitrogen, all in the anticipation of what science might
be able to do for them in just a few
more hundred years. And not only was Robert not alone
in his desires and usings, but there were then and
(27:51):
remain today enough enthusiastic clients who are hoping for the
second chance at life. As for Robert, he deanimated in
twenty eleven and was similarly put into the deep fries.
Maybe we'll see him again someday, but I'm just not
sure I'll be around to do so. Myself.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Grim and mild Presents Bedside Manners was executive produced by
Aaron Manke and narrated by Aaron Mankey and Robin Minitter.
Writing for this season was provided by Robin Miniter, with
research by Sam Alberty, Taylor, Haggridorn and Robin Minitter. Production
assistance was provided by Josh Thain, Jesse Funk, Alex Williams,
(28:32):
and Matt Frederick. You can learn more about this show
the Grim and Mild team and all the other podcasts
that we make over at Grimandmild dot com, and as always,
thanks for listening. It was the scene that any of
us could picture today in our mind's eye. Two groups
(28:55):
of rivals set against each other by grudges big and small,
with a bit of small town politics thrown in for
good measure. To call it a ticking time bomb would
be an understatement. On one side were the Cowboys, a
band of ranchers turned criminals who had plagued the town
for years. On the other for lawmen, and their names
(29:15):
are the ones you'd recognize, Virgil Morgan and Wyatt Earth
alongside their good friend Doc Holliday. The resulting shootout that
day in Tombstone, Arizona, known today as the gunfight at
the Ok Corral only lasted thirty seconds, but the market
left on the popular imagination has held on for nearly
(29:36):
one hundred and fifty years. Why because Americans have never
stopped being fascinated with the wild West. This July, Grimm
and Mile Presents turns its gaze westward. Join us for
a trek into the unknown, the misunderstood, and the forgotten
tales of America's westward expansion, from the early explorers and
(29:57):
the indigenous peoples they encountered, to the gunslingers of legend
and everything in between. This is your chance to learn
just how complicated our move into western North America really was,
and why so many of the assumptions we have about
it are dead wrong. So pack your sense of adventure
and childhood love of the unexplored, and get ready to
(30:19):
make a journey. Grimm and Mild Presents The Wild West
sets off on Friday, July seventh. Subscribe today on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Learn more at Grimminmild dot com. Slash Presents
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