The preservation of anatomical material by carbolic acid / Robert J. Terry.

  • Terry, Robert J. (Robert James), 1871-1966.
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The preservation of anatomical material by carbolic acid / Robert J. Terry. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    removal of the viscera, with a cotton cloth soaking wet in the carbolic acid mixture. When the cloth is tucked in between the ribs and the common skin and muscle flap and the median in- cision sutured, the abdominal and chest walls and muscles of the back are thoroughly saturated with the preservative. Autopsy cadavers are in fact better preserved than entire bodies. Since 1899 we have not used cold storage rooms or solutions for storing our material. The statistical paper of Gronroos’* shows that in the year 1898 the majority of continental medical schools were using carbolic acid in some mixture, usually with glycerine and alcohol, as an injection and were storing the embalmed material in tanks containing vari- ous preserving fluids. In America the tendency to store in cold vaults began and several institutions have followed Huntington and Mall in establishing refrigerating machines. The initial ex- pense of cold storage apparatus and its subsequent care are ob- stacles to this method of storage for unendowed schools, while the ordinary ice-box is unsatisfactory in many respects in addi- tion to being expensive. The results of our experiments with carbolic acid have from the start indicated that storage is a secondary matter compared with embalming and this has been demonstrated at Johns Hopkins where a cadaver properly embalmed and kept upon an open shelf in a warm room for half a year “ cannot be detected from others by its quality and appearance.” Our experience is the same and we can say that when a body is thoroughly saturated with car- bolic acid it is well embalmed and with the epidermis fixed the only matter that calls for attention in storage is the drying of the body. When a body is smeared with vaseline, wrapped with paper and then in an oil-skin but little drying ensues ; what evap- * Gronroos, Hjaimer. Zusammenstellung der ublicheii Konservier- ungsmethoden fiir Praparirsaalzwecke. Anatomischer Anzeiger, Bd. 15, 1898; p. 61.