Mortuary Science
Imagine yourself as a mortician, certified as an embalmer, retort operator, funeral director, and a funeral cosmetologist. You get a call late at night, there’s been a terrible accident and someone has died. You arrive at the hospital and are directed to a small room where the body of the deceased is being held. There’s blood all over the sheets as the doctor and coronary assistant zip up the body bag and inform you the body was badly mangled in a car accident, which is going to make reconstructing the deceased very difficult. Your assistant puts the body on the stretcher and loads it into the hearse while you talk to the wife of the deceased man. She tells you they plan to have a funeral so you give her your card and a reassuring word before leaving the hospital and driving back to the funeral home. Now your job begins, not only will you have to reconstruct this man’s disfigured body, but you must meet with the family, discuss funeral arrangements, and deal with the family’s emotional trauma that comes with losing a loved one. Although working in the funeral business can be emotionally draining, it’s a satisfying feeling to see mourning families able to say goodbye to their loved ones. Despite the fact that working so closely with the deceased can be chilling, Mortuary science can be a thrilling field to work in.
Mortuary science has several different certifications and understudies and can be dated back to 3100 B.C. http://www.preceden.com/timelines/45056-timeline---funeral-practices--3100-bc-1700-ad- Certified embalmers, funeral cosmetologists, directors, and in most funeral businesses, certified retort operators can be found within the business or local establishment. Embalming is a technique used to artific...
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...ial ceremony. The mortician grooms the deceased’ and tries to make the dead look as living as possible. (http://listverse.com/2007/11/08/the-5-stages-of-embalming/)
Works Cited
http://listverse.com/2007/11/08/the-5-stages-of-embalming/ http://www.gramerfuneralhome.com/client-forms/ http://www.thefreedictionary.com/obituary http://listverse.com/2007/11/08/the-5-stages-of-embalming/ http://h2g2.com/entry/A3388052 http://www.ancientegypt.co.uk/mummies/story/main.html http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rigor+mortis http://health.howstuffworks.com/diseases-conditions/death-dying/rigor-mortis-cause.htm Chamberlain, Andrew, and Pearson Michael Parker. Earthly Remains: The History and Science of Preserved Human Bodies. New York: Oxford UP, 2001. Print. http://www.drkloss.com/tools.html http://www.preceden.com/timelines/45056-timeline---funeral-practices--3100-bc-1700-ad-
For historians, the colonial period holds many mysteries. In Written in Bone, Sally Walker tells the story of America's earliest settlers in an interesting way, by studying human remains and bones. Sally walker works alongside historians as they uncover the secrets of colonial era gravesites. Written in Bone covers the entire process, from excavating human remains to studying the burial methods and how scientists, historians and archeologists go about this. Readers will be amazed by how much detail these processes uncover, such as gender, race, diets and the lifestyles of many different people. The reader will began to see the colonial era in a new way.
The article was an enjoyment to read. It provides an insider's view of what goes on in the mortuary, where not many people can access. It deals with a subject which people do not usually seek information on but are nonetheless intrigued by. The style lessens the formality of the subject, which makes it less scary to deal with. The descriptive language is effectively used. The expression of the author's feeling and thoughts encourages empathy from the reader with the author.
“Skeletons in the Closet”, written by Clara Spotted Elk, is a well-built argument, but it can be enhanced to become immensely effective. Firstly, Elk’s position is effective in obtaining her purpose and connecting her audience to it, because she includes a broad scope and background of the problem in the first few paragraphs. She describes the amount of Indian skeletons preserved and contained by American museums, through the use of data and statistics. For instance, Elk states: “we found that 18,500 Indian remains…are unceremoniously stored in the Smithsonian’s nooks and crannies” (13-15). By using this data, the background of the argument is illustrated to assist the audience in understanding her argument. Now, by knowing this statistic, readers can connect with Elk and her assertion, since we realize that there are plenty of skeletons that
In the book “Death's Acre”, By Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson they tell readers how they got to where they are today in their careers and how Dr. Bill Bass became famous for the well known “Body Farm” at the University of Tennessee. In “Deaths Acre” Bass invites people across the world who are reading to go behind the gates of the body farm where he revolutionized forensic anthropology. Bass takes us on a journey on how he went from not knowing if this is what he wanted to do for a living to being in a career that he would never trade. He tells us about the Lindbergh kidnapping and murder, explored the headless corpse of a person whose identity shocked many people included the police, divulges how the telltale traces and case
In the past four decades the cost of a funeral service has risen 1,328% (Boring) and that’s not just because Morticians wanted to out of pure greed. One must take into account that modern mortuaries are much more of a business than before. Prior to 1970, the majority of funeral homes were were independent, family run. Today about 14% of funeral homes are run by a publicly traded corporation (Boring) meaning there’s a plethora of capital involved in these businesses now. The homes are built better and by professionals rather than by individuals with some tools, the home’s are extremely more sanitary since there’s more than likely no one living in these funeral homes unlike before, and the quality of the products these services are providing is greater than before.
Perhaps the most notorious of burial practices originating in Egypt is that of mummification. Why such an extraordinary attempt was made to preserve cadavers may seem
“In most human society's death is an extremely important cultural and social phenomenon, sometimes more important than birth” (Ohnuki-Tierney, Angrosino, & Daar et al. 1994). In the United States of America, when a body dies it is cherished, mourned over, and given respect by the ones that knew the person. It is sent to the morgue and from there the family decides how the body should be buried or cremated based on...
Holloway dug into the history of African American death through a series of interviews, archival research, and analyses of literature, film, movies, theater, and music. Through it, Holloway showed how the vulnerability of African Americans to untimely death is inextricably linked to how black culture represents itself and is represented. In dealing with grief and loss, African American researchers have primarily focused on the “death-care” industry—black funeral homes and morticians, the history of the profession, and its practices. Holloway took a stronger and more active approach by researching all facets of the burial business: emergency room physicians, hospital chaplains, hospice administrators, embalming chemical salesmen, casket makers, funeral directors, and grieving relatives.
Ancient sources highlight the need for a proper burial and refer to the omission of burial rites as an insult to the dignity of humankind (Iliad, 23.71). Relatives of the deceased person, mainly women, conducted the elaborate burial rituals that were usually of three parts: the prothesis (laying out of the body), the ekphora (funerary procession), and the entombment of the body or cremation of the remains of the deceased. The body was first washed and anointed with oil, and then dressed for the funeral and laid out on a tall bed within the house. During the prothesis, relatives and friends came pay their respects. Lamentation of the dead is depicted in early Greek art, as early as the Geometric period, where vases were carefully painted with scenes showing the deceased person surrounded by mourners. After the prothesis, the deceased was brought in a ceremonial procession to the cemetery, the ekphora, which took place just before dawn. Very few objects
When one hears the word mummies the first thing that comes to mind are the Egyptian mummies inside expensive-looking detailed tombs. But 2,000 years before the Egyptians embraced this art, a South American Culture—the Chinchorro—had already started preserving its dead in a similar way. This Culture composed of fishermen, hunters and gatherers from southern Peru and northern Chile used a number of different mummification processes. But since there was no discrimination to choose who was mummified archaeologists have not yet found the reason why the Chinchorro chose to practice mummification. However, there is plenty of information on other aspects of the Chinchorro culture that makes it far more interesting than other cultures that practiced
She opens up her essay by saying “How surprised [Yorick] would be to see how his counterpart of today is whisked off to a funeral parlor and is in short order sprayed, sliced, pierced, pickled, trussed, trimmed, creamed, waxed, painted, rouged, and neatly dressed transformed from a common corpse into a Beautiful Memory Picture.”(Mitford) Funerals are meant to protect people from seeing what kind of toll death has on their loved one; to remove the scars of being human. Kubler-Ross touches on this when she says “The more we are making advancements in science, the more we seem to fear and deny the reality of death. How is this possible? We use euphemisms, we make the dead look as if they were asleep” (Kubler-Ross) which connects to her opinion that death is feared and people take responsibility when a loved one dies, even if they had no impact on their death. The eradication of the sense of death is the key reason why the deceased are embalmed. Clifton Bryant discusses that the reason why people want to have their dead embalmed is because of “death anxiety”, that it is the collective phrase for all the different and complex fears of death. He later states that death anxiety is why we tend to have “death denial” and why we tend to avoid it wholly. “Likewise, the use of metaphors or euphemisms that serve to soften the harshness of death (e.g., passed away, deceased, expired) clearly represents a culturally approved attempt to deny or camouflage death's impact on our daily lives.”(Bryant) This reflects well on the point Mitford makes, when she says “[The funeral director] put on a well-oiled performance in which the concept of death played no part whatsoever” (Mitford) Kubler-Ross feels that death being ever increasingly more taboo the more
Their are multiple steps of mummification though they are usually split into two parts, embalming and wrapping. The first step of embalming prosses is the wash the body with water from the Nile river. Next the brians are taken out of the head using a hook like tool through the nose. Then, the embalmer makes a cut on the left side of the body to remove the internal organs, except the heart. The organs are then washed and packaged in natron to dry them out. The body is then covered and stuffed with salt to dry it out. Once forty days have passed the body is then washed again from water from the Nile river, then for the skin to stay pliable and soft the body is covered in oils. In some cases the organs are returned to the body and other cases
Forensics Anthropology is the study that goes beyond the human skeleton. A forensics anthropologist can find out. How a person lived, the food that person ate, and the overall make-up of a human. The use of forensics has grown in recent years, it is used to solve crimes and locate missing persons. Snow, (1982) Forensics anthropology is not a new science. The first case forensics anthropology was used on was the Jezebel case, dating back to the nineteenth century. This case involved a person, who was thrown from a window. Snow, (1982) The remains found in this case were the skull, feet, and the palm of the victim’s hands.
Crime scene photography and the autopsy are of vital importance in dealing with a death.
Like anthropology that is the use of scientific study of humans, that involves their bones too (Latta Pg.7). To an anthologists the bones that are found are used to tell a story of the deceased person’s life (Pg.10). A (biological) anthropologist, with the right training, can tell the difference between of a human skeletal remains and an animal’s skeletal remains. They can even tell whether the skeleton remains are male or female (Pg.12). The bones provided information about the age of the skeleton remain with the deceased person (Mackay Pg.47, 48). The way that the age can be determined is by the size if the bone. Though it would not be easy for the anthologist to decipher the full story if the bone has been tampered with. There will be times when the anthologist can’t determine how the person died (Pg.44). There will also be times when the anthropologist had to dig up the remains from the place where it was estimated to be. A forensic Anthropologist cannot identify or analyze skeletal material that the person does not have. (Pg.41, 42). The next field is forensic pathology. Pathology is the examination the body in search of the cause of death. A pathologist must determine whether or not a body is dead or alive. Then they are to find out the time of death, also known as postmortem interval. The signs of death are divided into 2 phases Early and Late. The Early stage of death includes the coolness if the body. Which is