PRESERVING DEAD BODIES.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 5, Issue 1279, 16 January 1883, Page 2

PRESERVING DEAD BODIES.

The St. James Budget describe! the manner in which in France they preserve dead bodies for the purpose of identification, Every corpse that is taken to the morgue is now quickly converted into a block almost as hard as stone. The result is abtained by Carlo's chemical refrigerator, which is ; capable) of reducing the temperature 6f the gruesome " conservatory, " where each; body is laid out on .something, closely , resembling a camp bedstead in stone, to 15 degrees .below' zero centngade. At iheback of this salle i» »;»'«(JbffstovS-like compartmenls in which the corpses are boxed up and frozen hard before being exposed to public view; As as illustration of the intense cold thus artificially a Paris journalist; in describing a recent visit to the morgue, says' that in opehing'one of the compartments the attendant took file precaution to wear.a glove, lest" his hand afcould be burnt by contaot with the cold iron." The corpse .which .was taken out of its receptaple had been there nine hours. Th»;doctor who acoompaniedthe: visitor struck the dead man on the breast with a stick, and the sound wps just as if he |iad itruok a stone. " G'eat effmyaat I" adds iliii descriptive writer.' "My guide,"he continues; " told mo that the corpses once frozen at this temperature will stand erect nppn their feet, and should they fall down they do not iwUiri the slightest' Boratch. But the noise is like that of of a marble chimney-piece crashing down upon the floor." During the experiment which pteceedod the adoption of the new system corpses:jn this frozen, state were actually thrown out; but although they made "un fracuß terrible" they were "not in: the leaat damaged." No wonder that the morgu? has become more:.than.jever attractive as one of the" sights of Paris, 1 ' and that the Municipality is seriously contemplating the construction of a larger building fur the accommodation of : its unclaimed dead.