Desiccation, in striking contrast with embalming, is the process of
nature rather than of art, and involves no mutilation and no
substitution of foreign substances for human flesh, and does not by
unnatural means preserve the semblance of the human form so long that a
susceptible sentiment is shocked and a due return of material humanity
to the elements that gave it birth prevented. Desiccation is so far a
natural process that it seems not to have been thought of until nature
had done the work and shown the product, and through many centuries, and
upon an extensive scale, nature had employed the process before it
occurred to man to copy her and adopt her method for the disposition of
his dead.
Wherever the air that enwrapped the lifeless form of man or beast was
dry, desiccation anticipated and prevented decomposition. In deserts,
upon elevated plains, upon the slopes of lofty mountain ranges, to which
the winds that passed their summits bore no moisture, the dead have not
decayed, but have dried undecomposed. In the morgue attached to the
Hospice of St. Bernard, the dead, lifted too late from their shroud of
snow, and borne thither to await the recognition of their friends, dry,
and do not decay. In the "Catacombs" of the monastery of the Capuchins
at Palermo, and in the "Bleikeller" at Bremen, the same phenomenon has
appeared.
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