Embalming how long does it take

The rate of decomposition will vary, depending on the strength of the chemicals and methods used, and the humidity and temperature of the final resting place. Ambient temperature has more effect on the decomposition process than the amount of time elapsed since death, whether or not a body has been embalmed.

In a sealed casket in above-ground entombment in a warm climate, a body will decompose very rapidly. Many funeral directors believe that seeing the body is a necessary part of the grieving process, even if the death was long-anticipated. It is the basis for the sale of profitable merchandise, the guardian of public health, the reason for much of our professional education and our protective legislation.

Direct or immediate burial, without embalming, must be offered by all funeral homes. The body is simply placed in a shroud, casket, or other container, and buried within few days, without visitation or service. Refrigeration can be used to maintain a body while awaiting a funeral service or when there is a delay in making arrangements.

Not all funeral homes have refrigeration facilities, but most hospitals do. What is embalming? How prevalent is embalming? Do any religions forbid it? When is embalming required?

Also, many people die on special occasions. People tend to hang on for a birthday or Christmas. I'm not saying that death is psychologically motivated, but there's a sense that people stay alive for these events and their loved ones, and then pass away, so the death rate increases on birthdays and during religious festivals. When a death is expected, the ideal place for it is at home, in a familiar environment, surrounded by family. But that is becoming a rarer event. What is becoming more common is people being rushed into hospital for what I believe is a more undignified and worse death, in an anonymous room with nurses who are busy.

In my view that is a failure of health professionals, because we should be preparing the families of terminally ill people for death, showing them that it doesn't have to be frightening and that they can do it at home. Palliative care is all about making death comfortable - you do not need to die in pain, you can die in a dignified manner.

People worry that having a death at home will be horrible and traumatic for the family, but a good death is like a good birth - it is a beautiful event, not at all undignified.

Most people who come to me for a postmortem examination will have died from heart disease. In the elderly, strokes and pneumonia are also very common. The young are more likely to die from accidents, suicide or particular types of tumours one gets in youth. If a young person dies, the likelihood of them having a postmortem is high because their death is much more likely to be unexpected. Many older people who die won't have a postmortem because they are likely to have had a known illness that has led to their death.

The first part of a postmortem is an external examination that notes the condition of the patient, any unique identifiers such as tattoos, evidence of recent medical intervention or injuries.

Their notes might say "found dead in bed", but you don't know whether they have fallen and banged their head the day before and have a subtle but significant injury, so you are looking out for things like that. The internal examination starts with an incision from the sternum to the pubic bone. You go through the skin, fat and muscles to expose the rib cage.

Then you cut through some of the ribs for access to the upper organs. When removing the organs you work in three blocks. The thoracic block contains the throat, tongue, lungs, heart and aorta. Then you have the liver, stomach and pancreas in the second block. The final block includes the kidneys, the remainder of the aorta, bowels, bladder and reproductive organs. The incision doesn't go all the way up to the chin because we don't want anything to be visible to the relatives if they view the body.

So, to remove the tongue and windpipe, we work up under the skin from the chest. You loosen the skin up to the jawline, then you can work the blade to cut around the tongue, across the vessels and pull them down under the jaw. Once you have removed all the organs, you take them to the bench and go through each of the blocks for more detailed analysis.

You look for organ weight - a good indication of heart disease will be a big, heavy, often baggy, heart. You look for vessels blocked by clots or fatty deposits. As you slice through the lungs, you are looking to see if there is fluid where there shouldn't be, if there are tumours or evidence of asbestos exposure.

If someone had alcoholic liver disease, one might expect a small, shrunken, scarred liver. Using a scalpel, the mortuary technician will make an incision at the back of the head and lift up the scalp to reveal the skull. A little hand-held saw is used to cut through the skull. The technician will ask you to observe as they take off the skull in case there is something immediately obvious, such as a brain haemorrhage. They will then take out the brain for examination.

Many good things may come from a postmortem. You may find something that is relevant to subsequent generations - say, if a young mother has died and you find a coincidental breast cancer, you would suggest screening for her children. If you can't find a cause of death from looking at the organs with the naked eye, you take tissue and fluid samples, which are examined under microscopes and submitted for toxicological analysis. Once you have finished, everything is put back into the body and the incisions are sewn up.

It is not possible to re-site the organs into the positions they held in life, but the body is reconstructed as far as possible. It is cleaned to remove traces of fluid or blood. The hair is washed. You complete the cause of death documentation and the body can be released for cremation or burial. Once the death has been certified, we'll go to the family's home or hospital to remove the body and bring it back to the funeral parlour. Because of health and safety regulations, we have to be careful with manual handling - using stretchers enables us to slide the body rather than do heavy lifting.

If someone is being collected from a hospital, they would probably be in a hospital shroud; if it's a removal from a home, they are more likely to be in nightclothes. People don't have the close family networks they used to. It's more frequent these days for someone to have died alone in their house and not be found for two or three days and sometimes two or three months. We have to go in and remove the body, which can be quite an unpleasant experience.

If a body is left untreated at room temperature, it will deteriorate quickly, so at the funeral parlour it will be put into a refrigerated unit until the death is registered.

Then, with the family's permission, the body can be embalmed. With the Muslim faith, an imam will come in and wash the body and wrap it in an unbleached cloth. Hindu and Sikh families will come and do the washing themselves. If the deceased is male, the male family members will come; if female, it will be the women.

After embalming, we will dress the body before placing it in a coffin. It depends on the size of the person, but usually two or three people do the dressing. The family usually provide clothing - a favourite outfit or something apt.

It can afford family members from further away time to get to where they need to be, to pay their respects. Yes, a body can be viewed without embalming. Embalming is simply one of many funeral options to choose when someone dies.

A body that has not been embalmed will begin to undergo the natural processes that happen after death, sooner. It is usual for someone to be embalmed before they are brought home for an open coffin viewing or a wake, although this is not always the case. In circumstances where a person has not been embalmed and is brought home for an open or closed coffin wake, the funeral is generally held within a few days of the death and the room is kept very cool.

The Cuddlecot is an insulated crib which allows bereaved parents to bring babies who are stillborn, or died in infancy, home for a few hours, or even days. Many hospitals are beginning to provide these, to enable families to spend precious time with their baby, without the need for embalming. While they are not on view in an open coffin, embalmed bodies are usually kept in a refrigerated space, or a very cool room.

In theory, the time it takes for an embalmed body to fully decompose can be many years, depending on the environment. In the right conditions embalming fluids can preserve a body indefinitely, but burial, moisture or humid conditions attract bacteria to form and begin the process of decay.

If you're considering choosing one, our extensive guide to burials will be a very useful resource. Whether a body is embalmed, extreme-embalmed or not embalmed, it needs to be kept cool in between viewings and until the burial or cremation takes place. It primarily involved the use of natron salts to totally dehydrate the body. This was then was wrapped in resin-coated linen strips, to prevent any moisture in the air from causing decomposition.

Mummies in museums today are displayed in cases with the humidity strictly controlled. It can take between eight and twelve years for an unembalmed body buried six feet down, to decompose to a skeleton. The short answer: Absolutely! In a temperate climate, it usually requires three weeks to several years for a body to completely decompose into a skeleton, depending on factors such as temperature, humidity, presence of insects, and submergence in a substrate such as water.

The general stages of decomposition are coupled with two stages of chemical decomposition: autolysis and putrefaction. By some accounts, A. For years it has occupied a key position in the family tree as the lineal ancestor of Australopithecus afarensis, which is widely viewed as the ancestor of our own genus, Homo. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search.