Decency and medical handlings of corpses in 19th-century France

Carol, Anne

doi:10.4000/hms.203

Cited by 2 publications

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“…The second challenge was that of decency: embalming supposed in fact procedures that repelled the families. These were promised to be reduced to the strict minimum, and especially regarding undressing -even completely avoided -the deceased body (Carol, 2012b). Such con-cern was observed during the same period in the legal verification of the death, during which doctors tried to reconcile technique efficiency with the mourning's sensibility (Carol, 2014).…”

Section: The Golden Age Of Embalmingmentioning

confidence: 97%

Embalming and the materiality of death (France, nineteenth century)

Carol

2019

Mortality

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At the end of the 1830s, embalming became fashionable in France. Unlike traditional embalming reserved to the elites since the Middle Ages, the new, private form of embalming concerned ordinary people who could not bear seeing their passed beloved ones decompose and decay to dust. This rise went hand in hand with the multiplication of timeless plots allocation within cemeteries created by the decree of 1804, on which families could build tombs destined to shelter their dead. Embalming hence belonged to the 'funeral transition' between the eighteenth and the nineteenth century as described by R. Bertrand: the concern for the dead was not characterised by the concern for their soul but rather for the material remains. The cult of the dead focused on the grave in the nineteenth century: embalming was perhaps a necessary step within this materialisation: during a limited period of time, the certainty of having a fully preserved body under the grave was necessary in order to function as a place of memory and as a cornerstone of the cult of the dead.

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Section: The Golden Age Of Embalmingmentioning

confidence: 97%

Embalming and the materiality of death (France, nineteenth century)

Carol

2019

Mortality

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“…The rise of ostentatious funerals among middle classes and embalming practices for funerary purposes, which produced aestheticized, lifelike corpses, are clear indications of an increasingly sentimental mourning culture (Buklijas, 2008, pp. 580-581;Carol, 2011Carol, , 2015Deblon & Wils, 2017;Tarlow, 2002). In this respect, the increasing attention paid to the outward appearance of the corpse and its burial have often been referred to in relation to the individualization of death (Ariès, 1977).…”

Section: The Individual Pauper Corpsementioning

confidence: 99%

Reassessing the pauper burial: the disposal of corpses in nineteenth-century Brussels

Gijbels

2017

Mortality

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In this article I examine the changing disposal of pauper corpses in the nineteenthcentury hospitals of Brussels. I argue that the end of the century witnessed a growing focus on the individuality of the pauper corpse. Research into hospital records has revealed the significance of the ideological struggles between Catholics, liberals and socialists from the 1860s onwards, as a result of which the indifferent attitude of hospital administrators regarding dead patients and relatives was increasingly contested. Acts and complaints by the local authorities, mutualist burial societies and relatives brought about improvements of the material conditions of the pauper burial. My analysis of this debate shows that the ideological conflicts regarding Catholic and civil burials, as well as the introduction of new burial standards within hospitals, led to a greater emphasis on the burial desires of the dead. Yet, I argue that this attention towards the individual pauper corpse was only deemed necessary if close family members or burial societies stood up for the fulfilment of the dying wishes of the dead. Poor hospital patients without such social relationships could not prevent an anonymous anatomy burial.

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Decency and medical handlings of corpses in 19th-century France

Cited by 2 publications

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Embalming and the materiality of death (France, nineteenth century)

Embalming and the materiality of death (France, nineteenth century)

Reassessing the pauper burial: the disposal of corpses in nineteenth-century Brussels

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