embalming

Embalming, in most modern cultures, is the art and science of temporarily preserving human remains to forestall decomposition and make it suitable for display at a funeral. The three goals of embalming are thus preservation, sanitization and presentation (or restoration) of a dead body to achieve this effect. Embalming has a very long and cross-cultural history, with many cultures giving the embalming processes a greater religious meaning.

In my third semester of school, in order to pass the embalming class, I will have to embalm 10 bodies... and the bodies come from the Bellevue hospital, from the "unclaimed" bodies section of the city morgue... I never really pondered on how many people must die in a big city like NY, and how many of them don't have any friends or family to come claim them; frozen for at least 3 weeks, and with no one to come bid them farewell, they end up on the anatomy table of medical students or prepared to be embalmed by us, mortuary school students... kind of sad if you think of it.