Speaker 1: The Capuchin Friars thought they knew something about the dead.
Speaker 1: After all, their holy order was entrusted with caring for
Speaker 1: the sick and dying in their community of Palmero, Italy.
Speaker 1: They had been at it for decades and were considered
Speaker 1: resident experts on postmortem care. But when it came to
Speaker 1: their own dead, it turned out that nothing would go
Speaker 1: according to plan. In fifteen thirty four, when they relocated
Speaker 1: from far off Albacina, they immediately got to work constructing
Speaker 1: a collective below ground cistern like crypt. This particular monastic
Speaker 1: order practiced a tradition called the second burial. When a
Speaker 1: person died, they would be allowed to decompose unburied for
Speaker 1: some time. That was the first burial. When a Friar died,
Speaker 1: his body would be laid on a shelf to drip dry,
Speaker 1: draining himself of all of his liquid. Then, once the
Speaker 1: soft bits like flesh and other tissues were gone, the
Speaker 1: dried bones would be taken and installed within the holy
Speaker 1: walls of the order's church. That's the second burial. So
Speaker 1: as the years went on, the Friars stashed more and
Speaker 1: more of their own bodies in their crypt, waiting for
Speaker 1: the day the space would hit max capacity. The brothers
Speaker 1: planned to eventually go collect the bones for Fase two,
Speaker 1: where they'd be brought up into the church. In October
Speaker 1: of fifteen ninety nine, some Friars descended down into the
Speaker 1: belly of their crypt. Here they found something that had
Speaker 1: been whispered about over the years. These bodies hadn't fully
Speaker 1: decomposed at all. In fact, it seems that their decomposition
Speaker 1: had simply been arrested. How could this be? Instead of
Speaker 1: finding skeletons, they recognized their friends. It seemed that God
Speaker 1: had intervened on their plan for the dead. They took
Speaker 1: it all in to decide what it could mean. They
Speaker 1: closely inspected all of the forty five bodies meticulously preserved
Speaker 1: before them, and the Capuchin Friars believed they were witnessing
Speaker 1: a miracle. They interpreted this moment as an act of
Speaker 1: divine intervention. So the Friars decided to put the bodies
Speaker 1: on display as holy relics. They hoisted them from below
Speaker 1: and installed them around the church with wire and placards,
Speaker 1: up behind the high altar and in nooks all around
Speaker 1: the walls. And in all of this they continued on
Speaker 1: with their day to day lives, they kept caring for
Speaker 1: the sick and caring for the dead. They continued to
Speaker 1: fill their underground crypt with the bodies of their newly
Speaker 1: past members, and they noticed that these bodies, too were
Speaker 1: not decomposing. It was determined that they would get the
Speaker 1: same treatment as the others. The Friars got into the
Speaker 1: practice of installing the dead in their final resting or
Speaker 1: maybe standing place. Over the years, the order built additional
Speaker 1: rooms for these bodies. They added multiple corridors for their
Speaker 1: ever expanding collection of mummies. What we know now is
Speaker 1: that Palermo has an excellent environment for mommification. The air
Speaker 1: is dry and the humidity is low. The Capuchin's underground crypts,
Speaker 1: which often utilized the natural made caves, were made of limestone,
Speaker 1: which harbors incredible drying properties. Over the years, the Friars
Speaker 1: began taking a more active role in the miracle making,
Speaker 1: that is, preservation. They began to work with the addition
Speaker 1: of vinegar, lime, chalk, and arsenic which they found to
Speaker 1: aid in the process. Now, at first these catacombs were
Speaker 1: an exclusive club for the resident Friars, But who doesn't
Speaker 1: want to rub elbows with the divine right. Taking money
Speaker 1: in exchange for holy services is historically fraught, but these
Speaker 1: catacombs needed to be maintained, and the way that could
Speaker 1: be done was through donation. So in time the catacombs
Speaker 1: opened up to everyone, mostly to those who could pay
Speaker 1: for the privilege of being in proximity to something seemingly miraculous. Today,
Speaker 1: the Capuchin Catacombs are the final resting place of eight
Speaker 1: thousand well dressed corpses, and for about five bucks you
Speaker 1: can go see them. While it might seem like a
Speaker 1: macab spectacle to some, to others, it's a comforts and
Speaker 1: an honor to be in the physical midst of so
Speaker 1: many who have passed through this life before. So often
Speaker 1: the dead are hidden from us. In the not so
Speaker 1: recent past, folks in the Western world tended to their
Speaker 1: dead at home and buried them close by. Life was
Speaker 1: experienced by all from the cradle to the grave until
Speaker 1: a radical shift happened. For thousands of years across time
Speaker 1: and place, we have been tending to and preserving are
Speaker 1: dead because when our attempts at healing the body fail,
Speaker 1: humans have to turn to the next task figuring out
Speaker 1: exactly what to do with that body. I'm Aaron Mankee
Speaker 1: and welcome to bedside manners. When the opportunity to heal
Speaker 1: a body has passed us by, there is still healing
Speaker 1: to be sought for the living. That is, for those
Speaker 1: who love the deceased. It can be a great comfort
Speaker 1: to know that they've handled their loved ones with as
Speaker 1: much care as they can muster, and that they are
Speaker 1: giving them a proper sendoff. Throughout the centuries, humans have
Speaker 1: derived rituals for death and the remains of their dead,
Speaker 1: and among the many practices, there's one that shows up
Speaker 1: time and time again, embalming. We can trace our earliest
Speaker 1: examples of embalming back to about five thousand years ago
Speaker 1: in ancient Egypt. It's possible that the first mummies had
Speaker 1: no human intervention but were accidentally cured by the hot,
Speaker 1: dry climate in shallow sandy graves. Around twenty six hundred BC, though,
Speaker 1: it seems that mummification became more intentional. While we can't
Speaker 1: know exactly how the first methods of mummification came to be,
Speaker 1: we can't infer that early embalmers borrowed techniques from the
Speaker 1: preservation of animal meat. Over the years, different technologies and
Speaker 1: methods came into use, But what remained true over the
Speaker 1: course of centuries was that these embalmers played a revered
Speaker 1: role in the fabric of their communities. This act of
Speaker 1: preservation was to ensure the dead would make it into
Speaker 1: the afterlife intact and with everything they needed to carry
Speaker 1: on on the next plane. Around five hundred BC, how
Speaker 1: you chose to be embalmed in ancient Egypt boiled down
Speaker 1: to a three tier service model. Your selections of a basic, deluxe,
Speaker 1: or premium package all depended on your sensibilities and your savings.
Speaker 1: To illustrate which package you were purchasing in bombers would
Speaker 1: show shoppers three wooden models of corpses, all distinct from
Speaker 1: one another. Each was illustrated with various incisions included or
Speaker 1: not included in the purchase, as well as a list
Speaker 1: of other lux add ons. At the bottom tier, the
Speaker 1: body got a washing, assaulting, and perhaps an injection of
Speaker 1: cedar oil. At the top, the body would be anointed
Speaker 1: with an array of delicious smelling powders and oils, with
Speaker 1: organs fully removed save for the heart. Of course, Embalming
Speaker 1: became a means of one final capture of life in
Speaker 1: a corpse it helped to sand down the rough edges
Speaker 1: between life and death for survivors. The ritual has become
Speaker 1: part of our customary response to death ever since. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the expansion of Christianity would create waves in regards to
Speaker 1: burial customs of the world. As our concept of afterlife changed,
Speaker 1: so too did the means required to get this. Embalming
Speaker 1: fell out of fashion just for a while. By the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages, embalming again gained favor, being seen as a
Speaker 1: practical solution to some earthly problems. The pendulum began to
Speaker 1: swing back. At this time, it was often reserved for
Speaker 1: high ranking military men killed in action who needed to
Speaker 1: be sent home with some semblance of recognizability. But with
Speaker 1: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries rising interest in anatomy and
Speaker 1: all of the lessons it had to teach us, more
Speaker 1: bodies were needed for dissection practice. Anatomists toyed with different
Speaker 1: recipes and embalming techniques in the same way that the
Speaker 1: alchemists are. Proto chemists that we met earlier in this season,
Speaker 1: worked in their labs, cooking up solutions both physical and
Speaker 1: metaphorical in nature. Practitioners used all kinds of things and Honestly,
Speaker 1: they're things that you'd probably think would make some nice
Speaker 1: smelling potpourriaut of rose and cammameal and cedar in various
Speaker 1: combinations and forms, and sometimes turpidine and lime and ash
Speaker 1: and wax and alcohol. Through the years, they developed different
Speaker 1: techniques for preservation and washing and drying, submerging, extracting organs
Speaker 1: and draining blood, pumping a deflated body up with linen
Speaker 1: or straw, and adding pigments for a living likeness. These
Speaker 1: recipes were sometimes proprietary trade secrets, and there was a
Speaker 1: competition among embalmers as to who could make the most
Speaker 1: beautiful corpses. Speaking of there was one such corpse whose
Speaker 1: after life outlasted her mortal life that I'd like to
Speaker 1: tell you about today, and that was a woman named
Speaker 1: Mary von Butchell, who died on January fourteenth of seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy five. She had been married to a man named Martin,
Speaker 1: a bizarre yet wildly successful dentist in London. He traveled
Speaker 1: on a painted horse, wore flamboyant outfits, and somehow managed
Speaker 1: to offend the general populace. Even still, his patients loved
Speaker 1: him and kept his practice afloat for over twenty years.
Speaker 1: He had been a pupil of John Hunter, remember him, who,
Speaker 1: along with his brother William, became two of the most
Speaker 1: revered anatomists of their age. With this particular training, Martin
Speaker 1: had an idea. He would have her embalmed and then
Speaker 1: place her in his dental office window for all to see.
Speaker 1: This was for advertising, of course, but Madman's don draper
Speaker 1: he was not, so he called up his old friend
Speaker 1: William Hunter to execute his idea. Now, scholars still debate
Speaker 1: why he did this. One doesn't often use the body
Speaker 1: of their deceased spouse to inspire public affection. One idea
Speaker 1: was that this was a final jab to get back
Speaker 1: at her for some transgression in life. On the contrary,
Speaker 1: some believed that this was a gesture of great care
Speaker 1: and affection, having called upon one of the most esteemed
Speaker 1: anatomists in the world to help him. So, alongside William,
Speaker 1: Martin embalmed Mary. It was a deeply intimate act, one
Speaker 1: that required much time and attention to care for and
Speaker 1: preserve her remains. They opened her up for autopsy and
Speaker 1: inspected her organs for telltale signs of what had gone wrong.
Speaker 1: From there, they began the first of a three stage
Speaker 1: embalming process. First, they injected her arteries with a mixture
Speaker 1: of turpentine and vermilion and let it set. This would
Speaker 1: eventually help them drain her blood, which came in the
Speaker 1: second step, along with the removal of her organs. The
Speaker 1: third step found them washing her body with water and alcohol,
Speaker 1: before filling her cavities with a mixture of camphor, niter
Speaker 1: and resin. She was then stitched up with care, washed, dried,
Speaker 1: and anointed with oils. She was then laid in a box,
Speaker 1: her body set in quick drying plaster, ready for the
Speaker 1: curious eyes of the general public. Words circulated quickly, as
Speaker 1: you might imagine, and people wanted to see Mary's mummy exactly,
Speaker 1: it seems what he set out to do. He took
Speaker 1: a blurb in the local paper imploring people to come
Speaker 1: only at certain times, which, of course the cynic might
Speaker 1: say was just another way to stir up interest. It
Speaker 1: also seems that Mary's body long found a post mortem
Speaker 1: home in the house they shared, even after he remarried.
Speaker 1: When Martin died in eighteen fourteen, the Board of Curators
Speaker 1: of the Royal College of Surgeons received a letter from
Speaker 1: his son Martin was interred in the ground, but there
Speaker 1: was no final rest for Mary. Her embalmed remains had
Speaker 1: been in Martin's care while he was alive. Now his
Speaker 1: son wanted to know did the Royal College have any
Speaker 1: interest in putting Mary's body on display? They sure did,
Speaker 1: so there she was. Mary, once an attraction in her
Speaker 1: own home, was now accessible to the greater public in
Speaker 1: the curio room at the College, where she stayed for
Speaker 1: over one hundred and thirty years. His body arrived at
Speaker 1: the train platform in the middle of the night, passing
Speaker 1: from one set of strangers hands to the next. At
Speaker 1: about eleven pm on Saturday night, December seventeenth of eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine, the now dead John E. Cook arrived in
Speaker 1: Jersey City via the Express train North. He was received
Speaker 1: by his brother in law and a local undertaker, just
Speaker 1: another stop on the journey home. It was late or early,
Speaker 1: if that's how we're counting. By the time the group
Speaker 1: arrived in New York City, the night sky had broken
Speaker 1: open and let loose to hohrents of rain, soaking our
Speaker 1: faithful chaperones to the bone. They were able to catch
Speaker 1: an express wagon, though, and John was loaded in his
Speaker 1: final destination was a secret one, and traveling in the
Speaker 1: dark helped them keep it this way. Their schedule was
Speaker 1: something of a formality, but it also was a pure
Speaker 1: function of the situation. John had recently been executed in
Speaker 1: Virginia for treason, and his body had to move swifter
Speaker 1: than the decay that threatened to overtake him. Curious folks
Speaker 1: who managed to find out where John had ended up
Speaker 1: were turned away when they called, but his young wife
Speaker 1: pleaded to be the first to see his remains. When
Speaker 1: they arrived, the undertaker promised her that this would happen,
Speaker 1: but changed his mind once he saw just how badly
Speaker 1: decomposed John appeared. Doctor Thomas Holmes, one of New York's
Speaker 1: coroners and most skilled embalmers, got to work on the
Speaker 1: body that lay before him. He got the arterial injection
Speaker 1: site prepared and started, taking about forty five minutes to
Speaker 1: get the four courts of liquid passed through the body,
Speaker 1: but the newspapers noted that in about half the time,
Speaker 1: Cook's face began to regain its natural color. The next morning,
Speaker 1: it said that he didn't even smell. John E. Cook,
Speaker 1: the flamboyant co conspirator of John Brown and his rebellion
Speaker 1: at Harper's Ferry was held the following Tuesday at the
Speaker 1: personal residence of the city Clerk. The political nature of
Speaker 1: John's death and the criminal stigma around his hanging kept
Speaker 1: local churches from opening their doors to him and his
Speaker 1: loved ones. Only a handful of people were allowed to
Speaker 1: see the body in the Crowd control at the actual
Speaker 1: funeral limited attendees to a guided, single file line. After
Speaker 1: the last visitor was led out through the basement of
Speaker 1: the home, John's remains were taken to Cypress Hills Cemetery.
Speaker 1: A reverend gave a short address before John was put
Speaker 1: into the grave. After all of this was put to rest,
Speaker 1: the good doctor Holmes dusted his hands and cleaned up
Speaker 1: his embalming lab. He knew that the tides of how
Speaker 1: Americans writ large were caring for the dead were changing,
Speaker 1: but little did he know that the treatment of John E.
Speaker 1: Cook's body would be the telltale canaar in the coal mine.
Speaker 1: Holmes was an anatomist and surgeon by trade, and was
Speaker 1: deeply unsettled by the preservation of specimens, and by specimens,
Speaker 1: I mean corpses that he saw come through his lab.
Speaker 1: He was also well aware of the significant toxicity of
Speaker 1: the chemicals his fellow practitioners had gotten into the habit
Speaker 1: of using. Over the past few years. In the hopes
Speaker 1: of stopping the spread of diseases harbored in the corpses,
Speaker 1: they had treated them with arsenic and mercury based compounds.
Speaker 1: Holmes had experienced studying Egyptian mummies, though, and he believed
Speaker 1: that there were other and less deadly ways forward. For
Speaker 1: the most parts, up until this point, the work of
Speaker 1: death wasn't handled by professionals. The work was largely a
Speaker 1: labor of the domestic space, and the most intimate tasks
Speaker 1: of caring for the dead were carried out by women.
Speaker 1: But by the mid eighteen hundreds, America was on its
Speaker 1: way to creating a systemaized market for newly minted death specialists.
Speaker 1: These tasks of caring for the dead were beginning to
Speaker 1: be outsourced to paid strangers, consolidated into industries, and given
Speaker 1: the shiny new ven year of professionalism, and doctor Holmes
Speaker 1: was part of this movement. Having gained notoriety for developing
Speaker 1: a safe embalming fluid, it was sold not just to
Speaker 1: his fellow ananimius, but to the burgeoning class of undertakers
Speaker 1: who were popping up all over the country. Even still,
Speaker 1: the larger public often found it horrifying. That was until
Speaker 1: the outbreak of the Civil War. Doctor Holmes had the
Speaker 1: great distinction of embalming Elmer E. Ellsworth in eighteen sixty one.
Speaker 1: A Union Army colonel in life, he had been close
Speaker 1: with President Lincoln. When the doctor heard this, he visited
Speaker 1: the President and offered to embalm his friend. Newspaper accounts
Speaker 1: praised the doctor's methods, extolling this idea that men who
Speaker 1: were killed far from home could be embalmed locally and
Speaker 1: preserved enough to make it home for a proper burial.
Speaker 1: Thousands came to see Elmer lying in his coffin, and
Speaker 1: all who looked upon his face were said to be
Speaker 1: taken by how utterly lifelike he remained. A short time later,
Speaker 1: the Army Medical Corps decided that they would employ the
Speaker 1: doctor's services to embalm all of the Union's dead. It
Speaker 1: was a symptom of wishful thinking, though, because they thought
Speaker 1: that the war would soon be over and the number
Speaker 1: of casualties low, They had no idea the carnage they
Speaker 1: were about to see and the undertaking that they were
Speaker 1: about to embark upon. As America's Civil War exploded through
Speaker 1: small towns, into the forests, and onto the open fields,
Speaker 1: doctor Holmes and his colleagues embalmed thousands of bodies. The
Speaker 1: practice established itself in the midst of this horrific mass casualty,
Speaker 1: which amounted to a bloodier conflict than any they'd ever
Speaker 1: experienced before. For the first time in American history, scores
Speaker 1: of people were dying far from where they were born.
Speaker 1: According to one statistic, just in the South, one in
Speaker 1: five Southern men died during this conflict. Everyone seemed to
Speaker 1: know someone or some ones, and try as we might,
Speaker 1: the psychic toll incurred is unlike anything we've seen in
Speaker 1: our own lifetimes. The practice of embalming then became both
Speaker 1: practical and sentimental. It gave grieving families one last chance
Speaker 1: to look upon their loved ones, even if sometimes they
Speaker 1: were hardly recognizable. And while it's true that some embalmers
Speaker 1: were motivated by care and compassion for their fallen countrymen,
Speaker 1: the others were motivated by the hustle and the profit
Speaker 1: to be made off the dead. Even in the midst
Speaker 1: of tragedy, or, as so often happens, because of it,
Speaker 1: the opportunists had arrived. It said that those who had
Speaker 1: taken up the embalming trade following the outbreak of the
Speaker 1: war stalked the Union and Confederate armies around the country,
Speaker 1: staking out battlefields and recruiting prospective clients while they were
Speaker 1: still living with the generous offer of pre paid embalming
Speaker 1: coverage and transportation plans. These men were hawking their wares
Speaker 1: in showman's style and with only a hint of sensitivity.
Speaker 1: You can only imagine what that did to the morale
Speaker 1: of the troops on the front line. Some embalmers, too,
Speaker 1: were charged with more or less holding bodies of the
Speaker 1: dead hostage until their families could pay what amounted to
Speaker 1: a ransom. The craft was wildly on regular but in
Speaker 1: years to come it would be codified and organized with
Speaker 1: laws and degrees as a mechanism of control. In all,
Speaker 1: around forty thousand were embalmed and sent home. It was
Speaker 1: a practice that seemed ghastly to so many in the
Speaker 1: years leading up to the war, but like many things,
Speaker 1: that war might change our collective attitude towards death and
Speaker 1: how to manage the care of it. Became one of them.
Speaker 1: President Abraham Lincoln, who had been at the country's helm
Speaker 1: for this entire conflict, died on April fifteenth of eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty five after being shot at Ford's Theater in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. By a Confederate sympathizer. His body was quickly
Speaker 1: moved to the local embalming firm of Brown and Alexander,
Speaker 1: who just three years before had embalmed the president's young son.
Speaker 1: It was collectively decided by the powers in Washington that
Speaker 1: the president was going to be sent on one last tour.
Speaker 1: He had belonged to the people in life, and he
Speaker 1: would belong to them still in death. Lincoln had commissioned
Speaker 1: a stately presidential railcar, and it would now serve as
Speaker 1: his nine car funeral train, spending twenty days and seventeen
Speaker 1: hundred miles crossing the country from Washington, d C. To Springfield, Illinois,
Speaker 1: and it stops along the way. His black bedecked train
Speaker 1: was met by thousands of mourners who wished to see
Speaker 1: the president one last time. He was accompanied by loved
Speaker 1: ones and over one hundred and fifty attendants, including a
Speaker 1: resident embalmer. The latter worked alongside local undertakers to ensure
Speaker 1: that the president was looking as fresh as possible, even
Speaker 1: as Lincoln's face began to sink and discolor in the heat.
Speaker 1: The conductor of the train was quoted as saying that
Speaker 1: he looked as if he were asleep in pleasant dreams.
Speaker 1: And like I said before, this concept of embalming the
Speaker 1: dead like this was something that people had to get
Speaker 1: used to. But any disgussed discomfort or unease experienced firsthand
Speaker 1: by these curious onlookers was far surpassed by Lincoln's body
Speaker 1: as a symbol. They witnessed that his embalming gave him
Speaker 1: a chance to still be among them, if only for
Speaker 1: a little while longer, and in doing so, he helped
Speaker 1: to cement the powers of human preservation in the public's imagine.
Speaker 1: Within a few short years, the practice changed how the
Speaker 1: country would go on to live with death. Lincoln himself
Speaker 1: gave the practice his stamp of approval when he said
Speaker 1: that it helped to bind the nation's wounds, to care
Speaker 1: for him who shall have borne the battle, and for
Speaker 1: his widow and his orphan. They saw that this new
Speaker 1: technology readily available to everyone, from foot soldiers to presidents.
Speaker 1: As a balm to ease the ache of broken hearts.
Speaker 1: It was a panacea, a form of care in the
Speaker 1: shape of pickling chemicals, one last act of caring on
Speaker 1: the part of an enbalmer and by extension, a family
Speaker 1: before someone was laid down for good. In the wake
Speaker 1: of the Civil War, the nation began to rebuild itself.
Speaker 1: Life in the fractured country would never return to how
Speaker 1: it had once been, but a new normal would establish itself.
Speaker 1: Day by day. As the living returned home, the need
Speaker 1: for embalmers and their services began to side. People could
Speaker 1: now die from where they came and be summarily returned
Speaker 1: to the ground. Not to be dissuaded by a good
Speaker 1: thing they had going on, though, a group of professionals
Speaker 1: mobilized as a collective, staking their claim as the new
Speaker 1: mediators between the living and the dead. America's thriving, booming
Speaker 1: free market had created a place for them, and they
Speaker 1: were going to claim it. The cottage industries around deaf
Speaker 1: care had cropped up during the war, saw a permanent
Speaker 1: and necessary place for themselves and started creating barriers for entry,
Speaker 1: such as certifications and training programs that turned dying from
Speaker 1: something utterly domestic into a cog in capitalism's machine. Embalming,
Speaker 1: it seems, was here to stay. But the same can't
Speaker 1: be said for our faithful Doctor Holmes. You see, in
Speaker 1: the later years of the nineteenth century, Doctor Holmes would
Speaker 1: be arrested for keeping a body on his property for
Speaker 1: more than two months. He was studying the effects of
Speaker 1: his preservation, not just on this corpse, but on others
Speaker 1: in his sprawling anatomical collection. He was summarily relief based
Speaker 1: on the grounds of no wrongdoings, but it's easy to
Speaker 1: think that some may have been unsettled by his experiments.
Speaker 1: For years, he kept an embalmed dog in the front
Speaker 1: window of his shop. At another point, he announced that
Speaker 1: in the future, marble would no longer be necessary to
Speaker 1: create sculptures from, but that he had found the exact
Speaker 1: chemical cocktail that would help turn formerly living human beings
Speaker 1: into marble for display. Today, arterial embalming is commonplace in
Speaker 1: the Western world, and there are many misconceptions around it.
Speaker 1: One does not have to be embalmed in order to
Speaker 1: be buried. There are no laws that require it. Jewish
Speaker 1: and Muslim religious traditions also continue to consider embalming taboo.
Speaker 1: Since it pollutes the body's natural state. According to one study,
Speaker 1: there are over eight hundred thousand gallons of formaldehyde running
Speaker 1: through the veins of the dead that are buried in
Speaker 1: the ground each year. The environmental costs alone are high,
Speaker 1: never mind the other mechanisms of the funeral industry complex
Speaker 1: that have people making financial, environmental, and spe spiritual calculations
Speaker 1: for their loved ones final days. Doctor Holmes died on Monday,
Speaker 1: January eighth of nineteen hundred. The byline of the newspaper
Speaker 1: called him eccentric, but admitted that his creations were undeniably
Speaker 1: valuable to mankind. His final wish, according to the Brooklyn
Speaker 1: Times Union, was not to be embalmed. I'll be the
Speaker 1: first to admit that death can be a really hard
Speaker 1: thing to talk about, and it's so interesting to think
Speaker 1: that our relationship with it has changed so much over
Speaker 1: the past one hundred and fifty years. It makes me
Speaker 1: think a lot about not just where we come from,
Speaker 1: but where we're going. If you stick around through this
Speaker 1: brief sponsor break, my teammate Robin Minitter will tell you
Speaker 1: a story about one man in his ideas about exactly that.
Speaker 1: Oh and seeing as this is the final episode of
Speaker 1: Grim and Maal Presents Season three. We thought you'd enjoy
Speaker 1: a sneak peek at season four, so be sure to
Speaker 1: stick around after the epilogue story for an exclusive listen
Speaker 1: to the new trailer ahead of the general public.
Speaker 2: It's hard to pinpoint exactly when it was that humans
Speaker 2: decided that living forever might be possible. Stories about immortality
Speaker 2: are seen in the foundational myths, legends, and religions across
Speaker 2: the world. We see God speaking of eternal life, legendary
Speaker 2: characters who experienced suspended animation, and we found ourselves in
Speaker 2: the never ending search for the Fountain of Youth. More recently,
Speaker 2: even America's own Ben Franklin believed that if only his
Speaker 2: body could be preserved in ava of wine upon his death,
Speaker 2: he might have a shot at being reanimated in just
Speaker 2: a few more hundred years. In the summer of nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty one, a young boy in Detroit, Michigan, by the
Speaker 2: name of Robert Ettinger was flipping through his favorite science
Speaker 2: fiction magazine. He came across a story about a scientist
Speaker 2: who engineered a way to preserve his body after he died.
Speaker 2: The scientist decided that upon his death, he'd have his
Speaker 2: body put into a capsule and launched into space. His
Speaker 2: plan was to be plucked from orbit in about forty
Speaker 2: million more years, where his brain would then be transplanted
Speaker 2: into a mechanical body back here on Earth. Robert was
Speaker 2: utterly taken by this idea, and he never forgot it.
Speaker 2: Years later, he came home battered from the Second World
Speaker 2: War and then used his GI bill to earn a
Speaker 2: master's degree in math and physics. He continued to read
Speaker 2: and write the same science fiction stories that he loved
Speaker 2: so much Little Boy, and decided that he might be
Speaker 2: the one to make all of it come to life.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty four, Robert published what he claimed to
Speaker 2: be the first solution to death. His magnum opus, The
Speaker 2: Prospect of Immortality, spoke with conviction about the possibility of
Speaker 2: long term preservation and future reanimation. He believed that death
Speaker 2: wasn't a single event, but was actually broken up into
Speaker 2: a set of stages that could be paused and reversed
Speaker 2: with the right technology. And it just so happened that
Speaker 2: this tech didn't exist yet, but he wanted to be
Speaker 2: the one to find it. What's important to note here
Speaker 2: is that while some wanted to brush Robert off, there
Speaker 2: were so many others who wanted to believe him. They
Speaker 2: were living in the space age, after all, and the
Speaker 2: turn of new technology and how it could change lives
Speaker 2: just seemed limitless. His book sold over one hundred thousand copies,
Speaker 2: and he started appearing on television, the radio, and in magazines.
Speaker 2: Central to his argument was the idea that both metabolism
Speaker 2: and decay could be suspended just as long as the
Speaker 2: body was kept sufficiently chilled. He wanted to essentially press
Speaker 2: pause on what he saw as the liminal space between
Speaker 2: life and death, something of a scientific technology infused deep
Speaker 2: hibernation period for each and every cell. With this in mind,
Speaker 2: Robert cut the ribbon for his cryonics Institute in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy six. It was a seven thousand square foot warehouse
Speaker 2: and a very average looking industrial park outside of Detroit,
Speaker 2: and to this day anyone still can become a member.
Speaker 2: Today it costs one two hundred and fifty dollars to join,
Speaker 2: with the additional ask of twenty eight thousand dollars to
Speaker 2: be paid upon a member's death. One way to bank
Speaker 2: this investment would be, as they suggest, to make the
Speaker 2: Institute a beneficiary of a life insurance policy included in
Speaker 2: this price is also another very interesting offering. With a
Speaker 2: network of mortuary relationships, the Cryonics Institute can often deploy
Speaker 2: specially trained death care workers at a moment's notice to
Speaker 2: prepare and transport a body for its deep freeze. In
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy seven, Robert's mother was deanimated and put into storage.
Speaker 2: Since then, Robert's first and second wives have also been preserved.
Speaker 2: To do this. First, the blood was drained from their bodies. Next,
Speaker 2: they're pumped full of anti freeze, and for the third
Speaker 2: and last step, they were put into a vat of
Speaker 2: liquid nitrogen, all in the anticipation of what science might
Speaker 2: be able to do for them in just a few
Speaker 2: more hundred years. And not only was Robert not alone
Speaker 2: in his desires and usings, but there were then and
Speaker 2: remain today enough enthusiastic clients who are hoping for the
Speaker 2: second chance at life. As for Robert, he deanimated in
Speaker 2: twenty eleven and was similarly put into the deep fries.
Speaker 2: Maybe we'll see him again someday, but I'm just not
Speaker 2: sure I'll be around to do so. Myself.
Speaker 1: Grim and mild Presents Bedside Manners was executive produced by
Speaker 1: Aaron Manke and narrated by Aaron Mankey and Robin Minitter.
Speaker 1: Writing for this season was provided by Robin Miniter, with
Speaker 1: research by Sam Alberty, Taylor, Haggridorn and Robin Minitter. Production
Speaker 1: assistance was provided by Josh Thain, Jesse Funk, Alex Williams,
Speaker 1: and Matt Frederick. You can learn more about this show
Speaker 1: the Grim and Mild team and all the other podcasts
Speaker 1: that we make over at Grimandmild dot com, and as always,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening. It was the scene that any of
Speaker 1: us could picture today in our mind's eye. Two groups
Speaker 1: of rivals set against each other by grudges big and small,
Speaker 1: with a bit of small town politics thrown in for
Speaker 1: good measure. To call it a ticking time bomb would
Speaker 1: be an understatement. On one side were the Cowboys, a
Speaker 1: band of ranchers turned criminals who had plagued the town
Speaker 1: for years. On the other for lawmen, and their names
Speaker 1: are the ones you'd recognize, Virgil Morgan and Wyatt Earth
Speaker 1: alongside their good friend Doc Holliday. The resulting shootout that
Speaker 1: day in Tombstone, Arizona, known today as the gunfight at
Speaker 1: the Ok Corral only lasted thirty seconds, but the market
Speaker 1: left on the popular imagination has held on for nearly
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty years. Why because Americans have never
Speaker 1: stopped being fascinated with the wild West. This July, Grimm
Speaker 1: and Mile Presents turns its gaze westward. Join us for
Speaker 1: a trek into the unknown, the misunderstood, and the forgotten
Speaker 1: tales of America's westward expansion, from the early explorers and
Speaker 1: the indigenous peoples they encountered, to the gunslingers of legend
Speaker 1: and everything in between. This is your chance to learn
Speaker 1: just how complicated our move into western North America really was,
Speaker 1: and why so many of the assumptions we have about
Speaker 1: it are dead wrong. So pack your sense of adventure
Speaker 1: and childhood love of the unexplored, and get ready to
Speaker 1: make a journey. Grimm and Mild Presents The Wild West
Speaker 1: sets off on Friday, July seventh. Subscribe today on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: Learn more at Grimminmild dot com. Slash Presents