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Antique embalming machine that’s unnerving

Posted in collectibles, Death, and Medicine

The machine seemed to have a twin. I had seen a contraption like it two months earlier in another room during a special sale at the auction house. Is it possible that two of these morbid machines had been consigned in such a short time?

Not likely. I figured that the first buyer had reneged on the purchase, and I was right. When the embalming machine opened for bids this time, the auctioneer explained that the first buyer had failed to pay for it.

When I first saw the machine, I wasn’t sure what it was. The auction house had placed it in a conspicuous spot on the top corner of a glass counter, with no other items huddled around it. It was meant to be seen, and you couldn’t miss it.

embalming machine
One side of the Sorensen embalming machine sold at auction.

It had two large jars on opposite sides atop a wooden platform, with a metal apparatus and rubber tubes between them. I looked at it from the front, then the back and sides, and still couldn’t figure out what the heck it was. So I consulted the auction house bid sheet:

“Vintage CM Sorensen Co. Inc. Embalming Machine Vintage CM Sorensen Co Inc. Steam Punk Style Embalming Machine Cond: Good, dried out hose and motor belt.”

I usually touch items to get a good look and feel for them; I’m glad I had the wherewithal not to handle this one.

I had never seen an embalming machine come up at auction before, and I guessed at how it was used: Embalming fluid was pushed into the body through a tube from one jar and blood was removed through a tube and deposited into the other jar.

embalming machine
The other side of the Sorensen embalming machine.

This was an early motorized embalming machine, so I searched to see what I could find out about it. A few folks on the web guessed that it could be either an embalming machine or a dental machine (not sure how that’d work).

A seller on the retail site etsy.com had one – not for purchase – from his personal collection of “antique medical oddities,” and identified it as an Edwardian embalming machine made around 1910. He was giving it up because a friend had found him a hand-operated one from the 1870s.

A young funeral director recounted that when his grandfather owned the business, which was founded more than 160 years ago, embalming was done in the home. Caleb Wilde, the great grandson, found an old embalming gravity flash and stand in a basement. His great grandfather (and later his grandfather for a short period) would take it to a home, extract the blood and insert the fluid. All the time, they had to make sure that none of the blood spilled.

Wilde says he now uses a Porti-Boy, which is more streamlined and less nightmarish.

embalming machine
A modern Porti-Boy embalming machine.

Embalming bodies goes back to the Egyptians and mummification. The more modern embalming technique is credited to Dr. Thomas Holmes, who set up an embalming station on Civil War battlegrounds. The National Museum of Funeral History in Houston has re-created the tent station, and has embalming equipment and instruments dating back to the early 1900s.

Granted a commission as a captain in the Army Medical Corps in Washington, DC, Holmes embalmed Army officers killed in the war, reportedly preparing the bodies of 4,000 soldiers and officers. He also took his services to the battlegrounds along with other surgeonswhom he trained. He was said to have left the military to start embalming bodies for the public after seeing its potential.

Meanwhile, President Lincoln directed that the bodies of Union soldiers be embalmed so they could be returned to their families to be buried. African American soldiers assisted in the embalming.

The practice was confined to the Union; the South did no embalming. Interestingly, Lincoln was embalmed; Holmes asked that he not be. He died in 1900.

embalming machine
Close-up views of the front and back of the embalming machine. The back has a long cord that extends from the machine.

Embalming fell out of favor after the war. People were buried soon after they died and placed in wooden coffins for a quick burial. Some bodies were packed in ice in “ice coffins” to preserve them a little longer. In black families, they were placed on a “cooling board” and iced. All of the funeral details were done by an undertaker. Embalming did not become more acceptable until the early 1900s and was done in the home.

I don’t recall what the machine at auction sold for, but I’m sure it was much less than the $500 that someone paid for a similar Sorensen on eBay.

One Comment

  1. robert bryan
    robert bryan

    There seems to be many of these Sorensen machines around – I have one, too.
    I highly doubt that its an embalming machine, but rather a dental tool. I say this because I have been a mortician since 1973, and have NEVER seen this type of machine in the business. The power and capacities do not equate for what would be required for embalming. The Sorensen is an interesting looking devise, nickel plated, AC/DC motor and attractive carrying case – very unique.

    July 30, 2022
    |Reply

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