The Civil War – the second-most-deadly event in US history, just behind COVID-19 –contributed to lasting changes in how Americans care for the dead.

At the annual Gettysburg Civil War Battle Reenactment, we visited a camp surgeon and embalmer in the living history village and spoke to reenactors about medical practices during the war.

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Holmes alone reportedly embalmed 4,000 men over the course of the war at $100 per body. Opportunists, seeking to cash in, quickly set themselves up in business.

death probe How the US civil war and Lincoln’s embrace of embalming gave birth to America’s funeral industry Dying in America 200 years ago was a simply family affair, devoid of pomp.

Many prominent Civil War officers were embalmed, including the first casualty of the war, Colonel Elmer Elsworth, who was laid in state in the East Room of the White House at Lincoln’s request.

Dying in America 200 years ago was a simply family affair, devoid of pomp. The US Civil War and Abraham Lincoln’s embrace of embalming changed everything.

An embalming surgeon is seen at work on a Civil War soldier's body sometime in the early 1860s. Corbis Embalming fluid is effective, but it’s also nasty stuff.

Holmes claimed to have embalmed 4,028 bodies during the Civil War. His supposed nontoxic embalming solution was, indeed, toxic and to this day continues to contaminate the soil in older cemeteries.