Ultrastructural and immunofluorescent detection of herpes simplex virus after embalming and burial.

The practice of embalming preserves body tissues, and embalmed bodies may resist decay processes for many decades with relatively little change. As the chemicals used for embalming are poisonous to microorganisms, bacterial and viral cultures are futile after such funerary procedures are performed. However, embalming may act as a virtual tissue fixative, especially with arterial perfusion, and identification methods other than culture may be used to detect and identify pathogenic organisms. In the case presented here, a death from a fulminating, but unidentified, illness in a young girl was successfully diagnosed as herpes hepatitis by immunofluorescent and electron-microscopic studies of tissue obtained 3 weeks after she was embalmed and interred. Routine embalming and burial should not eliminate these diagnostic procedures from consideration in specific situations where potentially useful information may be realized.