Europe, and had certainly evolved by the time this process was explored in the United States during the mid-19th century: the use of chemical injections in arteries proved to be efficient in preserving bodies for transport. [2] Dr. Thomas Holmes, a physician and surgeon working in New York, started to experiment with arterial embalming, similar to the process we know today, in hopes of safely securing cadavers for medical students to work on. With deaths piling up on the battlefields at this very same time, Holmes was asked to provide his new preservative services to the Union Army. His embalming procedures allowed some soldiers to be shipped home without the threat of decomposition.

After the Civil War came to a close, it took years for embalming to become acustomary practice. After Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 15, 1865, he became the first president to be embalmed. His funeral train drove his body 1,700 miles from Washington, DC to his hometown of Springfield, IL. When Americans came out to his mourn his loss as the train passed through their city or town, they were introduced to the magic of embalming.

In this era, embalming was only exercised on the dead bodies of soldiers and military officers, the social elite, and the politically significant. It was a service that required training and education; the funeral industry professionalized to accommodate the standards and practices of technical expertise. Embalming took the funeral out of the domestic sphere and brought it into the funeral home, a recent advent of this time.