Another exhume question: Does the entire casket go to the Medical Examiner then the body goes back to the morgue for makeup, clothing, etc., all over again?

In historic exhumations the cadaver is returned to the original coffin in the original clothes. I assume that the same stands for more modern exhumations. If my loved one was exhumed I would want all the original clothes and artifacts intact despite condition.

The process at the morgue of makeup are for the benefit of the original burial to give a more lifelike look. It would not likely be possibly to replicate life after burial and to attempt to beautify a long- dead corpse would be impossible.

Do you think the M.E. is going to worry about the condition of the coffin inside, the clothes, etc?

When they remove organs during an autopsy, they replace them by throwing them back in the body cavity.They’re not neat about it.

I knew I shouldn’t read this question after lunch.

@Quagmire You obviously have your own answers to the question so why did you ask it?

My post was a sincere question and NOT a rhetorical one.

ARE the ME’s careful or is it like “work” for them?

The ME doesn’t leave the body in total disarray, but he/she does put the organs back into the body cavity and then sew things up. Typically if a body has been exhumed, that means the viewing and/or the funeral is over and done with, so while the ME might redress the body, they won’t bother with new make-up.

If a family wishes to have another funeral or a formal re-interment all they have to do is tell the ME to release the body back to a particular funeral home, give the funeral home more money, and go from there.

As to whether MEs are careful or is it like “work” for them, it is their work. A good ME should be thorough and methodical in order to conduct a proper autopsy that will hold up in a court of law, so the ME typically won’t just fling things around. An ME, as a public servant, will return everything that was in the coffin back to the coffin unless authorized to remove something either by the family or by the court. In addition, the autopsy is performed on the steel autopsy table, not in the coffin, so any resultant mess is washed away down the drain. Thus, the silk inside the coffin won’t get any more stained than it naturally was.

However, while embalming and hermetically sealed caskets can sometimes keep a body looking “lifelike” for a long time, generally decay proceeds fairly rapidly especially inside the coffin. As a result, the body that has been exhumed will no longer look like great uncle Fred very much. This site talks a bit about the longevity of the embalming process.

@Darwin The problem with sealed caskets is the gas that builds up from the bacteria in our digestive tract (normally flatulence) has no where to go, so it literally ends up exploding sometimes. Not to mention the liquid that builds up in the head cavity as it liquefies as well as the internal organs has no where to go or evaporate into the surrounding soil, so until it gets absorbed by the lining and the wood it’s just a vat of liquefied organs.

So whether it makes something look lifelike for longer is debatable.

@samanthabarnum – If you read the link I provided you will see that most embalmed bodies last only about a week before decomposing.

@Darwin Yeah, I didn’t click it, I wasn’t sure if your link talked about that so I just thought I’d throw the greusome details out there. :P