Sale of the Preservative to Unprofessional Persons.
You will no doubt have customers who will only buy the casket and who will not require your attendance in laying out and caring for their dead, and we would suggest a source of profit and advantage to you in such cases in recommending the purchase of a bottle or two of the Preservative with directions for using on the face and exposed portions of the body, and such other uses as may be appropriate in each case. We can furnish the Preservative put up in bottles, labeled with directions for its use by unprofessional persons as a face application and as a disinfectant and deodorizer.
The greatly improved appearance of a body that has been even so partially treated with the Preservative, will not only make your customer’s investment in it entirely satisfactory to them, but it will be also an advertisement for and an aid to your business. It will be, in a professional point of view, entirely proper in such cases, and in cases of infectious diseases, to make the Preservative an article of merchandise, as it will aid in introducing and familiarizing the idea of embalming in your community; and will not at all interfere with, but will rather create a demand for your services as an Embalmer, for the use of the Preservative in such a limited way would only tend to make popular its more extended use, but as we furnish it only to the Undertaking Fraternity, it is for them and not for us to put it upon the market in that way or not, as they may choose.
Prof. E. H. Crane's Manual of Instructions to Undertakers · The Wunder Library — complete classics, free to read, with narration.