ellimist

After the war, [Thomas] Holmes set up a business selling his patented embalming fluid, Innominata, to embalmers, but otherwise began to distance himself from the mortuary trade. He opened a drugstore, manufactured root beer... According to Christine Quigley, author of The Corpse: A History, he shared his Brooklyn house with samples of his war-era handiwork: Embalmed bodies were stored in the closets, and heads sat on tables in the living room. Not all that surprisingly, Holmes began to go insane, spending his final years in and out of institutions. At seventy, he was placing ads in mortuary trade journals for a rubber-coated canvas body removal bag that could, he suggested, double as a sleeping bag. Shortly before he died, Holmes is said to have requested that he not be embalmed, though whether this was a function of sanity or insanity was never made clear.