Today’s mnemonic covers anticoagulants. Its widely understood that aldehydes function best with modifying agents. Modifying agents are chemicals added to embalming solution that help decrease molecular cohesion, add moisture to tissue, add color to tissue and help decrease clots that can form in the vascular system. Clots will negatively impact the distribution of your arterial solution through the vascular system.

Anticoagulants use di-carboxylic acids to trap calcium so that it can’t interact with molecules in the vascular system and cause them to coagulate. You may recall that the development of anticoagulants included oxalates, citrates and chelating agents like EDTA. Oddly enough, at one point oxalates were favored but fell out of popular use because they were too toxic…I know it sounds funny to say something is too toxic for an embalming chemical. Anyhow, I’ve always thought that the words Oxalate and Toxic sound very similar, so I created a contraction that helps me remember that oxalates were toxic and are no longer favored. That contraction is T-oxalates.