CHAPTER II.

THE EVILS OF BURIAL; THE SANITARY ASPECT OF INCINERATION.

The grave, hallowed by religion and the queen of arts, poetry, has

become to us the emblem of eternal rest—something that is beautiful;

something in which we may sleep long and well. The weeping-willow droops

its slender branches over it, sweet, fragrant flowers thrive upon its

soil, and the little birds perch there to sing their song.

The rays of the sun often play upon the small earth elevation, and lend

additional beauty to the green foliage of the trees, the bright color of

the many flowers.

But verily, we are like the sunshine—superficial. It is the great fault

of mankind to be satisfied with a film-like knowledge of things. To go

deeper, to dive below the superstratum, would mean to meet, perhaps,

with matters not at all pleasant; to become cognizant of facts never

before dreamt of. Consequently, the majority of men is content to remain

on the surface; content to know a little, but not all.

Thank God, there are happily individuals left who descend to the bottom

of every question, scientific or social, and who daily enrich all

departments of learning.

As regards the grave, let us first of all listen to him who has held

generations of folk spellbound; let us bow reverently before the opinion

of one of the masters among English novelists—Charles Dickens.

[Illustration:

THE CREMATORIUM AT CREMONA.

(From Dr. Pini’s work.)

]

It is he who tells us in measured words that the grave is naught but—

“Brave lodgings for one, brave lodgings for one,

A few feet of cold earth, when life is done;

A stone at the head, a stone at the feet,

A rich, juicy meal for the worms to eat;

Rank grass overhead, and damp clay around,

Brave lodgings for one, these, in holy ground!”

The late Prof. Samuel D. Gross, M.D., one of the greatest surgeons the

world ever possessed, called burial a horrible practice, and maintained

that:—

“If people could see the human body after the process of decomposition

sets in, which is as soon as the vital spark ceases to exist, they would

not want to be buried; they would be in favor of cremation. If they

could go into a dissecting-room and see the horrid sights of the

dissecting-table, they would not wish to be buried. Burying the human

body, I think, is a horrible thing. If more was known about the human

frame while undergoing decomposition, people would turn with horror from

the custom of burying their dead. It takes a human body 50, 60, 80

years—yes, longer than that—to decay. Think of it! The remains of a

friend lying under six feet of ground, or less, for that length of time,

going through the slow stages of decay, and other bodies all this time

being buried around these remains. Infants grow up, and pass into

manhood or womanhood; grow old, and get near the door of death; and

during all that time the body which was buried in their infancy lies a

few feet under ground in this sickening state, undergoing the slow

process of decay. Think of thousands of such bodies crowded into a few

acres of ground, and then reflect that these graves, or many of them, in

time fill with water, and that water percolates through the ground and

mixes with the springs and rivers from which we drink.

“People turn with dread from the subject of cremation. Why, if they

knew what physicians know,—what they have learned in the

dissecting-room,—they would look upon burning the human body as a

beautiful art in comparison with burying it. There is something

eminently repulsive to me about the idea of lying a few feet under

ground for a century, or perhaps two centuries, going through the

process of decomposition. When I die, I want my body to be burned.

“Any unprejudiced mind needs but little time to reflect in forming a

conclusion as to which is the better method of disposing of the body.

Common sense and reason proclaim in favor of cremation. There is no

reason for keeping up the burial custom, but many against it; some of

the most practical of which are but too recently developed to need

mention. There is nothing repulsive in the idea of cremation. People’s

prejudice is the only opponent it has. If they could be awakened to a

sense of the horror of crowding thousands of bodies under the ground, to

pollute in many instances the air we breathe and the water we drink,

their prejudice would be overcome; cremation would be taken for what it

truly is—a beautiful method of disposing of the body. The friends of the

departed can do as they please with the remains. Take the ashes of a

wife or daughter and put them in an urn; place it on your mantelpiece,

or in as private a place as you please. Strew them on the ground if you

like, and let them assist in bringing forth a blade of grass. This would

be an advantage over the burial method, where human bodies only cumber

the ground.”

This was said by a man who not only showed considerable ability as an

operator, and writer on topics of medicine, but who also was honored by

the famous universities of Cambridge and Oxford, receiving from them

academical titles never conferred except upon the most distinguished.

We will take a spade (only metaphorically, of course) and investigate

the narrow pit which serves to hold all that is mortal of man after the

spark of life has extinguished. Now we remove the plants, the clinging

vines, the blooming flowrets. We throw the earth aside and finally lay

bare a coffin. A coffin? Something that must have been one in the remote

past. A sickening odor greets us. We step back to draw a breath of pure

air. At last we muster up sufficient courage to return to the grave. A

touch of the spade causes the top-board of the box to fall to pieces,

and there is revealed to the sight a spectacle that is horrible. The

ground around the body has been moist and non-porous; what has remained

of the corpse is only a mass of foul flesh in a state of putrefaction.

Is there anything more disgusting than such a sight?

Shakespeare says in “As You Like It”:—

“And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,

And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot;

And thereby hangs a tale.”

True! The tale that hangs thereby is illustrative of the carelessness

and ignorance of man alike. The grave has been at all times a kind of

box of Pandora, with this difference,—it did not require unclosing:

unopened, the grave sent forth its children—pestilence and death—to

decimate the ranks of the population of the globe. But all calamities

caused by burial have been endured by people with perfect indifference,

and it was not until modern times that any reforms were attempted at

all. But in spite of these so-called reforms, the murder of the living

by the dead has continued. The reforms I mentioned generally resulted in

the removal of cemeteries to the suburbs of cities. In this way the evil

effects of interment were deferred for some time, till the city

enlarged, and the population closed in around the burial-grounds.

What is burial? For what purpose do we place the bodies of our dead in

the earth? It is the beginning of a chemical process—a process which

ends finally in the total dissolution of the corpse. The chemical

constituents of our body are returned to nature. Burial and cremation

are in a sense the same; in either case the body oxydates. The great

distinction between the two lies in the fact, that the burning in the

grave requires years for its completion, and is fraught with danger to

the living, whilst in case of incineration the body is reduced to its

primitive elements in the brief space of a few hours, and is

unaccompanied by anything that may do harm.

Dr. A. B. Prescott, Professor of Chemistry in the University of

Michigan, has determined what elements of the human body are destroyed

or dissipated by cremation, and what remain in the ashes. In a letter to

the _Detroit Post_ he states:—

“Of the 70 chemical elements or ultimate simples, known to man, 15 are

found in the human body. Of these, four—carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and

oxygen—are derived from the air, and in combustion, as in decay, they

return to the air again. These four in their various compounds make up

by far the greater part of the animal tissues. Of the remaining 11

chemical elements, six are metals,—potassium, sodium, calcium,

magnesium, iron, and manganese; and five are non-metals,—sulphur,

phosphorus, chlorine, fluorine, and silicon. When combustion of the

tissues is completed, the six metals, in combination with the five

non-metals last named, are left behind in the ash. These were drawn from

the earth. There are about 19 chemical compounds in the ash so left,

compounds such as phosphate of lime, carbonate of lime, sulphate of

potash, chloride of sodium, etc. The greater number of the ultimate

elements contained in the living body are left behind in the ash, but

the proportional quantity made up by all these elements is, of course,

very small. In the first place, about two-thirds of the tissues consist

of water. The proportion of the ‘ash’ to the tissues varies from two per

cent in muscle and seven-tenths per cent in blood, to 66 per cent in

bone. The ‘ash’ left by combustion is very nearly the same, in kind and

in quantity, as the ‘dust’ left after the final completion of decay.”

What is decomposition? How does it take place normally? Decomposition is

the decay of an organic substance, which is completely destroyed through

the influence of the atmospheric oxygen. Decomposition is facilitated by

moisture. The organic mass undergoing such change assumes a different

color and consistency and gives up carbonic acid, ammonia, and water;

the same products originate in the rapid destruction of an organic

substance by means of fire.

Only those parts of the body (the bones) that can best resist the

influence of the air remain secure from decay a longer time; at last

they also crumble into dust and mingle with the rest.

Wetness accelerates decay. When we hear the rain fall in the silent

night, we are compelled to think, shuddering, how the horrible process

of destruction begins in the grave of some beloved one whom we have

recently buried.

The same stench that assails our nostrils when we approach a corpse that

has lain a long time above ground, meets us when we open a grave; the

same poisonous gases are evolved under ground from a decaying corpus as

upon the surface of the earth. It makes no difference whether the grave

we explore be that of a prime minister, upon which a magnificent

monument rears its costly shaft high into the air, or that of a common

criminal who tried to enjoy existence by spending three-quarters of his

lifetime in prison; the result remains the same: in each we find the

disgusting and sickening evidence of slow destruction,—a formless,

putrid mass of flesh, and sometimes numberless revelling worms.

The conditions under which decomposition can take place are a certain

degree of moisture and a constant supply of air. When a corpse is

embedded in a soil that is very wet, a curious change takes place. There

is no decay, but instead a fatty metamorphosis, giving the body a waxy

appearance and preserving its original form. The result of this

transformation is called adipocere. The process by which the body is

changed into this stearine-like mass is entitled saponification, and is

not very well understood as yet by the scientists. Such preserved bodies

were found in the burial-grounds at Paris, Brussels, London, and many

other cities.

[Illustration:

THE CREMATORIUM AT VARESE.

(From Dr. Pini’s work.)

]

In 1874, the cemetery board of the burial-ground at Zuerich,

Switzerland, discovered that the bodies interred in the graveyard since

1849 had not undergone decomposition, but had turned into adipocere.

This horrible discovery materially assisted the progress of incineration

in Switzerland.

Tripp relates that when eight bodies were taken up in a cemetery near

Worcester, England, the soil of which was composed chiefly of gravel and

clay that was always very moist and at times so wet that the water had

to be pumped out of the graves, the undecayed body of a

nineteen-year-old girl was found which had been buried 51 years and had

undergone saponification; the other corpses were decomposed, also the

coffins, while the casket which had contained the saponified body was

preserved.

I have seen but one saponified corpse. It was at the museum of the New

York College of Physicians and Surgeons; I have forgotten whether it was

a man or woman. But I still remember how I shuddered at the sight and

how I walked close up to the glass case to make sure that the waxy mass

within was a human being.

It is superfluous to point out here that cremation puts a stop to

saponification. One need not be a chemist to know that a body cannot

turn into adipocere after it has been reduced to ashes.

Whenever the earth of a graveyard yet contains enough oxygen for the

corpses deposited there, the dangers are very few; but whenever this is

not the case, the bodies of the dead undergo a horrible metamorphosis,

known as putrefaction, and become dangerous to the living on account of

the poisonous gases and other effluvia generated.

We observe the same phenomenon in our stoves. When but very little air

is admitted into them, the combustion of even very inflammable material

remains incomplete; and stifling gases (for instance, carbonic oxide

gas) are produced.

It is evident that a porous soil facilitates decomposition, the products

of which it absorbs and retains till they have entered into some

harmless combination. There is, however, a limit to its efficiency. When

it becomes overcharged with the products of decomposition, it can only

hold a small quantity of them; the rest are delivered to the water,

which permeates it and the air which passes over it. On the other hand,

it is clear that a very damp, non-porous soil into which the air cannot

enter favors putrefaction.

A state of saturation is produced in the course of time in the best of

cemeteries by a continued system of overcrowding.

Although overcrowding of cemeteries is confined almost entirely to the

countries of Europe, yet there are many American burial-grounds in

which this condition exists; and, what is worse, they are annually

multiplying. Some of these overcrowded graveyards are situated in

large cities, in the centre of a dense population. In these

churchyards it is impossible to dig a single grave without the

disinterring of the bones of one previously buried there. Imagine the

consequences of such a state! Isn’t it far better to remove the

possibility of future disease and danger at once than to allow it to

grow by degrees, till it assumes a terrible and fatal dimension? Isn’t

it better to refrain from the use of cemeteries entirely, and resort

instead to the clean, pure, and undangerous system of incineration?

Consider! Does it agree with our ideas of right and wrong to endanger

the lives of our great-grandchildren or their offspring by our methods

of disposing of the dead? For, by the time they appear on the stage of

this world, the burial-ground now sanitary will have become a

breeding-place of disease from overuse.

When we remove burial-grounds to a distance, we only postpone the evil.

We insure our own safety, it is true, by so doing; but we encumber the

ground with most virulent seeds, and leave to future generations—to

those who come after us—a terrible crop of pollution, disease germs, and

death. Our own security from harm should not actuate us in this matter.

We should be wise enough to prevent the evil while we have the power, so

that our offspring will not justly reproach us for entailing upon them

such a terrible legacy.

Among American cities there is none that needs a change of method in the

disposal of its dead as greatly as New Orleans, in Louisiana.

Those that are mowed down by the grim rider of the white horse cannot be

buried there, owing to the excessive moisture of the ground which

surrounds the city and the proximity of the water to the surface. It is

impossible to dig two feet under ground without coming to water. At all

times the dead have been disposed of in a very careless manner in New

Orleans. It is related that during the yellow-fever epidemic of 1853,

when New Orleans had a population of 150,000 inhabitants, those that had

died of the dread disease were thrown into trenches not over 18 inches

or two feet deep, and covered with very little earth; so little, indeed,

that the first rain that came along washed it away. In a graveyard

situated in the central part of the city, were buried in this manner 400

bodies, recent victims of yellow fever, and contaminating the air with

poisonous exhalations. The mayor of the city was asked to remove the

dangerous condition of the burial-ground. He replied, “That’s not my

business!” And the commissioner of streets, who was next approached,

answered in a like spirit. The state of affairs grew worse and worse;

and at last, even the negroes refused to act as grave-diggers.

At present, they have a system of entombment in the Crescent City. These

tombs are in the municipal cemeteries, 35 of which are within the city

limits, giving them the appearance of a collection of bakers’ ovens. The

tombs are almost universally made of brick, and whitewashed. They vary

in size from 3 × 6 feet to 10 × 10 feet or 10 × 20 feet; there is a post

in the centre, which is surrounded by shelves, on which the body—that

is, the coffin—is deposited. There the dead rests for about a year, when

it becomes necessary to use the tomb for another corpse; then the

remains of the preceding occupant of the vault are rudely taken from the

casket and dashed head over heels into a pit, where they are left to

breed disease.

What wonder, exclaims Kate Field, that yellow fever runs riot in New

Orleans, when the air reeks with the festering corruption of 35 plague

spots, exposed for six months of the year to a tropical sun! Think how

the death-rate of New Orleans might be reduced by abolition of

earth-burials! What better field for missionary work than our own “Sunny

South”?

The unhealthfulness of these vaults is apparent to all, but, owing to

prejudice, no other disposition of the dead has been adopted. But sooner

or later the inhabitants of New Orleans must have recourse to cremation,

and burn their dead, as they were forced to do once during a cholera

epidemic, when 135 corpses were consigned to the devouring element.

For 300 years English churchyards have been so full that, like the one

in Hamlet, Yorick’s bones have had to be dug out in order to put

Ophelia’s in. From time to time the attention of the British authorities

was directed to the shameful state of the cemeteries of the metropolis

and other places. In that case the matter was brought before Parliament,

the government ordered an investigation, a committee was appointed to

examine the grievances, the committee returned a report with the

testimony of witnesses, and the report was ordered printed. The report

commonly made a very large volume, which looked exceedingly pretty on

the shelf on which it was placed, but became dusty in a comparatively

short time from non-use. The excitement had quieted down, public opinion

and the press were pacified, Parliament was satisfied, and the condition

of the burial-grounds remained the same as before.

The cemeteries of Paris, France, are in no better condition; the mould

in the old Cimetière des Innocents is literally saturated with corpses;

Montmartre and Mont Parnasse are overcrowded. As for Père la Chaise,—the

burial-place that has been praised in poetry and prose (the

resting-place of Racine and Molière), that has been adjudged the most

beautiful cemetery in the world,—Père la Chaise is packed with decaying

bodies. A cable dispatch dated Dec. 27, 1883, reported that the

municipal council of the city of Paris had resolved upon leaving those

that fell during the reign of bloodthirsty La Commune at Père la Chaise

for a period of 25 years. Ordinary cadavers must be dug up after five

years, to make room for their ghastly successors.

In Portugal the soil has become so packed with corpses that an effort

was made to enact a law that after five years all interred bodies should

be dug up and subjected to cremation. This means that after the dead

have saturated the ground with disease-producing emanations, and have

exhaled nearly all their virulent effluvia into the atmosphere,

sacrificing the welfare of the living to superstition and prejudice, a

later incineration shall take place to save space.

Of American cemeteries, I only need mention Pottersfield of New York,

the name of which is not spoken or heard by an American without an

involuntary shudder. Our graveyards are, of course, not like the

cemeteries of the Old World, where the exhumation of bones takes place

daily to make room for the recently deceased, but they will become so

unless the damaging prejudices are laid aside and something is done to

prevent such a poisonous and dangerous situation. In some of the old

cemeteries in our cities it has become impossible to dig another grave.

Rev. John D. Beugless, D.D., thus describes the burial-grounds of New

York City: “Of the great cemeteries about New York, there is not one,

not even Woodland or Greenwood, in the public lots of which three or

more bodies are not put in one grave,—that of John Doe, who died from ‘a

bare bodkin,’ being sandwiched between those of Richard Roe and James

Low, who were victims respectively of small-pox and yellow-fever. In the

public or poor quarter of Calvary Cemetery a far worse state of things

obtains—more appalling than even the _fosse commune_ of Paris, for it is

the _fosse commune sans chaux_. A trench is dug, seven feet wide, ten to

twelve feet deep, and of indefinite length, in which the coffins are

stowed, tier upon tier, making a flight of steps, five or more deep, and

with not enough earth to hide one from the next. And this is our vaunted

‘Christian burial’ in this new country, with its myriads of broad acres!

What shall our children say of us, when they come, perforce, from stress

of space, to build their dwellings upon these beds of pestilence?”

[Illustration:

THE CREMATORIUM AT BRESCIA.

(From Dr. Pini’s work.)

]

That is the way we, “the Christian nation par excellence,” treat

friendless paupers and criminals. Shame! shame! A dog is more decently

interred.

The cemeteries of the city of Brooklyn occupy nearly 2000 acres of land.

A thoughtful eminent physician gives it as his opinion that the

prevailing southwest wind, blowing over these corruption festering

plague spots, carries to Flatbush the germs of typhoid fever and

diphtheria, and swells the death-rate of that city to its present

alarming magnitude.

The more one considers cremation, the more one finds himself wondering

how it has come to pass that we practice interment, with its many faults

and dangers, and do not burn our dead.

It is clear that overcrowding of burial-grounds must lead to evil

consequences. A ground that is saturated with putrefying material can

emit naught but poisonous odors, cannot fail to contaminate the purest

and clearest water, must vitiate any atmosphere.

Incineration deserves the respect to-day which the ancients paid to it,

and is the only way of disposing of the dead so as to avoid the terrible

consequences of the mephitic graveyard gases, of the dangers with which

the ordinary mode of burial threatens us.

The truth was taught us by the Tuscans some three hundred years ago. At

that time a whale was cast upon the shore of Tuscany. The inhabitants of

the surrounding country hastened to the spot, and removed the ribs of

the large fish, to hang them in the churches as a memento of the rare

occurrence. The flesh was left to rot in the scorching southern sun. An

epidemic of typhoid fever was the result; and when, ten years later,

another whale happened to strand in the same locality, the people,

having become wise by its previous experience, destroyed the monster by

chopping it to pieces, and burning these, one after another.

There are many lurking dangers, ready to destroy the living, in the

burial-grounds of the present day. The mephitic vapors increase in

quantity as decomposition advances, and become far more poisonous than

either arsenic or prussic acid, if these were uncombined in their

natural state.

These dangerous graveyard gases can spread to quite a distance, and

therefore can communicate the most malignant maladies at all times. Dr.

Ayr claims that they extend to a distance of a hundred meters; some

authorities assert that they reach sometimes twice the distance. This

occurs generally when the grave is air-tight above, and the surface

layer of the cemetery soil is imporous. Then the gas escapes where it

finds the least resistance,—at the sides,—and burrows along under the

earth until it strikes a cavity, and bursts into it, or diffuses into

the air. When the grave offers no resistance above, the gas enters the

atmosphere directly. Burial-grounds best fitted for cemetery purposes

should be feared most, for it is evident that dryness and porousness are

qualities which, although conducive to the rapid decay of a body, very

much facilitate the escape of gases.

The danger is not obviated by deep burials. In that case the morbific

matter is diffused through the subsoil. If the inhumations are so deep

as to impede escapes at the surface, there is only the greater danger of

escape by deep drainage, and the pollution of springs and wells. Dr.

Reid detected the escape of deleterious miasma from graves more than

twenty feet deep.

The danger from inhaling graveyard gases is great.

Ramazzini relates how an avaricious grave-digger, by the name of Pisto,

met with instantaneous death on descending into a vault to steal the

shoes of a corpse; he was found dead upon the body.

Lancisius (De noxiis palud. effluv. II, Ep. 1, c. 2, p. 152) states that

several grave-diggers died in a like manner after entering a newly

opened vault, which had been set under water by an inundation of the

Tiber, and in which the stagnant water had regenerated the virulent

gases.

Unger gives an account of a case similar to that of Haguenot, reported

further on. A vault was reopened in a convent at Madrid, for the purpose

of depositing therein a fresh corpse. When the grave-digger was about to

descend into it, he fell down dead. Two other persons, who tried to save

him, shared his fate.

Fortunatus Licetus (De annull, antiquitt. c. 23) relates that three men,

who went into a vault that was full of semi-decomposed bodies with the

intention of robbing, lost their lives. When the bodies were extracted,

they were found to be swollen and black.

Th. Bartholini (Historiar. anat. rarior. C. IV, obs. 32, p. 296) made

experiments in Denmark which confirm these reports concerning the lethal

action of graveyard gases, and prove the especial danger from the gases

of the dead long pent up in vaults. He affirms that these noxious gases

often prove fatal, death being preceded by dizziness and fainting.

The gases of Francis I operated with fatal effect upon the vandals who

broke open his coffin, in the time of the French Revolution, to rob it

of its treasures.

Books on hygiene teem with examples of the lethal properties of an

atmosphere containing carbonic acid in excess. A familiar instance is

that of the passengers of the ship _Londonderry_, in 1848, 150 of whom

were shut up by the captain during a storm, in the steerage 18 × 11 × 7

feet. Seventy of them died in an incredibly short space of time, with

convulsions and bleeding at the eyes and ears.

Haguenot reports that, in 1744, the corpse of a monk of the Penitent

Order, who had been buried in a vault under the church, was exhumed in

the church of Notre Dame, at Montpellier, France. A man descended into

the vault to remove the cadaver, but, before he got quite down, he was

taken with convulsions, and fell unconscious into the vault, where he

died of suffocation. A monk went down to rescue him, but he too was

taken sick, and, on having been pulled out immediately, succumbed

quickly. A third, who had the courage to follow his example, fell dead

without being able to retire. The same fate was reserved for a fourth

victim,—a brother of the first. The bodies were pulled out with hooks;

the stench of their clothing was unbearable. Lights held near the

opening of the vault extinguished; dogs, cats, and birds, on being

brought in contact with the poisonous gases, died, with all symptoms of

a severe convulsion, in a few minutes. Some of the mephitic gas was

bottled; but when experimented with after two and one-half months, it

still had all of its dangerous qualities.

In 1749, when new vaults and graves were made in the St. Eustachius

Church at Paris, France, cadavers were dug up and placed temporarily in

an old vault of the church, which had remained locked a long time.

Children coming to church to prepare for confirmation, and even adults,

fainted on entering the sacred edifice, and some had serious attacks of

illness. The same took place in St. Sebastian Church at Madrid, Spain,

in 1786; three times a grave burst open, in which, but a short time

before, a very corpulent lady had been buried. The horrible smell that

arose from this grave prevented the reading of the holy mass at the high

altar during a period of eight days. At one time the Parish Church of

Metz was so infected by the gases of a female corpse that it had to be

abandoned, and the divine service removed to another church.

In 1841 two men who had some work to do in a grave in St. Botolph’s

Churchyard, Aldgate, England, died almost instantly on entering it.

In the churchyard at Cobham, in Surrey, England, on account of some

changes in the church, some bodies had to be raised. The work of the

navvies was horrible beyond description, and dangerous beside. It was

performed very early in the morning, and was beset with difficulties.

Repeated doses of gin had to be given to the men to keep them at a kind

of work which they could only do under the influence of alcohol. Three

men perished in 1852, at Paris, from inhaling the gas that escaped from

coffins.

Fourcroy affirms that grave-digging is an unhealthy and dangerous

occupation, and that all grave-diggers he examined showed symptoms of

slow poisoning.

George A. Walker declared that no grave-digger ever wholly escaped the

influence of graveyard gases. Some of the men employed in this way have

noticed the peculiar smell of the gases on beginning to dig.

Monsieur Patissier reports several deaths due to grave-digging; and Mr.

Chadwick asserts that the vocation of a sexton shortens life one-third.

Usually grave-diggers are heavy drinkers; they take to drinking to

resist the malignant influence of the vapors which arise slowly but

surely out of the cemetery soil, and to do away with any “maudlin

sentimentality” that may still linger in their hearts, and that might

interfere with their horrible work.

On March 1, 1886, Marke Thornton, of Washington, Ga., met with a

singular death. His decease resulted from inhaling poisonous gas which

seeped through into a grave he was digging by the side of another. The

other men at work with him left the grave as soon as they detected the

gas, but Thornton, thinking there was no danger in it, remained and

died.

The action of cemetery gases on the human body manifests itself in a

variety of ways. Sir T. Spencer Wells states that decomposing human

remains so pollute earth, air, and water as to diminish the general

health and average duration of life.

Dr. Lyon Playfair affirms that the inspiration of graveyard gases does

not always cause one form of decay or putrefaction, but that it depends

entirely upon the organs attacked. Entering the blood, it produces

fever; communicated to the viscera, it gives origin to diarrhœa, and

may, Dr. Playfair thinks, even be the source of consumption. When the

irrespirable gas enters the respiratory tract, Dr. Southwood Smith

claims that it is conveyed into the system through the thin and delicate

walls of the air-vesicles of the lungs in the act of respiration. He

states that turpentine, for instance, if only inhaled when passing

through a room that was recently painted, will exhibit its effects in

some of the fluid excretions of the body even more rapidly than if it

had been taken into the stomach. Dr. Riecke thinks that putrid

emanations operate also through the olfactory nerves by powerful,

penetrating, and offensive smells.

Cemeteries are breeding grounds as well as foci of disease and death.

[Illustration: THE CREMATORIUM AT WOKING, ENGLAND.]

Mr. Chadwick, in his “Report on the Practice of Interment in Towns”

(London, 1843), writes:—

“The injurious effects of exhalations from the decomposition in question

on the health and life of man is proved by a sufficient number of

trustworthy facts. The injurious influence is manifest in proportion to

the concentration of the emanations. Sometimes it produces asphyxia and

sudden death. In a less concentrated state the emanations produce

fainting, nausea, headache, languor. If, however, they are often

repeated, they produce nervous and other fevers, or impart to fevers

arising from other causes a typhoid type.... As there appear to be no

cases in which the emanations from decomposing human remains are not of

a deleterious nature, so there is no case in which the liability to

danger should be incurred by interment amidst the dwellings of the

living, it being established as a general conclusion that all interments

in towns where bodies decompose, contribute to the mass of atmospheric

impurity which is injurious to public health.”

The Italian physician Felix Dell’Acqua gives it as his opinion (in his

study on cremation), that graveyards infect the earth, the air, and the

water, and constantly endanger public health during an epidemic. Dr.

Polli proved that graves deteriorate the air we breathe and contaminate

the water we drink, by loading them with organic matter.

Prof. Antonio Selmi, of Mantua, claims to have discovered organic germs

in the air above graves, which he called septopneuma, and which, when

injected under the skin of a pigeon, caused a typhus-like disease that

ended in death within three days.

Specific germs may enter the atmosphere from the graves, which convey

the deadliest of maladies, being carried very far by the wind. But the

agent that makes cemetery gases so dangerous is carbonic acid.

Dr. Parkes (Practical Hygiene), the eminent English scientist, says:—

“The decomposition of bodies gives rise to a very large amount of

carbonic acid. Ammonia and an offensive putrid vapor are also given off.

The air of most cemeteries is richer in carbonic acid, and the organic

matter is perceptibly large, when tested by potassium permanganate.”

It is a well-known fact that carbonic acid, when inhaled in an undiluted

state, causes death; it is fatal to all forms of life. When inhaled

diluted with air it interferes with the introduction of oxygen into the

body, and causes the carbonic acid, which should be eliminated, to be

retained. This, no doubt, prevents the proper tissue changes, and must

in time undermine the healthiest body by seriously affecting its

nutrition.

Dr. E. J. Bermingham (Disposal of the Dead) says:—

“The effect of constantly breathing an atmosphere containing an excess

of carbonic acid is not perfectly known. Dr. Angus Smith has attempted

to determine the effect of carbonic acid _per se_—the influence of

organic matter of respiration being eliminated. He found that three

volumes per thousand caused great feebleness of the circulation, with

diminished rapidity of the heart’s action; the respirations were, on the

contrary, quickened, and were sometimes gasping. These effects were

lessened when the amount of carbonic acid was smaller; but were

perceptible when the amount was as low as one volume per thousand.”

According to Haberman, sensitive and nervous persons have been taken ill

when walking by a cemetery.

P. Frazer, Jr., says: “A sexton and the son of a lady who died seven

days before went down into the vault. Both were affected with sickness

and nausea; one was affected for some years; the son had ulceration of

the throat for two years.”

Mr. William Eassie affirms that, “according to a report of the French

Academy of Medicine, the putrid emanations of Père la Chaise,

Montmartre, and Montparnasse have caused frightful diseases of the

throat and lungs, to which numbers of both sexes fall victims every

year. Thus a dreadful throat disease which baffles the skill of our most

experienced medical men, and which carries off its victims in a few

hours, is traced to the absorption of vitiated air into the windpipe,

and has been observed to rage with the greatest violence in those

quarters situated nearest to cemeteries.”

The most common diseases produced by graveyard gases are diphtheria,

throat and pulmonary affections, severe diarrhœa, and dysentery. The

number of cases reported is enormous. Many cases have been made public

by Drs. Parkes and Tardieu.

Ramazzini (Maladies des Artisans, p. 71) asserts that sextons, whose

business often compels them to enter places where there are putrefying

bodies, are subject to malignant fevers, asphyxia, and suffocating

catarrhs.

Fourcroy affirms that there are innumerable examples of the pernicious

effects of cadaveric exhalations.

It has been stated that the carbonic acid generated by the decaying

bodies is taken up by the plants, shrubbery, and trees abounding in

cemeteries and their neighborhood. That excellent and well-edited

newspaper _Iron_ declares: “The consumption of vegetables whose roots

had been nourished by the defunct members of a family would hardly be

enjoyed by the survivors, unless, indeed, they possessed the philosophic

mind and robust appetite of the French gentleman who declared that, with

a certain sauce, ‘_on mangerait bien son père_.’”

I do not believe that very much carbonic acid is absorbed by the

botanical burial-ground decorations; certainly not enough to prevent its

toxic action and the vitiation of the air.

Many a time was premature exhumation followed by fatal consequences.

In the church of a village near Nantes, France, the remains of an

aristocrat were buried in 1774. By accident some of the other graves

were opened, among them one which contained the corpse of a man who had

been buried three months before. An unbearable odor immediately filled

the church. Many persons who had attended at this burial were taken

sick; fifteen died in a short time, the first to depart being the

grave-digger who had opened the graves.

Vicq d’Azyr states that an epidemic was produced in Auvergne, by the

opening of an old graveyard.

Norman Chevers (European Soldiers in India, p. 404) refers to the

unhealthiness of the continent at Sukkur, India. Fevers of the most

malignant type were abounding, owing to an ancient Mussulman

burial-ground on which the station was placed.

Tardieu, the eminent French physician and scientist, relates (Dict.

d’Hygiene, p. 517) that the excavation of an old cemetery of a convent

in Paris caused illness in the occupants of the adjacent dwellings.

Tardieu (Ibid., p. 463) compiled a very considerable number of cases,

not only of asphyxia, but of several febrile affections produced by

exhumation and disturbance of bodies.

Bascom relates that when the parish church in Minchinhampton, England,

was rebuilding in 1843, the black earth of the cemetery surrounding it,

or what was superfluous, was disposed of for manure, being spread upon

adjoining fields. The earth was removed to change the grade of the

churchyard. The result was that an epidemic broke out in the

neighborhood. Children on their way to school took it. Seventeen deaths

occurred, and more than 200 children had measles, scarlet fever, and

various eruptions.

It seems, however, as though the above figures are not quite correct,

for Mr. Eassie, who has lately made personal inquiries upon the spot,

insists that the mischief which resulted has been even understated, and

that the population was nearly decimated.

Dr. Adalbert Kuettlinger brings forward the sequent case to prove the

deleterious action of cemetery gases. A very obese lady died during the

month of July, 1854. Previous to death she had requested, as a special

favor, that her remains be buried in the church to which she belonged.

This was granted and promised her. After her demise she was interred in

a vault of the church, and the next day the minister delivered the

funeral oration. It was very warm that day; several months before the

lady’s departure there had been aridity, and not a drop of rain had

fallen in a long time. The funeral sermon had been delivered on a

Saturday; on the following Sunday the Protestant clergyman preached to

an assemblage of nearly 900, who had come to attend the Lord’s Supper.

The warm weather still continued; many had to leave church during the

service to keep from fainting; many swooned away before they could

withdraw. In Germany people fast before they communicate. The sermon

lasted nearly one hour and one quarter, after which the bread was

consecrated and stood uncovered—according to custom—during the ceremony.

There were 180 communicants. One quarter of an hour after the solemnity,

before they had time to leave the church, more than 60 became ill; some

died in severe convulsions; others, who had placed themselves

immediately under medical treatment, recovered. The consternation among

the whole congregation and citizens was great. There was a general

belief that the wine used at the communion had been poisoned. The sexton

and some other individuals who assisted at divine service were

imprisoned. The next Sunday the minister delivered a severe sermon, and

pointed out several of his parishioners as participants in the

conspiracy. This enthusiastic sermon was printed and widely circulated.

The prisoners had to endure cruel treatment. They remained incarcerated

a whole week, and some, it is said, were tortured; yet they always

insisted upon their innocence. The second Sunday from the time of the

fatal occurrence, the city authorities ordered that a chalice should

stand uncovered on the altar one hour. The time had hardly passed when

it was noticed that the wine was covered with thousands of little

insects, which, by means of the sunbeams, were traced to the grave of

the corpulent lady who had been buried fourteen days before. Four men

were commissioned to open the vault and remove the coffin. When they

attempted this, two of them died at once, and the others were only saved

by the great efforts of the physician in attendance. The accused were

liberated, and the city council and clergyman begged their pardon.

Rev. Dr. Render, in “A Tour through Germany,” says:—

“Two of the crew of an American merchant ship went ashore near Canton,

to dig a grave to bury a dead shipmate. The spade struck and penetrated

a coffin of a man buried a few months before, and the discharge of gas

struck down both the sailors, who, though taken back to the ship, died

within five days.”

I doubt that there is any one who will assert that it is delightful to

drink an aqueous solution of one’s own grandfather or great-grandmother,

yet there are many who do so. The emanations from our ancestors may and

do filter through the earth, and get into the water we drink. Think of

that!

Wells, springs, and rivers are polluted by the infiltration of water

highly charged with organic matter. Often such water has been the cause

of fatal disease, yet nothing was done to guard against it.

[Illustration: THE DORCHESTER-SHIRE CREMATION FURNACE.]

Prof. Victor C. Vaughan, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Michigan, in

a paper on “Water Supply,” read at a sanitary convention at Ypsilanti,

Mich., July 1, 1885, states:—

“To show you the stupidity and recklessness of people, even in this

enlightened century, which is manifested concerning the contamination of

water, I must mention one other case. There is in the county of

Kalamazoo, in this state, a nice little village by the name of Richland.

It is situated in a most beautiful farming country. The farmers of that

region have grown rich on account of the fertility of the soil and other

special advantages. A few years ago the village board desired to select

a new site for a cemetery, and chose one within the village limits, and

within 30 rods of a well owned by an old physician, Dr. Patchin. I

always tell names in such cases, because they tell the truth, and any

one can investigate them. The old doctor objected to the location of the

cemetery so near his house and well, and as the result of his objection

there was a lawsuit; and if you will pardon me, I will mention something

of the condition of the land and some experiments that were made. There

were some 18 inches of rich prairie land, then below this some two or

three feet of hard-pan, below this there were 18 or 20 feet of gravel,

such as we have all through the southern part of Michigan. In digging

the graves the bodies would be put into this gravel. The gravel was so

loose and so moist that in digging graves it was necessary to put in

boxing to prevent the gravel from pouring in while the grave was being

dug. Below the gravel, and about 30 feet below the surface, was an

impervious bed of clay, with a slope from the cemetery towards the well.

It became a question now as to whether there was a possibility of the

contamination of this well from burying bodies in the proposed new

cemetery. I was called, and after studying the geological formation,

concluded that there was a possibility of such contamination. The well

was pumped dry twice a day, and on an average fifteen barrels taken from

it each pumping. To show how ridiculous some theories are that have been

advanced upon that subject, I will state that I was met in court with

this statement: that it would be impossible for any of the water or rain

falling upon this cemetery, 30 rods distant, to reach the well, because,

as was found in some old book, all the water that goes into a well is

that which falls upon a surface which will be enclosed in a circle whose

center was the mouth of the well, and whose radius was the depth of the

well. This statement was made independent of any lay of the land or the

geological formation, and without any consideration whatever of the

surrounding country. Fortunately this can be met very easily. Thirty

barrels of water were pumped from the well each day. We know the amount

of rainfall in Michigan per year, and we can calculate very easily the

number of barrels that would fall upon this surface enclosed in a circle

whose center was the mouth of the well, and whose radius was the depth

of the well; and as the result of such a calculation we find that the

amount of rain falling upon this surface during the year would not

supply the well more than two or three days. Returning home and

detailing the trip to Dr. Langley, he suggested that a direct experiment

might be made to see whether matter would pass from the proposed

cemetery to the well or not. He tested the water of the well for

lithium, a substance easily detected, found it was absent, then had a

salt of lithium sown over the proposed cemetery, and then examined the

water of the well each day thereafter; and on the eighteenth day after

the lithium was sown over the cemetery it was found in the water of the

well, showing that the water did unquestionably penetrate the soil, pass

down to the impervious bed of clay which was the watershed upon which

the water in the well collected, and thence into the well.

Notwithstanding proofs so positive as this, a learned judge in Michigan

dismissed the case, and allowed the cemetery to be located there, with a

possibility of poisoning a number of families. As a result, the families

of the neighborhood had to discontinue the use of their well-water.”

Professor Vaughan holds that the popular belief that if water filters

for any distance through the soil it is purified, is an erroneous

belief, and cites a number of experiments made by himself, and numerous

cases, in support of the assertion.

According to Dr. H. B. Baker, secretary of the Michigan State Board of

Health (_vide_ Report for 1874, p. 136), a terrible epidemic of

cerebro-spinal meningitis, that wasted the village of Petersburg in the

early part of 1874, was attributable to a spring five paces from a house

and 15 paces from a cemetery, which is on ground from 12 to 15 feet

higher than the level of the spring. About 18 paces from the spring was

a recent grave.

Prof. R. C. Kedzie, of the Michigan State Agricultural College, to whom

some of the water was sent for analysis, concluded his report as

follows:—

“The presence in these waters of unusual quantities of chlorides, of

ammonia, of albuminoid ammonia, of nitrates and nitrites, and finally of

phosphates, shows these waters to be very unusual in their composition.

We might account for the presence of all these substances if matters

very rich in nitrogen and phosphorus, _e.g._, flesh, were undergoing

decomposition in their vicinity, and the results of this decomposition

passed directly into this water. The fact that the spring is near and

lies below the level of the graveyard, that the well is in the midst of

an old Indian graveyard, gives much plausibility to this explanation.

The fact that the first person attacked with cerebro-spinal meningitis

in Petersburg used the water of this well, and that others who used the

spring water were attacked with the same disease, would very naturally

attract very significant attention to the composition of these waters as

having some possible connection with the epidemic.”

For several years many residents of Nyack, N.Y., have protested against

the encroachment of the Oak Hill Cemetery property upon the thickly

populated portions of the village, objections being principally made on

sanitary grounds. Examination of the ponds and wells of the village has

demonstrated that they are being constantly polluted by the emanations

from the cemetery.

Not long ago the _Detroit Evening News_ declared that the wells in the

neighborhood of Woodmere Cemetery do not catch the rainwater until after

it has been filtered through the thousands of graves in the cemetery,

filled with decaying bodies, and that no water is obtained in the

vicinity which is not discolored and has a brackish taste. After a heavy

rain the impurities are most pronounced. The residents of Woodmere have

long ago given over the use of water as a beverage. I do not blame them.

I would not like to drink fluid extract of dead man myself.

The _New York Staats Zeitung_, a reliable German publication, of May 27,

1886, relates that a lawsuit of North Bergen Township, N.J., against the

Weehawken Cemetery Company, was tried the preceding day before

Vice-Chancellor Van Fleet, at Newark, N.J. The township demands that for

sanitary reasons the cemetery shall be closed at once and no further

burials permitted in the same. Several physicians testified to the fact

that diphtheria and other infectious diseases are endemic in the

township, and that they are due mainly to the unhygienic state of the

cemetery, which lies in the most populated part of the township. One

physician gave it as his opinion that numerous cases of diphtheria that

appeared among the little pupils of a school was caused by drinking

water from a well in the proximity of the cemetery.

In an address on “Public Health, or Sanitary Science,” read before the

medical society of the state of West Virginia, May 24, 1882, Dr. T. S.

Camden says:—

“The Board of Health report for 1879 gives the investigation of an

outbreak of diphtheria in Northern Vermont, which occurred in May, 1879.

In a school of 22 persons, 16 were prostrated in two days, one-half of

whom died. Upon investigation the cause of the outbreak was found to be

from the public drinking water from a brook into which had been thrown

the carcasses of dead animals. Another outbreak of the disease of great

virulence was caused by persons using water that was poisoned by the

dead carcass of an animal that had been buried 75 feet distant from a

spring. The grass in this instance showed by its luxuriance the trace to

the spring. After the germs were once developed in many of these cases

by drinking the polluted water, the disease was communicated to other

persons far removed from the cause of the primary outbreak. One

convalescent patient communicated the disease to six persons. Numerous

illustrations of the importance of sanitary regulations are given in

these epidemics.”

Thus we have illustrations of the origin of diphtheria from putrid

animal matter; and, after the germs were implanted in persons, fatal

epidemics spread, and many lives were lost that could have been saved by

proper hygienic measures.

Dr. Prosper de Pietra Santa, the most enthusiastic French cremationist,

and a man who has investigated everything pertaining to incineration

thoroughly, calls attention to the example of the villages of Rotondella

and Bollita. The burial-grounds of these ill-starred villages were

situated on the summit of hills that were beset with woods. They were at

the lawful distance, and to all appearances in a most favorable

location. Unfortunately, the springs from which the inhabitants were

accustomed to derive their water supply emerged from the base of the

hills which were surmounted by the woods. These springs were the result

of collections of rainwater, which, percolating through the earth of the

hills, became impregnated with the organic matter which the ground

contained. In the course of time, the drinking-water of these two

villages became so contaminated that it caused a frightful epidemic.

Prof. Dr. E. Reichardt, of Jena (_Gesundheit_ I, No. 1), published a

large number of cases in which drinking-water was polluted by cemetery

emanations.

Many cases are on record where water contaminated by graveyard

emanations, by poisonous fluids oozing through the soil, has proven

harmful to health. Numerous cases of typhoid fever sprung from this

source. Contagious diseases can also be communicated in this way. Riecke

and Galtie have compiled statistics of cases of typhoid fever and other

contagious maladies due to this cause that withstand the severest

criticism.

“The rivers die into offensive pools,

And, charged with putrefaction, breathe a gross

And mortal nuisance into all the air.”

[Illustration: CREMATION IN THE CASEMENTS OF PARIS DURING THE REIGN OF

THE COMMUNE.]

Kate Field, the well-known author and lecturer, says:

“These are times that are trying men’s and women’s bodies quite as much

as their souls. The zymotic diseases breaking out in what were formerly

healthy villages may set even the blindest to seek for causes; and

perhaps the most prejudiced may finally be forced to admit that one

great source of water contamination is the existence of multitudinous

graveyards contiguous to habitations. In my daily excursions on

horseback, which cover about 15 miles, I count seven graveyards perched

on hills, the occupants of the adjacent towns preparing for speedy exit

from this world by living below the dead and using well-water. Suggest

to them that the prevailing ‘malaria’ may be due to drinking up the

remains of their deceased ancestors, and a howl of ‘sacrilege’ rends the

air.”

And in an admirable essay on cremation in the St. Louis _Daily

Globe-Democrat_ of July 12, 1885, this graceful writer, deservedly

noted, states:—

“New England villages, once so free from ills, are taking on the airs of

invalids; and it is often a question whether families that remain in big

towns during the summer are not better off than their wealthier

neighbors, who hie to overcrowded so-called watering places, not

unfrequently returning with germs of typhoid fever in their systems,

that later breaks forth to their amazement, and for which they are at a

loss to account. They forget how they drank well-water, the springs of

which percolated through peaceful village graveyards. Man’s worst

enemies are his own superstition and ignorance.

“I learned by terrible experience when very young the horrors of earth

burial. I now know its crime against the living.”

Miss Field is not only converted to but convinced of incineration,

convinced that it is preferable to any other method; the moment a

cremation society was incorporated in New York, she became a member.

Col. R. E. Whitman, U. S. A., remarks: “People who wonder at the change

that has come over our New England villages, the homes of a vigorous

ancestry, and deplore the advent of this mysterious ‘malaria,’ the

unseen vampire that sucks the red blood of the present generation, would

do well to look about them and see how the graveyards, old and new, have

grown in two centuries, how the town has surrounded them; how the water

supply is from the same old wells; how the town, never having arrived at

a magnitude seeming to demand a sewerage system, allows the refuse of

generations to mingle with the surface soil. It would be a theme worthy

of the magic pen of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Imagine his description of

water percolating through the grave of some despised Lazarus, feeding

the well of his life enemy, Dives, and compelling him daily to quaff the

poison his own cruel ignorance had distilled.”

Undoubtedly many country towns whose cemeteries are in their midst are

drinking daily, despite the acknowledged impurity of the water, disease

and death. An English writer very pertinently remarks that “if the

formation of a deep sewer will suffice to drain dry the wells near its

line of march, then the sinking of a well near a burying-ground must

help to drain the latter.”

Much complaint was at one time made in England, concerning the pollution

of wells by cemeteries. In Versailles, France, the water of the wells

which lie below the churchyard of St. Louis, could not be used on

account of its pollution.

Deep wells have been found to be infected more than 600 feet from the

cemeteries. In France and in some parts of Germany, the opening of wells

within 300 feet of a cemetery has been prohibited. The reports of the

boards of health of Massachusetts and New Jersey give abundant evidence

that country graveyards often contaminate the water supply when the

wells are on a lower level. The Michigan reports also contain a

description of a case that occurred at Grand Rapids.

A hygienic council held some time ago at Brussels decided that wells

could not be safely dug nearer than 400 yards to any graveyard, and that

even at that distance absolute protection was not certain.

The constant prevalence of dysentery at Secunderabad, in the Deccan

(India), seems to have been partly due to the water which filtered

through an extensive burial-ground. One of the sources of water

contained, by analysis, according to Dr. Parkes, 119 grains of solids

per gallon; and in some instances there were 8, 11, and even 30 grains

per gallon, of organic matter.

Sir J. McGrigor partly attributed the fatality of dysentery in the

Peninsula, at Ciudad Roderigo, to the use of water percolating through a

graveyard in which nearly 20,000 bodies had been hastily inhumed.

Medical Councilor, Dr. Kuechenmeister, who examined the wells of

Dresden, Germany, discovered the water to be very impure, especially in

the new parts of the city, and in the vicinity of the so-called “French”

graves. The same results were arrived at in Zuerich, where it was

demonstrated that the typhoid fever epidemic of Auszerbuehl was due to

water rendered impure by cadaveric effluvia.

In Philadelphia, three cemeteries, containing 80,000 graves, are so

situated as to be liable to drain into the Schuylkill, the

drinking-water of 1,000,000 of people. The diarrhœa prevalent during the

Centennial Exhibition in the Quaker City is said (by many eminent

sanitarians) to have been caused by burial-ground water drunk by

strangers unaccustomed to it.

The monumental cemetery at Milan, which is situated upon a hill some 180

yards to the north of the city, was proved to have been the cause of

serious illness in its neighborhood, produced by the contamination of

the wells in the vicinity. The water of the well of the Place Garibaldi

was analyzed by Professors Parvesi and Rotundi, who found it tainted by

organic matter.

The Atlanta _Medical Journal_ states that two young ladies who drank

water from a spring situated on a hillside, near an old graveyard,

became severely ill. One was seized with pyæmia and diarrhœa, the other

with typhoid fever; both died. Cattle that drank of the water were also

made sick.

Professor Pumpilly has made certain by recent experiments that sandy

soil does not prevent bacterial infection from entering a well situated

at a considerable distance from cesspools and cemeteries. Indeed, he

claims further that “dry gravel and coarse sand do not prevent the

entrance into houses built upon them of those microorganisms which swarm

in the ground-air, around leaky cesspools, near graveyards, and in the

filthy made land of cities.”

Anent the idea that the gases and organic matters which arise from the

graves rapidly undergo changes by entering into new combinations when

brought into contact with the earth, Dr. John O. Marble, of Worcester,

Mass., says:—

“The monstrous delusion that the mere contact of the corpse with fresh

earth renders it innocuous, and suffices for safe disinfection, is

dissipated by overwhelming evidence. I distinctly remember my boyish

scruples concerning the water of a well situated not fifty yards from

graves in the churchyard adjoining my father’s garden. This old ‘God’s

acre’ I have a hundred times passed, in my timid boyhood, in the shades

of night, with palpitating heart, and a pace rivalled only by that of

Tam O’ Shanter’s steed from witch-haunted Kirk Alloway to the ‘Keystone’

of the ‘Brig o’ Doon.’ My father overcame my scruples concerning the

water by stating the belief then held, that the earth was a purifier and

a safe depurator, and that no harm could come to that well, 30 feet

deep, the pride and unfailing source of supply of the neighborhood. Yet

I, that same autumn, suffered a severe and nearly fatal attack of

typhoid fever, and another member of the family was similarly affected a

year later. The fever occurred when the well was low, and I have no

doubt, in the light of present knowledge of such dangers, that,

repulsive as is the thought, I drank water filtered through the bones of

my revered ancestors buried there, and that the polluted water caused

that illness. To those who criticise the advocates of cremation for

quoting ancient examples only, of harm from graves, this instance will

appear sufficiently recent and intimate.”

Opponents of incineration, who lay great stress upon the disinfecting

powers of the earth, forget that the soil is easily saturated by the

emanations from the dead. Professor Presscott, of the University of

Michigan, says in regard to this matter:—

“The purifying power of ground, like that of the air above it, is

limited and easily overcharged. If ground-air be loaded with more

putrescent vapor than it can oxidize, then poison is carried through the

porous earth.”

Dr. William Porter, of St. Louis, Mo., has recorded the following case:—

“A young man died suddenly from diphtheria, and was buried in the

village churchyard. At some little distance was a well, from which the

good church-goers drank freely each Sunday. Finally the water of the

well became fœtid, for the supply was infiltrated by the horrible

decomposition from this, the nearest grave. Was it not suggestive that

20 from that congregation died from diphtheria while this impure well

was in use? These people lived in mountain homes, in a pure atmosphere,

and though many of these cases were isolated,—far removed from

others,—yet in all the disease was alike virulent and deadly.”

Churchyard emanations can penetrate almost anything; they have a

remarkable force. The chairman and superintendent of sewers of Holborn

and Finsbury division, London, claimed that putrid matter from

cemeteries over 30 feet distant had penetrated the cement and brick of

his drain.

Several years ago, when Mr. Holland, the English government inspector of

burial-grounds, investigated the state of Tooting Cemetery, it

transpired that the drainage provided for the burial-ground was

insufficient; there was merely a system of surface drainage. In one case

(admitted by the cemetery board) a coffin was placed in a grave that

contained enough water to cover the head of it. The entire drainage of

the burial-ground was conducted into a ditch near by, which ended in the

river Wandle, from which the inhabitants obtained their drinking-water.

Lefort (in a monograph to the Paris Academy of Sciences) points to the

possibility of well-contamination by neighboring cemeteries. In one

instance he detected, by chemical analysis, that a well was polluted by

a burial-ground 50 metres distant.

[Illustration:

RETORT

LANCASTER CREMATORIUM

]

The Parisian scientist M. Duchamp detected a spring that percolated

entirely through graveyards, picking up organic matter on the way, and

that tasted very strongly.

Not a few analyses of water tainted by graveyard emanations testify to

the fact that it is harmful, nay, that it is extremely dangerous, to

those who consume it. Nor is the danger always apparent. In 1874 the

Broad Street pump at London, England, carried cholera to those who drank

its water; yet the latter looked clean, had no perceptible taste, and

was odorless.

“The very witching time of night

When graveyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out

Contagion on this world.”

—SHAKESPEARE.

To the question, “Can an epidemic of any kind be caused by graveyard

emanations?” there is but one reply; the facts on record compel us to

answer in the affirmative.

Dr. Buck, in his excellent work on Hygiene, writes: “It is impossible

for any one to say how long the _materies morbi_ may continue to live

underground. If organic matter can be boiled and frozen without losing

its vitality, and seeds 3000 years old will sprout when planted, it

would be hardihood to assert that the poison of cholera, or small-pox,

or typhus may not for years lie dormant, but not dead, in the moist

temperature of the grave.”

Dr. Wheelhouse, of Leeds, England, says: “Do we not shun, and that most

wisely, the presence of those afflicted with infectious diseases as long

as they remain amongst us; and yet, no sooner are they removed by death

than we are content, with tender sympathy indeed, and most loving care,

it is true (but with how much wisdom?) to lay them in the ground, that

they may slowly dissipate their terribly infectious gases through the

soil, and saturating that, may thereby recharge the rains of heaven as

they filter through it, with all their virulence and terrible power of

reproduction in the systems of the living. I am not the thorough and

entire believer in the disinfecting and depurating power of the soil

that I once was, for terrible examples of its failure have, in my

judgment, come under my notice.”

Often the site of an old grave is used to make a new one, and in

consequence earth is brought to light that is saturated with the

effluvia of corpses of those who, perhaps, have died of some contagious

or infectious disease. The crime that is committed by individuals when

they bury persons deceased of such maladies is pithily expressed by that

champion of modern cremation, Sir Henry Thompson, who says: “Is it not

indeed a social sin of no small magnitude to sow the seeds of disease

and death broadcast, caring only to be certain that they cannot do much

harm to our own generation?” But such is selfish human nature!

The first to show the connection between epidemics and the process of

decomposition was Professor Pettenkofer, of Munich, Bavaria. He

demonstrated that the presence of putrefying organic bodies, air,

moisture, and warmth, in a porous soil, are the potent factors which

originate and develop pestilential germs.

The great mortality, the severity, that attended in former times the

appearance of epidemics in cities where graveyards were situated in the

center of a large population, illustrates the deadly influence which

these “God’s acres” have.

Saint Augustine pointed to the fact that epidemics are caused by

decomposing organic bodies.

Forestus reported many cases of malignant fever caused by the emanations

of cadavers.

Ambrose Paré, the renowned French surgeon, in 1562 demonstrated that a

malignant (pestilential) fever, then raging in L’Agenois, was due to the

putrid vapors arising from a neighboring well into which many dead

bodies, soldiers fallen in battle, had been thrown.

Raulin (Observ. de Med.) relates how the section of a corpse at

Leicturm, in the plain of Armagnac, caused a frightful epidemic.

A terrible pestilence, which decimated especially the lower classes, was

originated in Riorno (Auvergne) by the digging up of the ground of an

old cemetery, done to beautify the city.

Jean Wolf, who reported upon an epidemic of malignant fever in 1731,

attributed it to putrefying animal remains.

In 1752 a man who had died of small-pox 30 years ago was dug up in

Chelwood, a village near London, England. He had been buried in an oaken

coffin which, when taken up, was yet entire and could have been so

removed from the grave. But because the grave-digger could not handle it

properly he got impatient and beat in the cover of the casket with his

spade, whereupon immediately a mephitic smell arose that filled the air

to some distance. The corpse, which was to be deposited in a vault, had

been a person of consequence, and therefore not only the inhabitants of

his native village attended the exhumation, but a good many people from

neighboring places. But a few days after 14 persons contracted

small-pox, and within a short time the entire village was infected, only

two individuals enjoying immunity because they had had the disease.

Although the epidemic was of a light character, two persons died of it.

All those in the surrounding villages who had been at the exhumation

were also attacked by small-pox.

Riecke adduces analogous cases, and relates that the opening of a vault

which contained a victim of small-pox was followed by the death of a

workman and the infection of another person.

Maret is authority for the following statement: A fever, complicated by

gastric and catarrhal disorders, was prevalent in 1773 at Saulieu,

Burgundy; but few of those it attacked died. This was in the latter part

of February. On the 3d of March, a corpulent body, a victim of the

disease, was buried in the cathedral, and on the 20th of April

following, very near to the first, that of a woman who, in child-bed,

had succumbed to the fever. Maret reports that when the coffin was

lowered into the vault, the ropes slipped from the grasp of the men who

held them; the coffin fell to the ground and broke; a putrid fluid, that

filled the church with a most nauseating odor, oozed from it. Of 170

persons who remained in the church from the time that the grave was

opened until the conclusion of the ceremony, 149 were attacked by a

malignant putrid fever, which, bearing many of the characteristics of

the prevalent fever, was undoubtedly the result of the vitiation of the

church.

The city of Tacna, Peru, was yearly visited at certain times by a

pernicious fever, which caused many deaths. The cemetery was in the

center of the city. Finally, the dead were buried outside of the city

limits, and the fever disappeared.

During the month of March, 1781, and the half-year preceding it, an

epidemic raged at Pasajes, Spain, which befell 127 persons, of which

number 83 died. This epidemic was attributed to the poisonous vapors

arising from the overcrowded vaults of the parish church.

Trousseau mentions the case of a grave-digger who was attacked by

small-pox soon after opening the grave of an individual who had died of

that malady many years ago.

Mr. Cooper charged an outbreak of small-pox in Eyam, Derbyshire, Eng.,

to the excavation of an old cemetery.

A dispatch from Montreal, dated Oct. 26, 1885, states that a

grave-digger of St. Sulpice, named Robitaille, made a grave next to

where a man who died from small-pox a month ago was buried. At the time

there was no small-pox in the village; but Robitaille, some days after

digging the grave, sickened and finally died of small-pox, making it

evident that he contracted the disease from the body of a man who had

been buried for a month.

Recent scientific discoveries confirm the opinion long held by persons

endowed with common sense that the germs of many infectious and

contagious diseases retain their vitality and the power to spread the

respective malady in the grave and the layers of earth surrounding it.

By means of these germs, yellow fever, cholera, small-pox, splenic

fever, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and other diseases belonging to the

same category, can be communicated from the dead to the living, even

years after burial. Concerning splenic fever, which can be transmitted

from animal to man, the great French investigator and pathologist, Louis

Pasteur, says:—

“Recently, we discovered the characteristic germs in pits in which

animals dead of splenic fever (charbon) had been buried for 12 years;

and their culture was as virulent as that from the blood of an animal

recently dead. Anthracoid germs in the earth of pits in which animals

have been buried are brought to the surface by earthworms; and in this

fact we may find the whole etiology of the disease, inasmuch as the

animals swallow these germs with their food.”

The _British Medical Journal_ in 1880 commented on Pasteur’s great

discovery as follows:—

“Pasteur’s recent researches on the etiology of ‘charbon’ shows that

this earth-mould positively contains the specific germs which propagate

the disease, and that the same specific germs are found within the

intestines of the worms. The parasitic organism, or _bacteridium_,

which, inoculated from a diseased to a healthy animal, propagates the

specific disease, may be destroyed by putrefaction after burial. But

before this process has been completed, germs or spores may have been

formed which will resist the putrefactive process for many years, and

lie in a condition of latent life, like a grain of corn, or any

flower-seed, ready to germinate and communicate the specific disease. In

a field in the Jura, where a diseased cow had been buried two years

before at a depth of nearly seven feet, the surface earth not having

been disturbed in the interval, Pasteur found that the mould contained

germs which, introduced by inoculation into a guinea-pig, produced

charbon and death. Further, if a worm be taken from an infected spot,

the earth in the alimentary canal of the worm contains these spores or

germs of charbon, which, inoculated, propagate the disease; and the

mould deposited on the surface by the worm, when dried into dust, is

blown over the grass and plants on which the cattle feed, and may thus

spread the disease. After various farming operations of tilling and

harvest, Pasteur has found the germs just over the graves of the

diseased cattle, but not to any great distance. After rains or morning

dews the germs of charbon, with a quantity of other germs, were found

about the neighboring plants; and Pasteur says that in cemeteries it is

very possible that germs capable of propagating specific diseases of

different kinds quite harmless to the earthworm may be carried to the

surface of the soil, ready to cause disease in the proper animals. The

practical inferences in favor of cremation are so strong that, in

Pasteur’s words, they ‘need not be enforced.’”

[Illustration:

FURNACE OF THE BUFFALO CREMATORIUM.

(Venini system.)

]

Sir T. Spencer Wells pointed out, in his paper read before the British

Medical Association, in August, 1880, that the observations of Darwin,

“on the formation of mould,” made more than 40 years ago, when he was a

young man, are curiously confirmatory of the conclusions of Pasteur. In

Darwin’s paper, read at the Geological Society of London, in 1837, he

proved that, in old pasture-land, every particle of the superficial

layer of earth, overlying different kinds of subsoil, has passed through

the intestines of earthworms. The worms swallowed earthy matter, and,

after separating the digestible or serviceable portion, they eject the

remainder in little coils or heaps at the mouths of their burrows. In

dry weather the worm descends to a considerable depth, and brings up to

the surface the particles which it ejects. This agency of earthworms is

not so trivial as it might appear. By observation in different fields,

Mr. Darwin proved, in one case, that a depth of more than three inches

of this worm-mould had been accumulated in 15 years; and, in another,

that the earthworms had covered a bed of marl with their mould, in 18

years, to an average depth of 13 inches.

Professor Klebs, of Prague, Bohemia, discovered the bacteria of malarial

fever. They were called by him _bacilli malariæ_. His discovery was

verified by Prof. Tomassi Crudelli, of Rome, Italy.

Dr. Robert Koch, of the Imperial Sanitary Bureau at Berlin, Germany,

detected the _bacillus tuberculosis_; there is no doubt, to my mind, but

that consumption can possibly be spread by the upturning of the soil of

a grave containing the victim of tuberculosis.

The same gentleman, now professor in Berlin University, discovered the

_comma bacillus_ of cholera. He expressed his belief in its propagation

in the grave, especially when the latter is moist.

Houlier and Feruel are responsible for the statement that, during the

prevalence of the plague in Paris in the beginning of the 18th century,

the disease lingered longest and was the most severe in the vicinity of

the “cimetière de la Trinité.”

The _Detroit Evening News_, of Sept. 23, 1886, reports the following

case in which diphtheria was contracted from a corpse:—

“Blanche Hunt, a 12-year old girl, died at Albion of malignant

diphtheria last week. Sophie Calkins, aged 13, died at Fair Haven, Vt.,

of the same disease, contracted the week before at Albion. There are no

other cases in town, and these two girls are supposed to have taken the

disease at the cemetery, where they went into the vault containing the

remains of a woman sent there from abroad, who had died from what the

physicians called black jaundice. It is believed her disease was really

diphtheria.”

As early as 1878, the Massachusetts State Board of Health—one of the

best in the world—showed that diphtheria is originated and diffused by

the emanations of victims of that disease.

In 1875 the same high authority had reached similar conclusions

regarding typhoid fever.

There is much evidence to show that cholera was repeatedly caused by the

excavation of the graves of those who had died of the disease, and that

it raged with special violence in the vicinity of cemeteries.

Dr. Sutherland attested the fact that cholera was unusually prevalent in

the immediate neighborhood of London graveyards. This, however, need not

astonish us, when we consider that the soil of churchyards in some of

the poorer districts in London was raised two, three, or even four feet

in a few years. The great prevalence of epidemic diseases in some parts

of the city finally led to the formation of the Epidemiological Society

of London, under the presidency of Dr. Babington.

When the cholera visited London in 1854, Mr. Simon asserted that if the

soil of the cemeteries in which the plague-stricken of 1665 were buried

would be upturned, it would make the prevailing scourge more virulent.

It was done in spite of his warning, and his prediction was verified.

In 1826, when cholera made its appearance in Egypt, the French

government sent out medical officers to discover, if possible, its

origin. It was traced to an old and disused cemetery at Kelioub, a

village near Cairo.

The outbreak of cholera at Modena, Italy, in 1828, was shown by

Professor Bianchi to be due to the upturning of the ground of

burial-yards in which victims of the plague had been inhumed 300 years

before.

Nov. 12, 1836, Miaulis, the adjutant of Otto the First, of Greece, was

attacked by cholera, of which he finally died. The body was given in

charge of three men, who also assisted at the post-mortem examination.

On the third day after the funeral of the adjutant, one of the men,

Jacob Kuehnlein, 72 years of age, was taken ill, and died the following

day. The autopsy proved the disease to be Asiatic cholera. Three days

after Kuehnlein’s burial, the second of the men who had guarded Miaulis’

remains, J. Stroehlein by name, aged 48, was stricken down by the

cholera, to which he succumbed within two days.

Schauenburg (Cholera, etc., Wuerzburg, 1874, p. 8) gives it as his

opinion that decomposition is favorable to the development of cholera

germs, which means the propagation of the _comma bacillus_.

The Italians do not only stand at the head of the cremation movement

to-day, but they recognized the value of that sure and never-failing

germicide—fire—as early as 1837; in that year thousands of the victims

of the cholera epidemic, then raging in Italy, were burned on the

seashore at Palermo.

The report of the London Board of Health for 1849 directs attention to

the fact that the cholera was especially prevalent and fatal in the

neighborhood of graveyards. This, however, need not cause any surprise,

as the _London Athenæum_, to this day one of the most reliable journals

of the United Kingdom, states in 1850 that, during the prevalence of the

scourge, 500 bodies, dead of cholera, were daily interred, in addition

to those of other diseases.

Professor Jaccoud, of the faculty of medicine of the University of

Paris, claims, in his “Pathologie Interne,” that there are three ways of

transmission of cholera, of which the third is by corpses.

An employee of the French marine hospital at Therapia, near

Constantinople, was present at the autopsy of Marshal Saint Armand, who

had died of cholera, which was held in the amphitheatre of the

institution. A few days after the man succumbed to a severe attack of

_de choléra foudroyant_, which he had contracted at the post-mortem

examination.

Dr. F. Bidlot, of Liege, Belgium, states that, in 1867, he was called to

a robust cholera patient who, when asked about the cause of his illness,

said that until noon he had worked at the grave of a person, dead of

cholera, who had been buried very superficially, since an exhumation was

to take place: when the body was disinterred, he was seized by an

illness which soon proved to be cholera.

The following case was also reported by Dr. Bidlot. A nun who had nursed

cholera patients in a hospital died of the dread disease in the summer

of 1860. At 10 A.M. in the latter part of October she was exhumed. At

four o’clock in the forenoon of the same day Dr. Bidlot was called to

Dr. Romiée, who had attended the disinterment. He was found to be

suffering from cholera, and declared that his illness was owing to his

exposure to the emanations of the body dug up.

Trinity Church graveyard, at New York, was the center of very fatal

prevalence of cholera at every visit of that pest from 1832 to 1854.

Dr. Rauch relates (Intra-Mural Interments in Populous Cities, Chicago,

1868) how the cholera was spread in Burlington, Ia., in 1850. Not a

single death took place in the vicinity of the cemetery of the city,

until 20 persons, deceased of cholera, had been interred therein; then

one case after another occurred, till the epidemic became truly

alarming.

In 1865, when a cholera epidemic invaded Paris, France, it raged with

great virulence in the old quarter of Montmartre; in that part of the

metropolis there was a vast burial-ground, from which toxic vapors were

continually escaping. Of 5000 victims of the epidemic, 1800 belonged to

this ancient community. The great mortality in this quarter of the city

was no doubt due to the presence of the overcrowded cemetery.

Dr. John Murray, inspector-general of hospitals in Bengal, India, wrote

a book, in which he endeavored to determine whether or not cholera can

be propagated by human remains. He declares emphatically (Propagation of

Cholera, 1873, p. 216), that the body of a cholera patient, dead or

alive, must be regarded as an agent of transmission of the disease; and

adduces the sequent facts to prove his assertion. Several women, whose

business it was to lay out corpses, had contracted cholera. In 1818 a

man died of the dread disease; five fellow-men, who carried his body to

the last resting-place, were taken down with cholera, and died in the

night after the burial. Dr. Townsend reported that, in 1869, three men

were commissioned by the police to carry a corpse to Dumwahi. The day

following their arrival the cholera appeared in this city, and the first

to die of the scourge were the three who had borne the corpse.

Cholera from time to time threatens to invade our peaceful land. When it

comes, shall we, in view of what has just been shown, bury its victims,

saturate the earth with its specific germs, which, if the grave should

ever be disturbed, may breed a terrible pestilence, if not during our

lifetime, yet surely during that of our descendants? There can be but

one answer: To secure ourselves against a repetition of epidemics, we

must burn our dead; it is a duty that cannot be evaded, that we owe to

all mankind, that, when sinned against, as it has been in the past, is

revenged by the resulting visitation.

When the cases above related are taken into consideration, even the most

vehement anti-cremationist cannot deny that the specific germs of

infectious and contagious diseases are propagated by earth-burial, and

that the only sure medium for their destruction is fire, for no disease

germ can pass through the rosy heat of the crematory and survive to

propagate its species.

[Illustration:

FURNACE OF THE CINCINNATI CREMATORIUM.

(Designed by M R. Conway.)

]

The scientific world was lately startled by the gladsome news that Dr.

Domingo Freire, a physician of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, had discovered

the peculiar microbe of yellow fever. The blood of yellow fever patients

swarms with these microbes (_cryptococci_), which, by inoculation,

produce the disease in animals. Dr. Freire named the microbe

_cryptococcus xanthogenicus_. He was aided in his labors, to detect the

specific germ of yellow fever, which included microscopic and

spectroscopic examinations as well as experiments on animals, by his

able assistant, Señor Menezes Doria.

Dr. Freire also examined some soil from the cemetery of Jurujuba, where

victims of the yellow jack (as we call this fever sometimes) lie

interred. Some of this earth was dried and then placed in a cage which

contained a guinea pig. Previously to the introduction of the earth, the

blood of the animal was examined microscopically, and found to contain

no bacteria of any kind. The animal became ill, and died within five

days. When its tissues were examined after death, they were found to

present all the characteristic changes which yellow fever brings about.

The blood was full of _cryptococci xanthogenici_ in various degrees of

development. The urine was highly albuminous. The brain and the

intestines were stained yellow by the infiltration of the coloring

matter of the _cryptococci_. After this discovery, the doctor

recommended that all victims of yellow fever be destroyed by fire, to

prevent general infection. The Brazilian government (one of the most

enlightened in the world) immediately ordered that a cremation furnace

be built at Jurujuba, in which all those that die of yellow fever there

must be incinerated.

The St. Louis _Medical and Surgical Journal_ makes this very sensible

suggestion regarding the disposition of the remains of those dying of

yellow fever in our own United States. It says:—

“From what we have learned from private sources, the resurrection of the

bodies, during the winter months, of those who died of yellow fever, has

done much to perpetuate this terrible disease in southern cities, until

the warm weather has set in. Cremation obviates all possible harm that

can come from the dead, and duty to the living demands that everything

be done to destroy the possibility of propagating this and all

contagious diseases that run so malignant a course.”

Dr. J. F. A. Adams says:—

“Dr. Joseph Akerly expressed the belief that Trinity Churchyard had been

an active cause of the yellow fever in New York in 1822, aggravating the

malignity of the epidemic in its vicinity. This church was built in

1698, and the ground had been receiving the dead for 124 years.

Sometimes bodies were buried only 18 inches below the surface, and it

was impossible to dig without disturbing the remains. During the

Revolutionary War, this burial-ground had emitted pestilential odors,

and in 1781 Hessian soldiers were employed to cover the ground with a

layer of earth two or three feet in depth. The ground was unusually

offensive in 1782, and annoyed passengers on the surrounding streets

previous to the appearance of the yellow fever in July. During the

epidemic, the condition of this churchyard, and the virulence of the

disease in its vicinity, called for some active measures, and on the

night of Sept. 22 Dr. Roosa covered the ground with 52 casks of

quicklime, the stench being at the time so excessive as to cause several

laborers to vomit. On the 25th and 26th of the same month St. Paul’s

Churchyard, and the vaults of the North Dutch Church in William Street,

received the same treatment, these being likewise very offensive and

foci of epidemics.”

When the yellow fever raged in New Orleans in 1853, the death-rate in

the Fourth District (in which there were three large burial-grounds) was

452 per 1000 of the population.

Dr. Bryant, writing on yellow fever at Norfolk in 1855, regards

cemeteries as a constant source of danger in an epidemic, and urges the

total forbidding of intramural or even near-by suburban cemeteries.

Sir Spencer Wells related a fact recently at a meeting of the Health

Exhibition in London, England, which has a strong bearing on the source

of epidemics and their annihilation by cremation. Some persons who had

died of scarlet fever were interred in a country graveyard. Thirty years

afterward the cemetery was included in a neighboring garden, and the old

graves dug up. Scarlet fever forthwith broke out in the rectory and

parish, and no other probable source having been discovered, it is

impossible to avoid the inference that the germs of scarlatinal

infection can retain their vitality a third of a century.

In epidemics individuals should be forced to allow their dead (unless

they succumb to some disease other than the prevailing scourge) to be

cremated. To stamp out a contagious or infectious malady, or to arrest

its progress, incineration must be made general; its benefits are _nil_

when confined to isolated cases. The individual must stand back when the

public health is in jeopardy.

Governments should not allow bodies to be introduced into their

respective countries from an infected land, unless such bodies have been

previously reduced to ashes.

Thousands of cases of malignant sickness, I have no doubt, could be

prevented by the prompt introduction of cremation. Why not, then,

introduce it? Simply because there is an unreasonable prejudice against

the custom? It is ridiculous! Should any mere prejudice stand in the way

of a sanitary reform? I leave it to any sound mind to decide the

question. I am not advocating obligatory incineration in times of peace

except in cases of infectious and contagious disease. I would rejoice to

see it generally introduced, but not by force. Cremation, moreover,

needs not the aid of the sword or law; it will find its way unassisted.

Besides human and animal remains, I think all garbage should be

destroyed by fire.

The idea of cremation which, carried by the wings of enthusiasm,

traversed the whole civilized world in the spring of 1874, is really

naught but a demand of hygiene in favor of our own health. Not only

physicians, but also laymen, should enter the arena where the great

fight between earth-burial and cremation is going on, and combat for

glorious incineration.

The International Medical Congress which convened at Florence, Italy, in

1869 examined into the various methods of burial, and concluded by

expressing its belief that cremation was necessary, and should be

adopted in the interest of civilization and public health.

Dr. C. W. Purdy, of Chicago, Ill., says: “Burial-grounds are

unquestionably ruinous to health, as both theory and facts amply

demonstrate; many sections of population suffer annually disease and

death which are exposed to their influences; all engaged in this

unwholesome system suffer—the grave-diggers, the gardeners, the men who

repair the vaults and tombstones, the friends who visit the graves, and

the whole funeral procession are exposed directly. There is no redeeming

feature about this burial system, degrading to the dead and dangerous to

the living.”

The celebrated medical author, Moleschott, even more vehemently condemns

cemeteries. He claims that they emit a vapor which causes malignant

fevers, and concludes his remarks by calling them “workshops and

factories of the devil.”

Beyond a doubt, cremation soonest places the bodies of the dead in a

condition where they can do the least harm to the living. Incineration

destroys all disease germs and at once removes all possibility of the

contamination of air and water by the dead.

Then why not introduce cremation and do away with all the evils

described in this chapter? It is of no consequence to the dead, whether

they rot in the earth and originate miasma, or are transformed by fire

into pure white ashes. They feel as little of the process of decay as

they do of the flame; their eye is surrounded by the same darkness,

whether they are down in the deep grave or in the glowing light of the

crematory furnace. But it is of the greatest consequence to us, the

living; and the only way to protect ourselves from poisonous infection

by our dead is to burn them.