FOOTNOTES:
1 Thus Dr. Hodges; but Calmet informs us, that the Hebrews call by the name of plagues all diseases sent by way of punishment or correction from God; as the pestilence, infection, the leprosy, sudden deaths, famines, tempests: in a word, all calamities, whether public or private. Calmet’s Dict. vol. ii. fol. 412. Plaga.
Parkhurst derives the Greek term loimos, either from luo, as above, or from another Greek word signifying to faint; the same from which the English word eclipse has its origin; or it may be from the Hebrew lehem, to consume.
A friend observes, that “we no where find the word perdition in our version of the Old Testament. We have, however, the word destruction, which is of a similar import; as, for instance, in Prov. xv. 11. where the Hebrew is abdun. In Rev. xvii. 8 & 11, we find the English word perdition; but as we have no Hebrew version of the New Testament, we may advert to the ancient Syriac version. The Syriac being a sister dialect of the Hebrew, differs, radically, but little from it. The Syriac of the two places referred to above is abdna; hence the word abaddon, whole root is abd, and is the same with that of the Hebrew word above.
“As to the word plague, we often find it in the Old Testament, but perhaps never in that specific sense in which the moderns use it. The original word, rendered plague, is pretty generally ngp, or its derivations; as Exod. xii. 13., ii. Sam. xxiv. 21, &c.” On this last occasion, however, as the word pestilence had been used before, in the same chapter, we can scarce doubt its having been really some kind of disease: and we know that modern plagues will sometimes destroy as quickly as this is said to have done.
2 A myriad is generally supposed to contain ten thousand.
3 Gibbon’s History, vol. iv.
4 Transact. of Society for improving Medical Knowledge.
5 Political State for 1720.
6 Political state, ibid.
7 Mr. Gibbon, agreeably to the subject on which he writes, particularises the mode of vengeance; saying, “the earth frequently swallows up the assassin,” &c. It is hoped the substitution of the word vengeance, in general, will not be deemed a material alteration.
8 Univ. Hist. vol. vi.
9 Diodor. Sic. Frag.
10 Mead.
11 In the subsequent section this plague will be more fully treated of.
12 A plague is spoken of in the time of Romulus; but the accounts of this, and some others, are extremely obscure and indistinct.
15 Univ. Hist. vol. xvii.
16 Univ. Hist. vol. viii.
17 Id. vol. xviii.
18 Univ. Hist. vol. xv.
20 Gibbon’s Hist. vol. iv. Procopius, in speaking of the numbers who died in this extraordinary plague, compares them to the sand of the sea; and afterwards expresses them by a phrase which has been translated two hundred millions. The phrase is myriadas myriadon myrias. Mr. Gibbon, by dropping the first word, restricts the sense to one hundred millions; which he thinks not wholly inadmissible; but the probability seems to be, that Procopius did not mean to specify the number, but to represent it as incalculable. This is done by putting a comma, or semicolon, after the first word; and we may then read, that there perished myriads; a myriad of myriads. The grammar is rectified by reading myriades instead of myriadae.
21 Univ. Hist. vol. xvii.
22 Ibid.
23 Journal of the Plague Year.
25 An English gentleman, who resided in Bassorah at that time, preserved himself from the infection by retiring to a mud-house, where he had no communication with the inhabitants. Having a large quantity of Bengal cotton, he sold it to the people to wrap their dead in. The price was put in a basket, which he hauled up by a rope to his ware-room; lowering it again with the proportionate quantity of cloth. In the course of the summer he had an account of seventy thousand winding sheets thus disposed of!
(Transact. of a Society for improving Medical Knowledge.)
26 Philosoph. Transact. No. 364.
27 Water boils at eighty degrees of this thermometer.
28 Spirit of wine boils at 175.
29 Transactions of Society for improving Medical Knowledge.
A pond’rous stone bold Hector heav’d to throw,
Pointed above, and rough and gross below;
Not two strong men th’ enormous weight could raise,
Such men as live in these degenerate days.
Iliad, B. xii.
32 Herodotus says, that in his time the province of Babylonia produced commonly two hundred, and in plentiful years three hundred fold.
33 Philos. Transact. vol. liv.
34 See Sec. i. p. 10.
36 Univ. Hist. vol. xvi. pp. 433, 435.
37 Univ. Hist. vol. xvi.
38 Univ. Hist. vol. xvi.
39 Univ. Hist. vol. xvi.
40 M. Millot places this account among the “exaggerations which ought not to have a place in history;” but, as we have no evidence for or against the fact, it was thought proper to let it remain as related by the historians of those times. It is certain that in those days mankind assembled for the purposes of bloodshed and slaughter in prodigious numbers; the destruction was commonly in proportion to the numbers assembled. The account is not more incredible than that of Tamerlane’s filling up the harbour of Smyrna by causing each of his soldiers to throw a stone into it. Such an army could have spared the number in question.
42 Modern Univ. Hist. Arabia.
43 That such accounts are not to be looked upon as entirely fabulous, may be gathered from what is related by Mr. Thomson in his travels through Palestine, viz. that on the brink of the lake Asphaltites he found numbers of “small black pebbles, which are soon set on fire by being held in the flame of a candle, and yield a smoke intolerably stinking and offensive; but have this remarkable property, that by burning they lose nothing of their weight, nor suffer any diminution in their bulk. They are capable of taking as fine a polish as black marble, and are likewise said to be met with of considerable size in the neighbouring mountains.”
44 “Symptom (says Dr. Fordyce) is the Greek name for appearance:” but, from the strict etymology of the word, it ought rather to be translated accident. The universal consent of physicians, however, has applied it to every appearance produced in the human body by any distemper whatever.
45 Dr. Anthony Fothergill, in his prize dissertation upon the suspension of vital action, quotes some experiments of Dr. Kite, in which he was able to restore to life animals that had been immersed in water for eight, ten or twelve minutes, though he acknowledges that this operation, though performed with great attention, often failed; while other animals, that had been longer immersed, recovered spontaneously. He further adds, that if it be not attempted before the convulsions of the animal cease, which on an average of many experiments happens in about eleven minutes and a half, it will not be sufficient to renew the vital motions. But, “among the human species (says Dr. Fothergill) there are not wanting well authenticated instances of spontaneous recovery at an incomparably longer interval, and after every external mark of life had disappeared. Such is the latent energy of the heart, that it sometimes, after remaining several hours quiescent, renews on a sudden the secret springs of life, surmounts the barriers of the resisting blood, and restores circulation with all the other functions. Hence the unexpected recoveries from death-like syncope brought on by sudden terror, or great effusions of blood, even after the funeral obsequies have been prepared. Hence some persons have accidentally been brought to life, even after interment, by the rude motion produced in sacrilegious attempts to wrest rings or bracelets from the apparently dead body.”
Several surprising instances of the recovery of persons supposed to be dead, even of the plague, are given by Fabricius Hildanus; to one of which Dr. Fothergill seems to allude in the above quotation. Hildanus relates, that in the year 1357, when the plague raged violently at Cologne, a certain noble lady, by name Reichmuth Adoleh, being seized with the disease, was thought to have died, and was buried accordingly. Her husband, out of affection, would not take off her wedding ring, which she happened to have on her finger. The undertakers being acquainted with this circumstance, next night came to the church where she was buried, opened the sepulchre, and prepared to take off the ring; when to their utter astonishment she began to raise herself up in the coffin. Struck with consternation they fled in the utmost haste, leaving to the fortunate lady the lantern with which they lighted themselves to the church, and by means of which she now found out where she was, and after being come to herself, returned to her own house. Here being known by her voice, and the ring she wore, she found admittance, and by means of a generous diet gradually regained her health; bringing her husband afterwards three children, and surviving the accident many years.
A second instance no less remarkable is of a woman of the name of Nicolle Lentille, who, being supposed dead of the plague, had been thrown into a pit with a great number of the bodies of others, dead of the same distemper. After lying there a whole night, she came to herself in the morning, but neither knew at first where she was, nor, when she did, could she find any means of escaping, or extricating herself from the heap of dead bodies with which she was oppressed. Being at a distance from any house, her cries were of no avail, and, in the mean time, having taken no nourishment for four days, she was so tormented with hunger that she eat part of the cloth which covered her face. At last, after remaining twenty-four hours in this dreadful situation, the pit being opened to bury some other person, she exerted her utmost endeavours in calling for assistance, and at last was heard by those who stood round. Being taken up and brought home, she presently recovered, and lived several years after.
A third example is given by our author of one who, being carried to a church to be buried, had his face previously sprinkled with holy water by a priest. But this was no sooner done than he shuddered and opened his eyes in a fright; on which he was carried home, recovered, and lived eight years after. Other examples might be brought, but these are sufficient to show what dreadful accidents may ensue from early burials, and how cautious people ought to be in consigning their friends and relations to the dust from whence they were taken.
46 Dr. Gardiner, in his observations above quoted, gives the following curious anecdote. “An unmarried lady, of a healthy constitution, has such a peculiarity in the structure of her nerves, that, though she can, in general, bear strong odours as well as most people, yet she cannot suffer a rose to be in her bosom, or to hold it in her hand a few minutes, without becoming faint, and having an inclination to vomit. Conserve of roses, rose-water, and similar articles made from roses, have more powerful effects upon her, and usually excite vomiting. Going into a room where any of her companions are washing with rose-water, never fails to produce this effect; nor does she recover of her indisposition in less than two hours.”
47 This certainly does not hold good if we suppose the heat of the atmosphere to be indicated by a thermometer; for we are assured that animals can live in a heat much superior to that which raises the mercury to 97.
48 The discoveries of modern chemists have determined that the aerial fluid, termed fixed air or carbonic acid, and which is nearly the same with the vapour arising from fermenting liquor, and is also largely contained in the fume of burning charcoal, is not a simple but a compound substance; one part consisting of the pure part of the atmosphere, or oxygene, the other of real charcoal. The proportions, according to M. Chaptal, are 12,0288 parts of charcoal to 56,687 of oxygen.
49 The name of the vessels by which the heart itself is supplied with blood. These come from the aorta by the circuitous way of the lungs.
50 But there is a still more egregious blunder, and this the more surprising as it has been very general among physiologists, viz. that when an artery branches into two the capacity of the branches taken together is greater than that of the trunk. This would make the whole arterial system one continued aneurism,51 and, instead of promoting the circulation of the blood, would in the most effectual manner prevent it. In what manner an error so extraordinary in its nature could pass the mathematical physicians of the last century, I cannot imagine; but certain it is, that, in the year 1780 or 1781, the Edinburgh College were schooled on this subject by one of their own students named John Theodore Vander Kemp, a Dutchman. This gentleman found, by accurate mensuration, that when an artery divides, if the diameters of the two branches are made the two shorter sides of a right-angled triangle, the diameter of the trunk will be the hypothenuse; and thus, as the areas of circles are to one another in proportion to the squares of their diameters, the sum of the areas of the two branches will be equal to the area of the trunk. On looking into Blumenbach’s physiology, I find the same remark.
51 An aneurism is a preternatural enlargement of an artery. The blood stagnates in that place, and at length eats through the flesh and skin.
52 It seems now to be proved beyond a doubt that this something so long unknown is that fluid called by Dr. Priestley dephlogisticated air, and by Lavoisier oxygen.
53 Moore’s Medical Sketches.
54 Moore’s Medical Sketches.
55 Medical Inquiries and Observations, vol. iv, p. 133.
56 Vol. iv, p. 133.
57 Ibid. p. 149.
58 A Pathognomic symptom is one which being present certainly indicates the presence of a disease, and being absent, the contrary.
59 Vol. iv, p. 123.
60 The vampire is a kind of bat, of a very large size, met with in some parts of South America and in the East Indies. This vile creature delights in human blood, and often attacks people in the night time in the most insidious manner. A late traveller relates that at Surinam he was bit by one of them, which sucked so much of his blood that in the morning he found himself exceedingly weak and faint. He felt no pain, nor was sensible of the injury in any other way. The vampire commonly attacks the great toe, making a wound so exceedingly small that the person is not awaked by it; it then sucks till gorged with blood, and, lest the patient should awake, it keeps fanning him all the while with its large wings, the coolness of which, in that hot climate, promotes sleep. In this manner some are said to have been destroyed. Captain Cook relates an humourous anecdote of one of his sailors, who being ashore at New Holland, and having wandered a little way into the woods, returned in a fright, crying out that he had seen the devil! Being asked in what shape Satan had appeared, he answered, “He was about the size of a one gallon keg, and very like it; and if I had not been afear’d, I might have touched him.” It was a vampire. The man, notwithstanding his fright, had not exaggerated its magnitude. People, though mistaken and terrified, are not to be disbelieved in every part of their relation.
61 Non esse certi morbi genus, id quod pestilens vocatur, rectissime notatum a Galeno est (3 Epid. comm. 3. t. 20.) quicunque enim morbi ac symptomata consociantur pesti veræ proprieque diclæ, ijdem morbi pestilentes apellari consuevere, quorum equidem innumerabilis existit cohors, ac non semper et ubivis eadem. (Deusing. de Peste, Sect. iii.)
63 Gas is a German word, or derived from one, signifying spirit. The word ghost comes from the same original.
64 This must be understood only of its general properties and effects; for, though the fume of charcoal possesses many of the apparent properties of pure fixed air, it contains also a very considerable quantity of another kind of gas.
65 Many fabulous stories have been related concerning the samiel. Even so late a traveller as Mr. Ives has adopted some of those exaggerated accounts which have been discredited by those who have long resided in the countries where this wind is commonly met with. It is not peculiar to the deserts of Arabia, but is met with in all hot countries which are destitute of water. In the African deserts therefore it is common; and Mr. Bruce describes it by the name of simoom. It was preceded by whirlwinds of a very extraordinary kind. “In that vast expanse of desert (says he) from W. and to N. W. of us, we saw a number of prodigious pillars of sand at different distances, at times moving with great celerity, at others walking on with a majestic slowness. At intervals we thought they were coming in a very few minutes to overwhelm us; and small quantities of sand did actually more than once reach us. Again they would retreat so as to be almost out of sight; their tops reaching to the very clouds.* There the tops often separated from the bodies; and these, once disjoined, dispersed in the air, and did not appear more. Sometimes they were broken near the middle, as if struck with a large cannon shot. About noon they began to advance with considerable swiftness upon us, the wind being very strong at north. Eleven of them ranged along side of us at about the distance of three miles. The largest of them appeared to me at that distance to be about ten feet diameter. . . . It was in vain to think of flying; the swiftest horse or the fasted sailing ship could be of no use to carry us out of this danger; and the full persuasion of this rivetted me as if to the spot where I stood.” At another time he saw them in much greater number, but of smaller size. They began immediately after sunrise, like a thick wood, and almost darkened the sun. His rays darting through them gave them the appearance of pillars of fire. They now approached to the distance of two miles from our travellers. At another time they appeared beautifully spangled with stars. in Darwin’s Botanic Garden we find a reason assigned for the appearance of these whirlwinds; viz. the impulse of the wind on a long ledge of broken rocks which bound the desert. By these the currents of air which struck their sides were bent and were thus like eddies in a stream of water which falls against oblique obstacles. In the same work we have the following poetical description of them:
“Now o’er their heads the whizzing whirlwinds breathe,
And the live desert pants and heaves beneath;
Ting’d by the crimson sun, vast columns rise
Of eddying sands, and war amid the skies,
In red arcades the billowy plains surround,
And whirling turrets stalk along the ground.”
* N. B. In these sandy deserts, where it never rains, there are no clouds.
Whether the simoom is always preceded by these whirlwinds we know not; but Mr. Bruce mentions an extreme redness of the air, pointed out by his attendant Idris, as the sure presage. His advice was, that all of them, upon the approach of the pernicious blast, should fall upon their faces, with their mouths on the earth, and hold their breath as long as possible, so that they might not inhale the deadly vapour. They soon had occasion to follow this advice; for next day Idris called out to them to fall upon their faces, for the simoom was coming. “I saw (says Mr. Bruce) from the S. E. a haze coming, in colour like the purple part of the rainbow, but not so compressed or thick. It did not occupy twenty yards in breadth, and was about twelve feet high from the ground. It was a kind of blush upon the air, and it moved very rapidly; for I could scarce turn to fall upon the ground, with my face to the northward, when I felt the heat of its current plainly upon my face. We all lay flat on the ground, as if dead, till Idris told us it was blown over. The meteor, or purple haze, which I saw, was indeed passed; but the light air that still blew was of heat sufficient to threaten suffocation. For my part, I felt distinctly in my breast that I had imbibed a part of it; nor was I free of an asthmatic sensation till I had been some months in Italy, at the baths of Poretta, near two years afterwards.” It continued to blow for some time, and in such a manner as entirely to exhaust them, though scarcely sufficient to raise a leaf from the ground.
The account given by Mr. Ives is, that it blows over the desert (of Syria) in the months of July and August, from the northwest quarter, and sometimes continues with all its violence to the very gates of Bagdad but never affects any body within its walls. Some years it does not blow at all and in others it comes six, eight, or ten times, but seldom continues more than a few minutes at a time. It often passes with the apparent quickness of lightning. The sign of its approach is a thick haze, which appears like a cloud of dust rising out of the horizon, on which they throw themselves with their faces on the ground, as already mentioned. Camels are said, instinctively, to bury their noses in the sand. As for the stories of its dissolving the cohesion of the body in such a manner that a leg or an arm may be pulled away from those who are killed by it, or that their bodies are reduced to a gelatinous substance, we cannot by any means give credit to them. From its extreme quickness, and luminous appearance, it would seem to be an electrical phenomenon immediately preceding those vehement hot winds which all travellers agree in likening to the vapour issuing from a large oven when the bread is newly taken out. Its electrical nature will be more probable from the account given by Mr. Ives, that the Arabians say it always leaves behind it a very sulphureous smell. These particulars do not at all accord with the supposition of its consisting of fixed air. I have indeed been assured by a gentleman long in the service of the English East India Company, that the samiel cannot pass over a river. Hence probably it has been supposed to be a blast of fixed air, because this species of gas is readily absorbed by water; but we know that the same thing would also take place with any quantity of electric matter; for water takes up this also much more completely than it does fixed air.
The mofetes are invisible, and kill in an instant. They rise from old volcanic lavas, and, as it were, creep on the ground, and enter into houses, so that they are very dangerous; but, though they may probably consist of fixed air, we have not as yet any direct proof of it. It is not indeed easy to imagine why any lava should suddenly emit a great quantity of fixed air, and then as suddenly cease; nor in what manner the air thus emitted should continue unmixed with the atmosphere; for fixed air will very readily mix in this manner, insomuch that a large quantity of it being let loose in a room has been found to vanish entirely in less than half an hour. Sir William Hamilton mentions a mofete having got into the palace of the king of Naples.
66 Est etiam in quibusdam turba inanium verborum, qui dum communem loquendi morem reformidant, ducti specie nitoris, circumeunt omnia, copiosa loquacitate, quæ dicere volunt.
67 Here Dr. Beddoes, from whose publication this account of Girtanner’s memoir is taken, has the following note: “Dr. Goodwyn had proved this before. Could Dr. Girtanner be ignorant of his experiments?” In justice to myself, however, I must observe that this very doctrine had been published in the Encyclopædia Britannica long before either Dr. Goodwyn or Dr. Girtanner had made any experiments on the subject. It may still be seen under the article Blood, and reasons are there given for supposing that only one part of the oxygen, viz, the elastic part, can be absorbed.
68 Here it is necessary to observe, for the sake of accuracy and perspicuity, that, in the new chemistry, the terms of which are now very generally adopted, the words oxygen and hydrogen when mentioned by themselves are not understood to signify any kind of air, but what I have called the condensable part of the air. If the word air is added, then the whole substance of the fluid is understood. But though this is the strict orthodox language of the new chemistry, it is impossible to say whether every one who adopts the terms be sufficiently careful in this respect. Indeed this is one out of many inconveniences that might be pointed out which have arisen from this nomenclature; for thus the mere omission of a monosyllable, which may happen in numberless instances, totally perverts the meaning of the author, and may of course subject him to unmerited censure. Besides, it is not to be known, unless the author tells us so, that he designs to observe this strictness, and of consequence we must in multitudes of cases be uncertain of the meaning of what we read. Thus, in the present instance, when Dr. Girtanner speaks of oxygen, we know not certainly whether he means the air in substance, or only one of its component parts. Probably he means the condensable or solid part. If he does so, there must be a very material difference between his theory and that laid down in the Encyclopædia, and which is supported throughout this treatise. In the latter it is maintained that the condensable part is thrown out by the breath, being previously converted into fixed air, while the elastic part enters the vital fluid, communicating to it not only the red colour, but heat, and the principles of life and sensation, as will be more fully explained in the sequel.
69 Hydrogen air is the same with that by Dr. Priestley called inflammable air. He also discovered the true composition of it. Having included a few grains of charcoal in the receiver of an air-pump, and exhausted the air, he heated it in vacuo by means of a large burning glass. The charcoal was entirely volatilized and converted into this kind of air. He found, however, that without some small portion of moisture this volatilization did not take place.
70 A glass tube is sealed hermetically, by heating the open end or ends, till they become soft, and then closing them with a pair of pincers.
71 Thus letters, or other characters, may be curiously marked upon the calx within the vial, by cutting them out in paper, and then pasting them on the side to be exposed to the light. We may have them in this manner either dark upon a white ground, or white upon a dark ground.
72 It is now acknowledged that common atmospherical air contains a portion of what Dr. Black and Dr. Priestley have called fixed air; but this portion is so small (not more than one fiftieth part, according to Dr. Anthony Fothergill’s Prize Dissertation, and none at all, according to Dr. Beddoes) I say, this proportion is so small, that we cannot suppose it to constitute the quantity of fixed air thrown out by the breath, which is very considerable. Besides, fixed air, of all others, is the most readily absorbed; and, indeed, if we could admit of absorption of any basis of air in the present case, it certainly ought to be that of fixed air; but where such a quantity is thrown out, we cannot well admit of any absorption.
73 Nitrous air is that suffocating vapour which arises when aqua fortis is poured upon metals. When taken into the lungs it destroys animal life more quickly than any other species.
74 In one of Dr. Priestley’s papers above quoted he says, that charcoal is entirely of vegetable origin; but the conversion of vegetable into animal matter which we daily see is an undoubted proof that there cannot be any essential difference between them. Even the bones are undoubtedly produced from vegetables in such animals as feed upon vegetable substances; so that even the calcareous earth they contain is plainly of vegetable origin. We may say indeed that the calcareous particles had a previous existence in the vegetables used by the animal as food; but we may say the same of the particles of the blood, flesh, horns, &c. Besides, Dr. Priestley has shown that every particle of charcoal may be volatilized into inflammable air, with as great accuracy as any human experiment can be made; so that in this case the calcareous particles, if any such there were, showed themselves to be as much charcoal as the rest. In the 74th volume of the Philosophical Transactions, Mr. Watt has shown, that dephlogisticated spirit of nitre may be changed into the smoking and phlogisticated kind by means of red-lead or magnesia alba, as well as by charcoal; of consequence there can be no essential difference even there. In short, so wonderful and multifarious are the transforming or metamorphosing powers of nature, that every attempt to find out a substance upon which these powers cannot act, will be found altogether vain, and our best conducted and most plausible experiments, made with a view to discover the ultimate composition or what we call the elements of bodies, will be found mere inaccuracy, bungling and blunder.
75 These words are to be found in the M. S. Copies of his lectures circulated at Edinburgh. Dr. Black himself never published any thing to the world upon the subject.
76 Monthly Review, for 1790, p. 165.
77 Count Rumford was superintendant of boring the cannon in the workshops of the military hospital at Munich.
78 The quantity was two gallons and a quart, wine measure.
79 Dr. Priestley thinks water is an essential in the composition of air.
80 Irwin’s Voyage up the Red Sea p. 335.
81 At the time of writing his treatise Dr. Fordyce informs us, that he had been “for upwards of twenty years one of the three physicians of St. Thomas’s Hospital (in London) whose walls have contained nearly four thousand patients every year, where the proportion of fevers to other diseases is much greater than the general proportion.”
82
“An intense head-ach, uncommon giddiness, and a sudden loss of strength,
were the first complaints of those who were seized with this distemper.”
(Russel on the Plague at Aleppo, p. 230.)
83 This is expressly denied by Dr. Hodges, who had innumerable opportunities of seeing the distemper.
84 Though the writer of this Treatise was not at that time on the spot where this event took place, yet he has as good evidence as any one can have of what has not fallen under his immediate inspection, that these graves were opened, that the father of one of the young men died; and the mother of another, and one of the young men himself was taken ill with the eruption of boils on some parts of his body; but whether there was any person previously affected with fever in the neighbourhood from whom it might have been derived, or any thing which might have strongly predisposed those people to it, is unknown. It is indeed no easy matter to discover who was the first person affected with an epidemic, as no body chooses to own that either they, or any of their relatives were the authors of mischief, however involuntary, to the community. M. Chaptal, however, in his Elements of Chemistry, has some curious, as well as useful observations on the propriety of burying bodies in a sufficient space and at a sufficient depth; and on the accidents which may arise from opening vaults and burying grounds. An instance of this he gives of the ground of a church in Paris being dug up, which emitted a nauseous vapour, affecting several people in the neighbourhood.
From M. Chaptal’s observations it appears, that bodies do not soon dissolve in such a manner as to emit no disagreeable or noxious effluvia, when buried. M. Becher, he says, “had the courage to make observations during the course of a year upon the decomposition of a carcase in the open air. The first vapour which rises, he says, is subtle and nauseous: some days after, it has a certain sour and penetrating smell. After the first weeks the skin becomes covered with a down, and appears yellowish; greenish spots are formed in various places, which afterwards become livid and black; a thick glosey or mouldy substance then covers the greatest part of the body: the spots open and emit a sanies.” In such as are buried the decomposition is much more slow; our author thinks four times at least. According to M. Petit, a body buried at the depth of four feet is not decomposed in less than three years, and, at a greater depth the decomposition is still more slow. This decomposition is favoured by the presence of water, and likewise by some kinds of earth more than others. It has been proved by Lemery, Geoffroy, and others, that argillaceous earths have very little effect in this way: porous and light earths much more: the roots of vegetables also by absorbing the putrid effluvia contribute greatly to the final decomposition of bodies buried in places exposed to the open air; but in churches and other covered places the case is vastly different. “Here, says our author, is neither water nor vegetation; and consequently no cause which can carry away, dissolve or change the nature of the animal fluids: and I cannot but applaud the wisdom of government which has prohibited the burying in churches; a practice which was once a subject of horror and infection.
“The decomposition of a body in the bowels of the earth can never be dangerous, provided it be buried at a sufficient depth, and that the grave be not opened before its complete dissolution. The depth of the grave ought to be such that the external air cannot penetrate it; that the juices with which the earth is impregnated may not be conveyed to its surface; and that the exhalations, vapours, or gases, which are developed or formed by decomposition, should not be capable of forcing the earth covering which detains them. The nature of the earth in which the grave is dug, influences all its effects. If the stratum which covers the body be argillaceous, the depth of the grave may be less, as this earth difficultly admits a passage to gas and vapour; but, in general, it is admitted to be necessary that bodies should be buried at the depth of five feet to prevent all these unhappy accidents. It is likewise necessary to attend to the circumstance, that a grave ought not to be opened before the complete decomposition of the body. The term of decomposition is various; according to M. Petit of three years in graves of four feet, and four years in those of six feet. The pernicious custom which allows a single grave to families more or less numerous, ought therefore to be suppressed; for, in this case the same grave may be opened before the time prescribed. It is likewise necessary, to prohibit burying in vaults, or even in coffins.”