The cremation of the dead / considered from an aesthetic, sanitary, religious, historical, medico-legal, and economical standpoint

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.

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

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”:—

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.

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?”

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.

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.