Chapter II (2)

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.”

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.

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.’”

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.

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.