William Eassie

“ Fevers were classed of old as putrid diseases, and any one who has witnessed the prompt decomposition and the foul emanations of fever stricken beings, whether human or brute, can readily understand that it was no very India rubber like stretch of the imagination that led our forefathers to confound contagion with putrescence. ”

“ CREMATION OF THE DEAD. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. Cremation of the dead is neither new in theory nor in practice. In the England of modern times, however, the question has only recently assumed recognised importance. And the more one considers cremation, the more one finds himself wondering how it has come to pass that we practise burial, with its many faults, and do not burn our dead. Thousands amongst us are now beginning to feel thankful that the dead are soon to 'rule our spirits from their urns' in a realistic and not alone in a poetical sense. ”

“ But we may assume that an universal system of embalmment is undesirable in our times. There is no purpose to serve in withholding from nature her very own. Cases may be imagined in which the practice would be advisable; but, as a rule, the earth's surface is required for the living, not for the dead; and we have, at least here, no underground caves. Had the Egyptians lived in a damp climate such as ours, there would have been no embalming. It is not every country that is suited to the practice. ”

“ Disinfection is practised by fits and starts. With us it has been mainly a summer practice, when our nostrils encounter the smell off offensive matters. Contagion seizes a house, or a town, and for a time the sanitary inspectors, and the awakened people themselves, distribute even the most noxious disinfectants without system, and with the inevitable result of expending the most money with the least possible good result. ”

“ It is a matter of regret that those of our own poets who have been in favour of burning the dead did not enshrine their proclivities in verse. Southey, for instance, wrote that the custom of interment 'makes the idea of a dead friend more unpleasant. We think of the grave, corruption, and worms: burning would be better.' But he left us no poetry on the subject.
[27] It forms no part of my purpose to defend cremation against those who consider that its practice might lead to the commission of crime owing to the entire destruction of the body. ”

“ THERE are certain rules to be promulgated respecting the protection of human life from contagion, or from the injurious effects of decomposing organic matters, which may be gleaned from the experience of ages, and which as yet have never been laid down with sufficient clearness. ”

“ If every individual promoter, male or female, of fifteen years old and upwards—without reference to the possession of property in any way—would, in view of the uncertainty of life, place such a request in his or her writing-desk, cremation would speedily prevail. The change from burial will otherwise be a protracted one, since few persons have enough strength of mind to run counter to the general custom, fearing the indignation of other relatives of the deceased. The weakest persons, however, have still a greater repugnance to doing anything contrary to the expressed wishes of the dead. ”

“ Disinfectants are employed as deodorizers and as contagion destroyers. Such agents as carbolic acid prevent the decomposition of organic matter, and therefore favor a state of atmospheric purity; but carbolic acid is not a deodorizer. It makes, but it does not absorb or destroy, fetid vapors: and it is for this reason that M. Lemaire and others have recommended the use of carbolic acid in conjunction with sulphate of zinc, salts of iron, chloride of lime, and so on. ”

“ Nothing can apparently look more charming than a cemetery sparsely dotted with monuments, as, for instance, the Necropolis at Woking, seen from the railway station; but they speedily, far too speedily, fill. The cost of conveying bodies to these distant cemeteries must also be taken into account. In Vienna, where the city burial-grounds are 'more than full,' the question of conveyance to the new cemetery has provoked a great deal of angry discussion, and has been the means of bringing into notice several schemes for the transportation of the bodies to the site of burial. ”

“ It would be supremely foolish to object to the burning of the dead on the score of its being completely a heathen practice, and as if burial in the ground was not at one time open to the same objection. ”

“ It is desirable that a disinfectant should be an antiseptic—viz., an agent that arrests chemical change in animal or vegetable matters, and it must be a deodorizer, or capable of fixing the most noxious gases evolved. It has been erroneously believed that sulphuretted hydrogen is the principal deleterious gas which disinfectants have to encounter the worst kind of vermin to ferret out. ”

“ No natural outfall will exist, and the drainage-water must be pumped up, the bare idea of which is horrible. It will be near also to water-bearing strata, or to a reservoir. Long before decomposition has taken place, owing to the smallness of the site and the impossibility of obtaining any more land except at high building prices, the organic matter hidden out of sight will be far too large in proportion to the area. From the foregoing we may conclude that a proper site for a cemetery is not everywhere obtainable, and that serious mistakes must often be made. ”

“ Having attempted to show that disinfection must be an everyday practice in the household, and that disinfectants must necessarily be harmless antiseptic deodorizers, it is not difficult to establish a code of rules of almost universal application. There is a caution that should be given at all times in a household: Servants cannot be expected to understand the use of disinfectants any more than they can be trusted to carry out a system of ventilation. Disinfection and ventilation, therefore, should, to a large extent, be automatic processes and, happily, such things are to be found. ”

“ The aim of the Society is to promote the substitution of cremation for burial, by diffusing information on the subject, by co-operating with foreign Societies, and by raising funds to obtain an apparatus of the most approved kind, together with a suitable site, so that, for those who desire the performance of cremation after death, ample means should be available for the purpose. The letters of adhesion to the scheme which have been already received have come from every class of society, from Peers to the humblest commoners. ”

“ It is, however, necessary to learn that, in practising Disinfection, we have to neutralize the products of, or check the decay of healthy matter separated from living plants or animals, and that we have likewise to destroy specific elements of contagion, elements which differ in the various maladies that are known to be transmissible from the sick to the healthy. ”

“ Few have given more time and study to practical cremation than Professor Brunetti. This gentleman sent a case of apparatus to the Vienna Exhibition, and records his conviction—arrived at after five experiments upon human bodies—that the total incineration of a corpse and the complete [104] calcination of the bones by fire is, under ordinary conditions, impossible. He has tried various combustibles, gas retorts, closed vessels, and the open air, and has arrived at the conclusion that special apparatus is indispensable to the success of any attempt at perfect cremation. ”

“ Or if these questions are easily answered, why, if not for sanitary reasons, should any people have gone to the trouble and expense of cremation, when exposure or burial in the earth was so easy to perform and absolutely costless? [87]
When the necessity for cremation has once become a settled conviction with a people, nothing but the pressure of a conquering race or religion inimical to the practice will eradicate it. In parts of Madras where fuel is dear, the body is reduced to ashes with dried cow-dung and wood. ”

“ The actual process of burning here is simple and effective, and well suited for people amongst whom fuel is one of the dearest of the necessaries of life, besides being subject to a tax, which has been greatly mitigated by the present governor. A bed is prepared; it is said in the old [92] books that it should be as long as a man with his arm extended above his head, a fathom wide, and a space deep; it is also said that it ought to be on rising ground, so that the water poured on the ashes may easily run off. ”

“ The common practice with us is to allow about a quarter of an acre of burial-ground to each 1,000 head of population, where the soil is favourable; but some authorities double this allowance, and leave room for embellishing the ground. Wise cemetery companies also allow a space between each alternate row of grave-spaces, in order to prevent trampling. They, moreover, encourage the purchase of family freehold grave-plots containing three or six grave-spaces. It is true that the proprietors of the burial-ground profit by this payment in anticipation ”

“ The only exception is in seasons of epidemics or when the land is laid waste by famine. Among the better classes the dead body is laid unmutilated, save by the removal of the intestines, in a coffin, and it is more or less carefully embalmed, according to the time it is to be kept. If the deceased belonged to a private family of moderate means, the burning takes place from four to six days after death; if he was wealthy, but not high-born, the body may be kept a month, but never longer, while the remains of a noble lie in state from two to six months, according to his rank ”

“ Scarcely a year passes over our heads without adding to our list of cremation-practising peoples. Thus we have lately learnt that amongst the Gāro Hill tribes of Bengal, the dead are kept for four days and burnt at midnight within a few yards of their residences, the ashes being put into a hole in the ground dug upon the exact spot where the burning took place, and a small thatched building erected over the grave, which is afterwards allowed to fall to pieces. ”