Cremation

“ 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. ”

“ There are many things to commend cremation aside from the pretty Indian fancy that fire, the purifier, completes the deliverance of the soul from its long-time prison of flesh, and by the smoke and ascending heat forms a path on which the spirit ascends to its home in the skies, or, as one tribe has it, the soft, warm chariot conveys the released and purified soul toward the sun. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the words of the learned rector of the University of Padua, Professor Coletti: “Man should disappear and not rot; he should no more be transformed into a mass of corruption—the source of filthy and injurious exhalations—than into a grotesque mummy, a shapeless mixture of pitch, resin, and perfumes; man should become a handful of ashes and nothing more.”
“Would not cremation rob nature of its supply of ammonia?” ”

“ One of the great advantages of cremation—apart from all sanitary conditions—lies in the swift restoration to Mother Nature of the physical elements composing the dense and ethereal corpses, brought about by the burning. ”

“ Cremation is humane, healthful, and, most of all methods, consonant to the natural impulse of Christianized veneration for the dead; serving and honoring that impulse by preventing the exposure of the dead to those visible elemental and chemical conditions and operations which breed a revolt of the feelings, and tend to surround the subject with an atmosphere of abhorrence. ”

“ 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 Fourth Medical Congress held at Milan on the 5th of September, 1877, endorsed cremation, stating that it is a veritable scientific progress which has the advantage over inhumation in corresponding to the exigencies of hygiene. It also expressed its conviction that incineration in no way offends against the affection of families for their defunct, the respect and veneration for human remains, and the religions principles of the surviving. ”

“ The cremationists of to-day, who propose to substitute a decent æsthetic and sanitary mode of disposal of the dead for the present harmful and loathsome custom of inhumation, are repulsed, met by sentimental objections, are even called monsters without religion, without reverence for the dead.
But the apostles of incineration are as far removed from striving to suppress and murder such sacred feelings as is Dan from Beersheba. On the contrary, they believe that cremation is far more conducive to a pious veneration for the dead than interment. ”

“ When the corpse has been cremated the funeral party returns to the house and the next two days are spent in feasting and dancing. After this, the widow bedecked with the trappings of woe proceeds to the cremation ground. All groan loudly and weep as they pick up the bones left by the flames. As a sign of mourning they merely get their hair cut. ”

“ If the guardians of consecrated sepulchres, in which people have paid an honest fee to be buried, are to dig them up and cart them off as in England, or make a show of them as here, why, I can only say that cremation will gain a good many converts. Any one would prefer urn burial to the chance of being thus made a spectacle. So good, too, it must be for the rising population to take off the edge of any salutary horror they may feel at death and decay, or of reverence for the dead. ”

“ It is evident that to be buried as Christ was, Christians would have to be deposited in rock-hewn tombs.
The assertion of certain religious fanatics, that cremation interferes with the Christian doctrine of the resurrection, proves untenable enough when one but remembers that both interment and incineration lead to the same result; namely, to the total destruction of the body. In the case of cremation this takes place within an hour; in earth burial the process may last for centuries until completed. ”

“ We, the undersigned members of the British Medical Association, assembled at Cambridge, disapprove the present custom of burying the dead, and desire to substitute some mode which shall rapidly resolve the body into its component elements by a process which cannot offend the living, and may render the remains absolutely innocuous. Until some better mode is devised we desire to promote that usually known as cremation. ”

“ There is no condemnation of cremation in any of the dogmatic teachings of the apostles. The early Christians, whether in Judæa, Greece, or Rome, were mainly of the poorer classes, who had to bury their dead. The mere fact that the richer and more educated classes, who were the most difficult to proselytize, universally practiced cremation would probably cause that custom to be associated with their other heathenish practices. ”

“ An English Catholic pointed out that cremation would once more enable us to bury our dead in the churches, not only in the crypts of the sacred edifices, but also along the sides of the body of the churches.
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher had a word to say about cremation in a recent sermon of his. He thought that the universal Christian teaching of the resurrection of the body would prevent any general acceptance of it while that teaching prevails. Of course, a man of a “classical” education cannot reject incineration altogether, especially when he considers it from a hygienic point of view. ”

“ The subject of incineration is already awakening much interest among us, as is evinced by a recent sermon of that eminent New York divine, Rev. Heber Newton, who spoke strongly in favor of the substitution of cremation for sepulture. He said the mode of disposing of the dead human body was only a form, and that mode was best which was best for the living. In England, only a few years ago, a dignitary of the national church dared to assert that cremation endangered the belief in the life to come. ”

“ These few remarks upon the cremation of human bodies have as yet referred only to those which have succumbed to the ordinary evils of life; but I cannot forbear recording my conviction that it would be wise in the stricken field to have recourse to the practice. During the sittings of the recent International Sanitary Congress a paper was read by Professor Reclam of Leipzic, in which he most strongly urged the adoption of cremation after destructive battles. ”

“ Among the many advantages gained by cremation the principal are that it entirely prevents any attempt at partial and unnatural temporary reunion of the principles, or any endeavour to make use of the corpse for the purposes of the lower magic — to say nothing of the many dangers to the living which are avoided by its adoption. ”

“ The greatest foe incineration has to contend with is the widespread antipathy against it, entertained and nursed by people who are governed more by sentiment than by reason. Which is the most poetical mode of disposal of the dead, cremation or burial? ”

“ But if we are to follow the prototype so closely, why do we practise burial in the earth? And why do we not lay our dead in roomy sepulchres? [14] I have perused most, if not all, of the religious objections which have been urged against cremation, and I humbly say that they appear to me to be outside the pale of argument altogether. They rank only as very respectable crotchets, and never rise above mere sentiment. The truth is, that the question of burying the dead or of burning them ought never to have been made, if ever it has seriously been made, a religious question. ”

“ The chief work on the subject hitherto published in America is that of Professor Frazer, [166] and must have considerably enlightened the nation as to the true merits of cremation. It is not very long since a Persian gentleman in an Eastern State, who wished to burn the remains of his dead wife, was personally assaulted by an ignorant mob and compelled to resort to ordinary burial. [167] But several cases of cremation of human bodies have been performed in America. [168]
In England several attempts have been made from time to time to popularise the idea of burning the dead. ”

“ It has been also a subject of regret to me that their remains lie so far off. I care little for the fate which happens to their bodies; and yet, had such a practice as cremation 220been in use, it would sometimes have been a comfort to feel that I had their ashes with me. Collected in an urn, they might either repose in columbaria, like those at Rome, or in a mortuary chapel in my own house. ”

“ 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. ”

“ During the period we are considering, both inhumation and cremation were practised, sometimes together. The placing of the interments was as diverse as the forms and construction of the barrows. For the moment we will confine ourselves to the inhumated class. In the simplest mode of burial, the body was laid on the ground and the mound heaped over it. But often, perhaps usually, something was done to fence it in, or to protect it from the material of the mound. ”

“ No more grave robberies in the twentieth century. The old style of burial becomes a back number. Popular errors about Cremation removed. Undertakers at a discount. Costly funerals discouraged. Funeral etiquette in 1999. No person buried alive in the twentieth century. Sacred memories of the dead still jealously treasured. “Rented graves” and other burial abominations of the nineteenth century are forever banished.
The great innovation of the twentieth century which long rankled within the human breast, but finally uprooted and conquered prejudice, was cremation. ”

“ The rule was that cremation and inhumation alike were means to the dissolution of the dead and their complete severance from this world, and the motive which prompted living men to seek that end was love of the dead who would in some way benefit thereby. ”

“ As cremation gradually superseded burial, the idea took shape that the soul might have an existence of its own, altogether independent of the body, and a place of abode was assigned to it in a hole in the centre of the earth, where it lived on in eternity with other souls. ”

“ As the widow often leaps from the pile, and is chased back again, into the flames, by the benevolent Bramins, the fagots, which are not heaped around the pile, but “laid on the bodies,” cannot be a very oppressive load; and the quantity, thus employed in the suttee, is for the cremation of two bodies, at least, the dead husband, and the living widow.
There can be no doubt of the superior economy of cremation, over earth-burial. ”

“ Some have advocated burial at sea; others, and among them Sir Seymour Haden, have pressed forward the advantages of using perishable coffins, wicker baskets, and the like—a suggestion as excellent as it is economical, for the sooner the earth and the body meet the better it is. Perhaps, in this scientific generation, some one may invent a totally new method of disposing of the dead, which will commend itself both to those who advocate cremation and to those who dislike it. ”

“ Do not believe that the practice is in any way opposed to religion, for such a belief has no anchorage in truth. And in order to practically bring nearer to us the time when our much-enduring mother earth shall no longer be systematically poisoned, all those who are favourable to the institution of cremation should forthwith put [126] into writing their desire that their remains shall not be buried, but shall be consumed according to the method of cremation best attainable. ”

“ Those who have tried to propagate the idea of cremation in an underhand way have invariably failed; the public must be brought face to face with the question: cremation or burial? To spread the 263reform in this country, I hope to see, before long, the birth of an American cremation association, to be composed of delegates from the various cremation societies of the United States. There is already a sufficient number of societies for the formation of a vigorous organization of the kind, that would undoubtedly aid greatly the progress of the reform. ”