Crematorium

“ The body, shrivelled up by a blast of hot air, is turned into a small handful of ashes, which can be preserved in an urn or buried in the ground, when its life is scattered through this world in the undying good or evil a man has helped to do. The Crematorium{218} enclosure has a close-packed show of tiny tombstones and dwarf crosses, that give a strange effect, as of a dolls’ cemetery, so inveterate is the desire for some visible memorial of our loved ones. ”

“ 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?”
THE CREMATORIUM AT BRESCIA.
(From Dr. Pini’s work.)
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. ”

“ In the 148retort are the ashes, consisting of pure oxide of lime.
It is plain from the above that the corpse does not come in contact with the flames, that is, the fire, in this apparatus. There is no burning. The body is simply oxidized, and the union of the oxygen and the organic matter composing the body is so complete that what nature has so perfectly formed in life appears to gently, quietly melt away in death, and becomes resolved into its original elements.
The record of the Davis furnace has been so far entirely satisfactory. The Lancaster crematorium contains two of these furnaces. ”

“ Most powerful of all in its favor is the prevention of premature burial. All these are on the side of cremation, and against it is but one—sentiment. It seems more beautiful to lay our friends to rest, softly pillowed, shrouded in satin, inclosed in rose-wood, covered with flowers, and of anything beyond we refuse to think. We erect the imposing marble, set out the blossoming plant, and carry flowers to the spot. The cemetery appeals more strongly to the sentiment than does the crematory. ”

“ At a burial there is but darkness, at a cremation rosy light unaccompanied by fustiness; the dead is really reduced to ashes, and with him the time-honored saying, “Peace to his ashes,” is not a hollow phrase, as it is with those who are interred.
Those who do not wish to miss religious and other ceremonies at incinerations may use any form of burial service they like, and those who desire to dispense with them may do so. And those who already have beloved dead in the cemeteries may rest by their side when the end is come, for the ashes can be interred as well as the body. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I rejoice at the thought that most writers on the momentous subject of incineration were medical men. Who, indeed, would be better qualified for such a task than the man who may daily witness the pernicious effect which the dead exercise over the living.
Those who are friends of the reform should come out openly in its favor. Crematists who are on the fence, or who, perhaps, hide back of it, might just as well keep out of the combat between cremation and interment altogether; we have no use for them. If you believe in cremation, candidly say so, and tell your friends why you believe in it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is an established fact that there is no certain sign of death, none but the beginning of decomposition. To prevent premature burial the body must be retained until the commencement of decay is visible. Incineration protects from the horrors of burial alive. Even if a person in a trance should be introduced into a cremation furnace, the intense heat to which the body would be subjected would extinguish life immediately and painlessly. ”

“ It consists of (1) a gasometer for the manufacture of the gas necessary to heat the furnace; (2) the furnace itself, with a regulator and a space for burning; (3) a chimney to take away the smoke &c. We may conceive a large, beautiful dead-house built for the purposes of cremation. In the midst, but invisible to those present, is a furnace. The funeral procession arrives at the house, and enters it the same as the churchyard is now entered. When the coffin has been placed on the tressel, and the usual ceremony ended, it is let down into the grave and disappears. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 128feature about this burial system, degrading to the dead and dangerous to the living.” ”

“ 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.
82The 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A stylish one is a beautiful sight; the poor, by making application to the police, are given the funeral car and passage for two persons free; the low and poverty-stricken class also hire the coffins, and when they reach the cemetery the corpse is taken out, wrapped in a serape and consigned to a hired grave—that is, they buy the grave for five years, at the end of which time the bones are lifted and thrown in some corner, exposed to the gaze of the public, in order to make room for new-comers, and the tombstones—then useless—are laid in one heap by the gate. ”

“ In these latter days when over crowded cemeteries and the levelling of graveyards in the midst of our metropolis have called forth the cry of "ashes to ashes, dust to dust," by some new means, and some means quicker than the old; when even cremation has come within the bounds of possibility, surely the Parsee mode of burial will commend itself to many foreseeing minds. True that we do not like to think of the vultures hovering around the funeral procession for the last few miles, nor of others awaiting it, perched on, and greedily gazing down into, the tower ”

“ The people of Burmah cremate their rich dead, and inhume the poor or consign them to a stream. Persons of rank are embalmed before incineration, and placed on exhibition in a convent or temple for six weeks. At the funeral, the body is borne in a coffin on the shoulders of men, who are preceded by female mourners chanting an epicede. The corpse is followed by the relatives. When the slowly moving train arrives at the pyre, which is commonly six or eight feet high, the remains are placed upon it; the wood of the funeral pile is generally laid crosswise, to bring about a stronger draught of air. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Not that alone, but cremation removed from earth the most horrible experience that can be endured by mortal man and that is premature burial. The practice of burying bodies is a relic of barbarism. Its horrors and possibilities are [166] without limit. No civilized community should tolerate it. Custom and tradition are the forces that maintain it. It does not possess a single point in its favor, while, on the other hand, there are scores of sound arguments against it.
No person who ever spent a minute in the fierce temperature of a crematory ever Can’t Bury them Alive. ”

“ 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 ”

“ When the people know how great are the evils dependent on burial in the earth, even when this is done under the most favorable conditions, how seldom these conditions can be secured, and, when the knowledge becomes general that when a human body which would require five, ten, or twenty years to slowly putrefy in any soil can in one hour be cheaply and inoffensively converted into a white ash, public sentiment must favor cremation in place of corruption, and for putrefaction substitute purification. The same religious ceremonial might accompany either mode of disposal of the dead. ”

“ If the relatives are too poor to afford the expenses incident to cremation, they bury the body, but exhume it for burning when their financial condition permits. On the day of the cremation, which is usually fixed by an astrologer, the remains are transferred from the jar to a wooden coffin and carried with much pomp to the meru, or place of cremation. When the deceased is of royal or noble blood the meru is frequently a magnificent structure, sometimes costing many thousands of dollars, built for the purpose and torn down when that purpose has been served. ”