Sacramento daily record-union., 1883-09-22

discovered that the alarming spread OF yel-
low fever there recently was due to the
soil Of the cemeteries where fever victims |
were buried, and that it was positively |
alive with microbian organisms identical
with those elected by the fever patients.
He took soil a foot from the surface
over the body of fever victim who had
been buried full year and found it
thick with yellow fever germs. The plague
of 1928 at Modena is admitted to have
been caused by excavations made where
plague victims three hundred years prior
to that date were buried. In New Or.
leans, in the great epidemic of yellow
fever in 1853, the mortality in the Fourth
District rose to 452 of every thousand
people; or double that Of any other dis
trict. In that district, however, were
three large cemeteries in which. the year
before, 5 GEO fever victims were inferred.
The London Lancet says no more deadly
carrier is known than the water of wells in
cemeteries, which is always sparkling
because of the nitrates and nitrites fed to
it by the neighboring graves. Washington
Square in New York was once a cemetery.
The city had the bodies removed and the
ground turned into park. But to this
day dense blue haze rests on the ground
of calm mornings, and physician who
lived years on its borders declares that it
is impossible to raise children on the lower
floors Of houses around the park. Science
has proven that this haze testifes that the
decomposing dead so saturate the soil that
for long years thereafter it gives of poi
sonoEs emanations. When we consider
these facts, which are, let it be borne in
mind, not to be denied since they are in
controvertibiy established, we must con-
clude that cremation is the more Christian
method of diAposing of our dead. No fire
touches the body; the heavy cost of
funerals is reduced to a minimum the
preservation of the ashes of the loved one
is possible to the poorest, and the
One of the leading undertakers of New
York, who has in his time buried thou
sands, is 30 convinced that many are buried
alive, because of the means taken TO pre-
serve the body by the lee and other pro-
cesses, that he has left orders and made all
arrangements for the cremation of his body
after death. a strong argument in favor
of cremation is the ease and cheapness with
which family ashes may be gathered and
ly die thousands of miles apart. Crema-
tion would stop the sequestration of land
for burial purposes that should be produc-
ing life instead of spreading death. Nearly
1000 acres of land of the best quality is
thus condemned in the vicinity of New
York and Brooklyn. If we cling to earth
burial at this day, in the light of scientific
revelation, it is because of the tradition of
mound and monument and the sad grave of
the churcbyard, and our reluctance to
adopt what we look upon as heathenish
substitute. If the heather were wiser
than we, we should be brave enough to
acknowledge it. The men of Israel buFned1
the body of the fallen Saul and buried his
ashes at the root of tree, and the kings
of old were honored by cremation at death.
The Egyptians mumifed their dead, and |
now the ships of the century carry the
crumbling bones by the ton to England to |
be used as soil fertilizers, SO certain is it |
that earth must return to earth. |
While the Hebrews buried their dead, !
we know that they practiced incineration. |
So, too, the Greeks both buried and |
burned, as did the Romans, until Chris
tianity substituted for the custom the one
loathsome rule of rotting the body in the
ground to aid the destruction of the liv. !
ing, and sent the practice down the ages to
US. and to which we cling for no better
reason than that we are ashamed to take
the cleanlier and altogether better path,
because our feet are accustomed to tread
the old. The time is very near at hand in
many of our great cities, which came to
london years ago, when. though the
churchyards were filed in on top of the
graves of hundreds of years, the noxious
gases burst asunder the weighty earth, and
poisoning the atmosphere. spread diaease
and death far and wide. Then our cities
in the light of sanitary science, will lead
in the establishment of cremation, and in
time the practice will take the place of the
burial custom, and thus we shall step over
the body of Christianity back to the ages
when the ancients knew better than we do
now, and burning their dead preserved the
ashes Of loved ones safely in funeral urns,
instead of mourning over the decomposing
remaine in noxious graveyards.