The Nevada picayune., 1885-07-30
The Progress of Cremation.

The people of Buffalo have taker
 hold of the business of providing z
 crcmatory with excellent judge
 ment and superior energy. The
 lot purchased is 1Sl feet front and
 l50 deep. The temple is to De
 after the Italian style of Joseph
 Venini of Milan, and probably he
 will come to this country and super
 wise the erection of the apparatus
 The external design will probably
 be left 10 the artists who choose to
 compete tor the contract. The
 Venini process produces such a
 perfect combustion that the final
 products which escape from the
 chimney have neither color nor
 odor. In other words, a person
 watching outside the crematory
 can detect nothing, and of course
 it follows that there is nothing
 offensive about it. The time occu-
 pied in reducing the body to pure
 white ashes varies from forty-Gye c to seventy-tiye minutes.
 It is not creditable to the spirit of enterprise displayed by our citi- zens in so many ways that greater progress has not been compelled in the efforts to secure a crematory here. We arc likely to have tue cholera in this country next year, and it is idle for New Orleans to hope to escape. If it strikes any point in the valley, 1t will be prccipitated upon us by the river, and we cannot quarantine the wa ter of the river, There are two which we can take in advance: One is to bore artesian wells and obtain water from q depth far below the possibilities of filtration of impurities from the surface; the other is the erection of public crematory, a matter which cannot be attended to in haste, and yet will be hurriedly badly wanted, if the chol- era comes. The water can be had, if we will bore deep enough; our believe that as soon as we have bored down to the orange sand or drift formation we will possess an enduring supply of the purest water. The people in Spain who drink artesian water alone are so lightly afflicted with cholera that it is scarcely possible to say that they have it at all, If our city is once supplied with arte' sian water in abundance, we may regard ourselves as fairly secure against cholera, and well supported against yellow fever. Pure water is powerful weapon against tev- CTS of many sorts. The great val ue of the crematory will be the sure means afforded by it of the i'm destruction of contamina ted matter; it can be used to con- vert other contamination besides that for which it is originally de- signed into harmless ashes. This year is an especially favorable time for the erection of a cremator because of the imminence of a chol era year. The actual presence of the scourge would convert the whole city to cremation in a single week; and consequently if the tenn pie is 10 depend on fees for prop. CT maintenance, the best time to build it must be a time when it's use will be enlarged by the spe- cial value of it in epidcmics. But really the project should not be permitted to stand on a business basis, dependent on pecuniary re- suits; tho fact that this city has more real need of cremation as a permanent measure of sanitation than any other city in the United States has, should place it at once upon the high plane of public need, like water works, sewer system, etc. New Orleans Plea yune.