, 1888-09-04
COMPRESSED HUMANITY.
Rur ming "a Man Through a Hydraulic
Press-Cheaper Than Cremation.

Ru ming IA Man Through a Hydraulic
Press-Cheaper Than Cremation.
Material, a dead body. Process, com.
preston. Result, a paper weight.
This is the programme mapped out by
an inventive genius in Pittsburg. He is
q doctor by trade, and therefore can
speak with authority of the destiny of
his patients. His name is Cooper. If
his idea .'goes, " he will make a barrel
out of it. His apparatus is a combina-
ton of steel presses and hot rollers-a
sort of rolling mill on a small scale.
There is little sentimentality about the
operation, but it is effectual.
a human body is put in at one end and
taken out at the other in the shape of a
paper weight. In other words, the
enormous pressure excludes all moisture
from the body and congresses it to a
fraction of its original bulk. The body
of a full grown man can thus be reduced
to a cube of one foot as hard and i'm
perishable as marble. DR.. Cooper asks
nobody to take his word for all this. In
this respect he is like the man who owned
a hen which he said laid two e e a day.
"If you don't believe it, ~ said he, ''there's
the hem" When DIR. Cooper runs across
a skeptic he takes him by the arm, leads
him into his study, and beamingly points
On his center table to what appears to be
~ cross fashioned of the purest marble.
"There," he exclaims, sis the remains
of a child converted by my process into a
handsome and valuable ornament. Taste
it-you will find it tasteless. Smell of it
you see it is odorless. Try it with a
knife-it is lard as marble. And, what's
more, 1 can turn out just as neat a job
every time"
Chicago people who ought to have in.
telligent ideas on the subject are puzzled,
and hardly sny two think alike. The re-
porter first asked the doctors about it.
One said fatty that it couldn't be done,
that compress the human body as much
as you pleased it would still be animal
matter, and therefore ~perishable, and a
second pronounced it a hoax. A third
did not doubt the possibility of the reduc-
ton of bulk by pressure, but insisted that
a chemical change would be necessary
before anything like the result claimed
could be obtained.
The chemists were divided in opinion.
Nothing" said one, sis impossible
nowadays, especially in the way of
hydraulic compression. I saw a brief
dispatch on the subject this morning, and
L saw at once that the idea was practical
BILE. By employing sufficient pressure
and there is no limit to it-all moisture
cay be eliminated from the residuum and
the particles SO closely cemented as to be
air and moisture proof, and therefore
practically indestructible. No chemical
change is necessary"
Other chemists made light of it, and
pronounced it nonsense of the rankest
kind.
One of the oldest undertakers in the
city took in the situation at a glance.
'Practicablei" said he; ''of course,
and easy and simple besides. There is a
great deal of solid matter in the human
body. Take the blood, for instance. In
a body weighing $50 pounds one-thir-
tenth of the weight is blood and 20 per
cent. of the blood is solid matter; this
gives you about two and one-third
pounds to start with. The muscles
weigh seventy-seven pounds and quite a
proportion is solid matter. The skeleton
weighs twenty-one pounds and eight
ounces, and here the proportion of solid
matter is large. Compression will reduce
everything to solid matter, which would
be in~destructible, without the necessity of
any chemical change. In embalming the
principal thing we have to contend with
is the liquids of the body. Exclude
these thoroughly and the remainder will
last indefinitely, just as mummy does.
1 don't know how much the residuum
would resemble marble, but by the in
PRODUCTION of coloring matter any desired
effect could be produced just as easy as
any shape. Cheaper than cremation? 1
should hope SO. 1t takes three hours to
cremate a body; they use 81 worth of
gas, and charge $50. If we put 81 into
a casket and charged $50 people would
say we were robbers. Chicago Tribune.