Richmond planet. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1883-1938, 1890-05-10
WHERE TO LAY HIM.
A New System of Burials Proposed
Every body to be EntOmbed i'm a
Vault-Rev.T reats'PrOpositiOn.

Rev. Charles r. Treat, in his
pamphlet Sanitary Entomb-
ment; the Ideal Deposition of the
Dead" says:
1t is strange thing that the
time should have to come to attack
the churchyard in its use for the bu-
rial OF the dead; but it is really far
more strange that the churchyard
should have come to be one of man s
most deadly foes. This, however.
every thoughtful man will have to
admit TO be true, and this will make
easy what otherwise would have bc en-
impossible for tender or rcverent
mind
AS general statement, it will suf-
ice to quote the words with which
Lord Beaconsfield denounced the
churchyard in the House of Lords. in
1880; What is called Gods Acre is
not adapted to the times in which we
live or to the spirit of the age. The
churchyard is an institution preiudi-
clal to public health and the health
OF people ought TO be one OF the
considerations OF a statesman. The
time has arrived when a safer dispo-
sltlon OF the dead should be institu-
ted"
la view of such a statement. and
OF many more that come readily to
mind that have been made instrong-
er terms, and most of all in view of
the TACT that the agitation against
the churchyard has been maintained
Tor more than hundred years. il is
amazing that this use should die so
hard; and as we survey the past, it
VIII amaze us more to be compelled
TO confess that the churchyard has
been made mans foe by civilized and
Christian menl
To this the reply is easy and con
vincing; that, if the dead endanger
the living when the population is
dense, they certainly also endanger
them when the population is sparse.
The danger is only diluted. it still
exists, and it ought to alarm us lust
as truly when few are imperilled as
when many are. As lovers of our
kind, as claiming to be humane. we
can no more Indifferent to the dan
ger OF a lew than to the danger of
many. True philanthropy has no
sliding scale by which to .guage
her gifts. And if the evils of
earth-burial issue from the fact that
a lifeless body is buried in the earth.
then these are not escaped and can
not be, unless the dead are buried at
such a distance from the living that
the living can never come in contact
with the earth lin which they lie, or
breathe the air, or drink the water
which they pollute. Therefore the
question, as to the effect upon human
OF our cemeteries, can be considered
settled III the casesof all that are not
remote from the habitations or the
approach of men; and such cemeter-
les, as we know are few, andthey are
not the cemeteries which lie upon the
borders of our great cities.
To strengthen this general posi-
ton it be sufficient to quote the ia,
miliar but weighty assertion of Sir
Henry Thompson: "No dead body is
ever placed in the soil without pol
luting the earth, the air and the wa
ter above it, and the testimony of
DIR. Holland, who speaks as the op-
pOnent of Ithis reform and the
antagonist OF Sir Henry Thompson,
that the best situated cemeteries NAV
be so mismanaged as to become
unsafe: that cemeteries shO uld not be
too near dwellings,; that they should
not be OvercrOwed; that the soakage
from them should be carefully guard
ed against: and that wells near bu-
Fairgrounds are unfit sources of
drinking water; and the declaration
OF the French Academy of Medicine,
that the cemeteries of Pere-la Chaise,
MOntmartre, and Montpar. asse. once
suburban, now intramural, are the
cause of serious disorders OF the head
and throat and lungs, that result in
the loss of many lives; and to note
the experience of Brooklyn, half-gir-
died with graves, of which the editor
of The SANITARIAN does not hesitate
to assert: "Typhoid-fever s taking
one year with another, increasing
prevalent in Brooklyn, and it is, in
our Judgment, probably due for the
most part to sewage-pollutiOn of the