The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-05-17
ASHES TO ASHES.
Cremation in its Sanitary Aspects.
EBy John 0. Marble, NJ. D., in the Urn.l

is impure milk. The water for dairies
 appears to be of more importance than
 the supply of food (and I have no ref
 erence to the cupidity of the average
 mtlkman). have personal knowledge
 of cases of enteric fever believed to
 have had their origin in milk produced
 by cows pastured near an old ceme-
 tery, the water which they drank be-
 ing supplied by springs very near it.
 Thus even milk may not always be a
 safe beverage, The fabled founders
 of Rome have been considered wise in
 their choice of a sanitary source of sup
 ply; but even that galactophorous wolf
 may possibly not always have drunk
 from the same babbling stream with
 the etoried lamb. but from some Roman
 pool of doubtful purity.
 In view of what has already been
 shown, I venture to assert that earth
 burial Is only an evil, and that con-
 tinually. No spot of ground accessible
 and convenient for present use as a
 cemetery can be found which will not,in
 the future, be liable to be needed and
 used as the residence of man; and the
 indefinite persistence of graveyard pol
 lution has been, I hope, abundantly
 proved.
 Professor Pumpilly has ascertatned
 by recent experiments that sandy soil
 interposes absolutely no barrier be-
 tween wells and the bacterial infection
 from cemeteries and casspools lying ev-
 en at considerable distance from
 them. Indeed, he claims further that
 "dry gravel and coarse sand do not
 prevent the entrance into houses built
 upon them, of those micro-organisms
 which swarm in the ground air around
 lealy cesspools, near graveyards, and
 in the filthy made land of cities" Not
 even the filters employed in the labor
 atories have been quite successful in
 preventing the passage of those many
 named microbes which are now recog-
 nized as the cause of the transmission
 of disease.
 So well recognized is the fact of the danger of the poisoning of water by graves that laws exist in France pro hibiting the opening of wells within one hundred yards of any place of bur ial; and in some of the German states it is forbidden by law to dig wells near CT than three hundred yards to any grave; and at hygienic council, held some time ago in Brussels, 1t was de- cided that the safe protective distance should not be less than four hundred yards. In our country am not aware that any such laws exist. In Philadel- phta, three cemeteries estimated to con- foI I,1 cit aea fn be liable to drain into the Schuylkill, above Fairmont dam, whence Is drawn the city's water supply. The "Centen- nial diarrhoea," so-called had a cause other than exhaustion from too much sightseeing. Many eminent sanitar- ians now believe that cause was grave yard pollution of water, drunk by strangers unaccustomed to 1t.
 However extravagant or exaggerated the statement may appear to persons who are welded to old custom, 1t Is as- serted, without fear of successful con- tradiction, that the poisoning of earth, air and water by corpses placed in the ground to putrefy and decay is now q S undeniably proven, and upon as unim- peachable authority, as is the deadly effect of the bite of the rattlesnake or the rabid dog, or even of too large a dose of arsenic or strychnial Though this proof is abundant and accessible, certain persons, who take pride in skep- ticism is an evidence of wisdom, will not believe it though an angel from heaven were to declare it to them. Ar gument is wasted upon such men now as in Scripture times.
 It may appear that the title of this paper should have been more appro- priately "the dangers Of earth-burial," but may reply that in demonstrating such universal and inevitable dangers, not only at present. but for posterity, I have proved the urgent necessity for | cremation, for, so far as Is yet known, all other proposed or piactised methods | of disposal of the dead are defective | and impracticable, in our country at | least. They have little to recommend | them anywhere. Exposure" practis- | ed by the Parsees and other tribes of | India, the body being left where 1t can | be devoured by wild beasts or torn by | birds of prey, seems cruel barbarous, | and Is not even desirable in a sanitary view, for I am told by my friend pr. Peabody of Worcester, who has lived | in Bombay, that the vultures frequent ly dropped large masses of flesh where they became offensive to the inhabi- tants. We are hardly ready to erect towers Of silence" or to suspend our dead upon the limbs of trees to be dis \ posed of in such a manner The Hin doos expose their dead upon the banks of their sacred river, to be the prey of their river monsters. Burial at sea is only one form of exposure, for marine animals soon devour the corpse.
 Embalnling, mummifying, or desiccat- Ing, as practised by the Egyptians for ages, is disgusting, imperfect and un- Such effort to preserve -he body is always partial, the result ng object being horrible, ghastly and to behold. The sight of ,uch of these ancient relics as I have in the Smithsonian insti- .ution at Washington, in the Museum if the Royal College of Surgeons in ( london, and elsewhere, is quite enough o disenchant anyone who might aspire h Q have his dead body set up in that { ,doriferous and obsolete style. Be- I tides the immense numbers that have I )een destroyed, it is estimated that here are still about ten millions of