The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-05-09

ports that the putrid enanations from Pere-Lachaise, Montmartre and Mont parnasse have caused frightful dis eases of the throat, levers and diar- rhoea, to which numbers fall victims
 every year, and that these fatal dis
 eases have been traced to vitiated air
 and water, and rage with greatest vio- lence near cemeteries.
 So great a. thinker as the Earl of Bea-
 consfeld, whose knowledge was con- fined to no one science, and who was 1 ahead of his times in more respects
 than one, said in the House of Lords, in 1880, What is called Gods acre is not adapted to the times in which we live nor to the spirit of the age, The grave yard is an institution very prejudicial to public health, and the health of the people ought to be one of the first con- alterations of g. statesman. The time has arrived when safer method of dis posal of the dead should be instituted" Jew or Christian, the sentiment Is cred itaIble to the memory of Disraelt.
 The distinguished bishop of Manches- ter, referring to the consecration of a cemetery, said in the same year. T feel convinced that very soon we shall have to face the problem how to bury our dead out of sight, with safety to the living. hold that the earth was made for the living, not for the dead. No in- telligent faith can suppose that any Christian doctrine can be affected by the manner in which, or the time in which, this mortal body crumbles into dust and sees corruption, The question must be met, for cemeteries are becom- ing not only d. difficulty and a great ex- pense but an actual danger"
 The general consensus of opinion of sanitarians the world over, adverse to earth burial, Is the surest proof that the practice is dangerous to survivors. It would almost seem that Shakespeare was inspired by a prophetic sanitary wisdom when he referred to
 The very witching time of night.
 When graveyards yawn. and hell Itself
 breathes out
 Contagion on this world.
 All the horrible results and disgust ing details of poisoning from the buried dead are admitted, but it Is claimed by some that they occurred in the days of intramural interments, and that abol- ishing that custom terminated the dan ger. Nothing could be more false. Re moving cemeteries to a distance only postpones the evil, and, while safer for us, entails upon those who come after us legacy of pollution, disease germs and death, with which they will justly reproach us, and which we ought to be wise enough to prevent while We have the power. The very men who claim that earth burial is safe and that grave yards are harmless when removed to a distance, go on to recommend different methods of averting the very dangers which they claim do not exist. One ad- vises planting groves of trees to absorb the deleterious gases, apparently aware that it is only the absorbent power of vegetation which renders the afr over cemeteries at all tolerable Another would leave them bare that the winds of heaven may sweep over them with purifying influence. Have they forgot ten that in most growing cities and towns the present suburbs will soon be built over, and that the sanitary pre- cautions recommended in connection with burial in the earth are seldom, if ever, fully taken? Such inconsistency is inexcusable, since the weight of evi- dence, especially during the past ten years, shows that inhumatfon of dead bodies is always and everywhere peril ous To postpone or ignore the danger (excusable perhaps in batchellors) is of fathers of children for the fact that the future will some day be the present, makes it the object of so- licitude to all unselfsh humanitarians to-day.
 Continued in our issue of Thursday next)