The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-05-02
ASHES TO ASHES.
Cremation in its Sanitary Aspects. [By John o. Marble, M. D.l

[By John O. Marble, M. D.l
 Wise sanitation is now universally regarded as essential to the public well fare. The health and safety of the people is believed to depend quite as much upon preventive medicine as up- on curative. The subject of this paper is, par excellence, one of preventive medicine. Advances in pathology and therapeutics have mo more than kept pace during the past ten years with progress in sanitation, equally impor- tant and eff1cacious in the promotion of health and the saving of life.
 The proper method of disposal of the dead is one of the greatest, if indeed not the greatest sanitary problems of the day.
 MT, Eassie, Hon. Secretary of the Cremation society of England, to whom I am indebted for many facts relating to this subject, said at a sanitary coun- cil "I am In a position to guarantee facts, and having a lively acquaint- ance with the history of other sanitary reforms, I think it my duty to declare my opinion that the problem what to do with the dead transcends in impor- tance every other sanitary question"
 shall endeavor to demonstrate the dangers to the living, from the preva- lent custom of earth burial, and the hygienic advantages of cremation over the time-honored, but always and eve- rywhere unsafe practice.
 It is an unprofitable, as well as an impossible, task to trace back to their origin either cremation or earth burial. Inhumation had certainly not the most honest origin If, as we are told, Cain buried his brother to conceal his crime. It is a disputed point when urn-burial was first adopted even by the Greeks. The Iliad account of the funeral rites of Patroclus and Hector is, I believe, the first mention of incineration in Greek literature. Rome in her earliest history, according to Pliny, practised earth burial, yet at that early period cremation was also g. custom as stated by Ovid During the Trojan war cre- mation appears to have been adopted that the remains of dead heroes might be restored to their native land. We are told that Hercules burnt the body of Argius, because thus only could he return the remains of the son to his sorrowing father.
 Homer causes his dying hero faint ing at the approach of death, to say: An, leave me not for Grecian dogs to
 tear!
 The common rites of sepulture bestow TO soothe, a fathers and a mothers
 woe;
 Let their large gifts procure an urn at
 least
 And Electors ashes in his country rest.
 Neither is it certainly known whether incineration was originally adopted on sanitary grounds, yet it appears proba- ble from the fact that 1t was generally resorted to after great battles. It is an undisputed fact, however, that in the fourth century after Christianity be- came established, cremation fell into disuse, inhumation becoming thereafter the more general custom throughout Europe. Whether this was due to the fact that Christian people desired thus to distinguish themselves from the so- called heathen or pagan nations, as is claimed, or to the absurd idea that burning the body would interfere with its final resurrection, concerns us little al the present day.
 The battle of the torch and spade has been waged in earnest in modern times | since the year 1873, when Professor Brunefti, at the International exposi- | tion in Vienna exhibited his samples of l the results of scientific < cremation. | Previous to that date, skirnishers had | appeared at intervals with more or less Influence ever since good old Sir Thom-