Improvements in and connected with Coffins.
Year: 1899

page_text: Date of Application, 6th June, 1899--Accepted, 24th Feb., 1900
COMPLETE SPECIFICATION.
Improvements in and connected with Coffins.
I, JEAN LOPEZ CRUZ, of 15, Place due Progreso, Madrid, Spain, Chief of Spanish
Telegraph Corps, do hereby declare the nature of this invention and in what manner
the same is to be performed, to be particularly described and ascertained in and
by the following statement:-
This invention relates to improvements in and connected with coffins.
All the works on public hygiene acknowledge the extraordinary importance of
the sanitary precautions necessary in cemeteries with regard to public health;
cemeteries being naturally the primary cause of various diseases and terrible
epidemics.
Science has almost done nothing in that direction but to acknowledge its direct
influence upon public health.
Corpses with their morbid germs and putrid emanations are often the sole
cause.
The coffin keeping the corpse as a repository of such dangerous germs, has a
direct bearing upon the question and may be sufficient according to conditions
to solve the problem.
This is what is demonstrated in a scientific paper I had the honour to read and
to discuss in the IXth International Congress of Hygiene held in Madrid in 1898,
(which paper will be shortly published and officially delivered after having been
translated into several languages) and my studies and experiments have succeeded
in convincing the said Congress that I have absolutely solved the question of
healthy cemeteries, by the use of the coffin invented by me and hereinafter
described. These coffins have already been recommended twice in Spain by the
Royal orders issued in the official Gazette. (It should be mentioned that such a
recommendation of an industrial product is most uncommon). Moreover the said
coffins have received an award at the International Exhibition of Hygiene in
Bordeaux and at the IXth Congress held in Madrid as I have already mentioned.
besides having been approved of and praised by other scientific authorities who
have examined it.
The aim of hygiene is to reduce the corpse to the skeleton as speedily as possible
isolating at the same time as far as possible the infectious centre.
In order to facilitate the reduction of the corpse to the skeleton, it is necessary
to make the coffin of porous material, such as of any kind of soft wood, which being
not impervious allows a certain amount of heat, atmospheric moisture and oxygen
to enter the coffin which hastens the developement of the germs in the corpse by
which it will be reduced.
For this reason in lieu of hard and dense wood, which have already been
prohibited in Spain. I use wood such as pine, poplar or deal.
Wood injected with creosote of coal (heavy oils) according to experiments made
in England, France and Belgium, and to the informations and data given by me
at the IXth Congress of Hygiene, has been conclusively proved to withstand decay
for a period of 30 years at least,

page_text: The same end is attained by the injection of 2 per cent. sulphate of copper
which as well as the injection by creosote of coal, is effected by Bethel's system,
which consists in performing the injection in a vessel under a pressure of about
6 atmospheres, whereby no smell is caused. The creosotation itself delays the
decay a little at the beginning, the sulphatation is in no way detrimental and is
preferable in a case where the corpse may require exhuming after a short time,
say for interment elsewhere.
A coffin thus injected therefore isolates the centre of infection without inter-
fering with the reduction of the corpse to the skeleton and in such countries as
certain parts of America, India, etc., where terrible diseases and epidemics spread
as soon as emanations of a corpse are allowed, the coffins I have invented, will be
of an utmost necessity.
Having now particularly described and ascertained the nature of my said
invention and in what manner the same is to be performed, I declare that what
I claim is
1st. The use of creosoted wood or of wood injected with an antiseptic sub-
stance for the making of coffins, substantially as and for the purpose set forth.
2nd. Coffins partly or wholly constructed of creosoted wood or of wood injected
with an antiseptic substance, all substantially as and for the purpose set forth.
Dated this 5th day of June 1899.
F. BOSSHARDT & Co.,
4, Corporation Street, Manchester, Agents to Applicant.