658 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



trary of human continuity. The cemetery oiight, therefore, in every 

 city to be preserved and improved, as something indispensable to the 

 intellectual and moral improvement of the people. It constitutes an 

 interest of the first order, the care of which justifies all necessary 

 efforts and expenditures. With a large part of the public, however, 

 hygienic considerations far outweigh all the moral and social advan- 

 tages to be derived from the maintenance of cemeteries ; and, in justice 

 to the views of this class, it is proper to inquire to what extent the ex- 

 istence of cemeteries, in or near a city like Paris, can be dangerous to 

 the public health. 



The injurious effects attributable to cemeteries can be exhibited 

 only through the air, the soil, and the waters. Let us examine each 

 of the three cases. 



The air may be contaminated by the disengagement of poisonous 

 gases, or by the propagation of miasms. 



The decomposition of bodies in the earth is a real organic com- 

 bination ; its products are quite well known. The principal and most 

 abundant of them is carbonic acid, a substance that is generated by 

 the slow combustion of the carbon contained in all organic matter, 

 vegetable or animal, whether it be a blade of grass, a leaf, wood, ma- 

 nure, or a dead body. It may be disengaged from the soil in ceme- 

 teries, and most hygienists have till now considered it one of the prin- 

 cipal causes of their insalubrity. This is a mistake. We have on a 

 recent special occasion made an approximate calculation of the maxi- 

 mum quantity of carbonic acid that can be produced in the cemeteries 

 of Paris. The results of these calculations, which are based upon nu- 

 merous weighings of corpses made in several hospitals and on the most 

 authentic data of the chemical composition of the human body, show 

 that this quantity is infinitely less considerable than has been supposed. 

 The total weight of the bodies consigned each year to the cemeteries in 

 Paris is 1,389,000 kilogrammes (3,472,500 pounds). If all their carbon 

 were transformed (which is not the case) and disengaged as carbonic-acid 

 gas, they would furnish 1,257,000 kilogrammes (3,142,500 pounds) of 

 that gas in five years. Now, according to the calculations of M. Bous- 

 singault, we may estimate the quantity of carbonic acid produced in 

 Paris, by the respiration of men and animals and the different processes 

 of combustion, at 18,000,000 kilogrammes (or 45,000,000 pounds) in 

 twenty-four hours. The combustion of illuminating gas alone in Paris 

 (218,813,875 cubic metres) produced last year a quantity of carbonic 

 acid thirty-five hundred times more considerable than all the dead 

 buried in the cemeteries during five years could give at the maximum 

 rate of exhalation. The Grand Oj^era-IIouse alone gives out every 

 year thirteen times more carbonic acid from its gaslights than could 

 be disengaged from all the cemeteries put together, even if all their 

 carbon were converted into gas. 



After examining these figures, and comparing them with the very 



