CHEMICAL SCIENCE. 203 



with this exception, the contained air was nearly alike in all, being 

 composed of nitrogen, carbonic acid, common air, and animal matter in 

 suspension. When ammonia was present, it overcame every other odor ; 

 when absent, the smell resembled that of very putrid moist cheese. 

 The result was the same, whether the interment had been made a few 

 weeks, or a century and a half previously, and whatever the cause of 

 the decease, or the age at which it took place. Out of all the coffins ex- 

 amined, but twenty of the leaden ones had been bulged by the pressure 

 of the gases generated in the interior. This is only about one out of a 

 thousand, and shows that the gases are formed very slowly. Mr. Lewis, 

 besides his own investigations, made diligent inquiries of all the clergy, 

 churchwardens, sextons and undertakers in every parish, and could not 

 ascertain that a coffin had ever been known to burst suddenly from the 

 pressure of the confined air. When one becomes bulged, or, as the 

 sextons say, " blown," it is customary to make a small aperture in it, 

 to which a torch is applied as an antidote to the noxious effects of the 

 escaping gases. Several persons, whom Mr. Lewis consulted, had heard 

 of cases in which the gases caught fire ; but, after searching inquiry, 

 he could not find one who had ever seen them burn. 



Mr. Lewis' experiments were confined to vaults and catacombs, 

 where the process of decomposition goes on under very different circum- 

 stances from those that attend open exposures or interments in the 

 ground, and it is only concerning them that we can draw our inferences 

 which are, that the deleterious emanations that haunt these deposi- 

 tories, may continue for a hundred years after they are closed ; they 

 are not rendered noxious by poisonous gases generated during the pro- 

 cess of decomposition, but by the animal matter itself, with which, if 

 ventilation is not allowed, the air finally becomes saturated ; that nitro- 

 gen and carbonic acid, holding animal matter in suspension, steadily, 

 but quietly, make their way through the pores of lead coffins, and, bv 

 some means, to the open air, so that, at the end of fifty or a hundred 

 years, nothing remains but a few dry bones, though the coffins are still 

 sound and unruptured. What their effect upon the living constitution 

 is, Mr. Lewis sufficiently experienced in his own person. First, upon 

 exposure, came nausea and vomiting, then diarrhoea, and the next day 

 throbbing pain in the upper part of the head, great prostration, utter 

 loss of appetite, and an unpleasant earthy taste in the mouth. After 

 continuing^ his investigations for a long time, he was attacked by a 

 series of biles, followed by erysipelas. 



The complete decomposition of a corpse, and its resolution into its 

 ultimate elements, takes place in a leaden coffin with extreme slow- 

 ness. In a wooden coffin, the remains, with the exception of the bones, 

 vanish in a period of from two to five years. This period depends upon 

 the quality of the wood, and the free access of air to the coffins. But 

 in leaden coffins, fifty, sixty, eighty, and even a hundred years are re- 

 quired to accomplish this. "I have opened," says Mr. Lewis, "a 

 coffin, in which the corpse had been placed for nearly a century, and 

 the ammoniacal gas formed dense white fumes when brought in con- 

 tact with hydrochloric acid gas, and was so powerful that the head 

 could not remain near it for more than a few seconds at a time." Mr. 



