CREMATION AND ITS ALTERNATIVES. 225 



CKEMATION AND ITS ALTEEKATIYES. 



Br GEOKGE BAYLES, M. D. 



A SUBJECT upon which mucli earnest thought is concentred is, 

 that method of disposing of the dead which shall be in strict 

 accord with Nature's fixed intentions, and which shall not be delayed, 

 by artificial means, to the obvious detriment of our plainest sanitary 

 necessities. The only legitimate approach to a fair investigation of 

 this subject is by the broad sanitary road. The obstacles are numer- 

 ous and very serious by any other line of approach. There is a moun- 

 tain of sentiment, of a very pronounced kind, on one side ; a very for- 

 midable barrier of custom on the other; a rugged declivity of super- 

 stition in another direction, and a quagmire of indiflerence in another. 

 To level all opposition of reason, prejudice, and superstition, is the 

 work of the sanitarian. The chief appeal must be to that potent 

 and first law of Nature, self-protection ; and that law must be so j^ro- 

 claimed that, finally, a wholesome conviction shall take root in the 

 poj^ular mind that the sanitarian is right, and that every thing of a 

 purely etliical and sentimental nature must yield to sounder views and 

 practices than now prevail. This is, then, the true pathway to the 

 right understanding of this subject. 



Like all great reforms that have had their conception, their strug- 

 gle for existence, and their ultimate triumph, any reform that contem- 

 plates so radical a change in the treatment of the beloved and re- 

 spected dead is a work of time, and depends wholly upon an enlight- 

 tened conception of the subject for its general recognition and popular 

 development. 



The placid, benign, and often spiritualized features of the recent 

 dead, doubtless constitute a grave standing-ground of protest against 

 the immediate reduction of the body to the dust and ashes to which 

 the Almighty fiat has condemned it. There is something that savors 

 of more than ignorant superstition in the commonly observed solemn 

 hush in the presence of the body whose spirit has fled, in the super- 

 delicate handling of the corpse by loving survivors, though with these 

 manifestations of affection alone no sympathetic spirit would be in- 

 clined to quarrel. The scientific protest is not against the tribute of 

 respect bestowed by sorrowing friends, let it be expressed in ever so 

 many and ofttimes grotesque ways, while the body remains among the 

 living, but, as it can so remain only a very brief period, the scientific 

 protest is against all that in our modern times and civilized communi- 

 ties follows the social leave-taking of the dead. 



No available progress can be made in moulding public taste and 

 opinion upon this subject until scientific men are prepared to offer 

 some economical and effectual method which shall be decorous and 



VOL. V. — 15 



