18 



admission, showing they are alive to the dangers themselves. The 

 memorandum statts : — " Nuisance and danger to health may be occa- 

 sioned not only to grave-diggers and persons attending funerals, but 

 also to the inhabitants of houses in the neighbourhood of the burial 

 ground." 



They advise that no one should live nearer than 200yds. to a grave- 

 yard. 



They then speak of water-pollution, and state that, in order to 

 obviate risk, the cemetery should be at a sufficient distance from 

 subterranean sources of water supply, and in such a position in respect 

 to them that the percolation of foul matter from one to the other may 

 be impossible. 



I need not say more on the pollution of air or water, but will pass 

 on to what is of greater importance to my mini — namely, the property 

 the earth has of preserving for a long time the specific organisms of 

 boiies dead of infectious diseases. 



It is well known that these bacilli and their spores live and thrive 



in the earth, and, when we know that the body of every person dying 



of an infectious disease contains myriads of germs, we can easily 



imagine how cemeteries may become a source for the dissemination of 



he seeds of death. 



Mr. Wheelhouse, an eminent surgeon, of Leeds, records one case of 

 scarlatina germs germinating after 30 years : — "In a Yorkshire village 

 part of a closed graveyard was taken into the adj ining rectory garden. 

 The earth was dug up and scarlatina broke ouc in the Rectory, and 

 spread to the village. It proved to be of the same virulent character 

 that destroyed tbe villagers 30 years before, who were buried in that 

 precise spot." 



The late Sir Spencer Wells quotes a case where the "earth sur- 

 rounding the body of a man who died of yellow fever a year before 

 contained the germs of the disease. Animals placed in a confined space 

 along with some of the mould from this grave died in five days, their 

 blood and tissues being found crammed with the germs of yellow 

 fever." 



Pasteur has shown that the specific germs and their spores of anthrax 

 keep alive a long time in the earth. He examined the surface mould of 

 a grave where a diseased cow had been buried two years previously, 

 and although the carcase had been buried 7ft. below the surface, 

 and the earth had not been disturbed in the interval, he was able 

 to obtain the germs, which, when inoculated into guinea pigs, produced 

 anthrax. 



It has been argued by some, notably by Mr. Haden, that an " earth 

 to earth " system would get rid of many of the evils attached to our 

 present mode of burial, but while decomposition would be more rapid,. 

 it is more than likely that the germs immediately set free would be 

 more virulent than they would have been had they been closed up in 

 coffins for some years. 



It has been shown that the earth worm is instrumental in bringing to 

 the surface these germs, Pasteur demonstrated that the bodies of the 

 worms found over the cow's grave were full of germs of anthrax. 

 What is true of anthrax is true of all infectious diseaee, and more 

 especially of tuberculosis, typhoid fever, tetanus, leprosy, etc. If you 

 will only think of animals eating the herbage in graveyards, as we 

 sometimes see, and imagine the effect of heavy rains washing the earth 

 mould into streams, you will have some idea of a channel of infection 

 not generally thought much about. 



Darwin long ago told us that the whole earth surface in old pasture 

 land passed through the bodies of the earthworm in the course of years 

 burrowing deeply down in the dry seasons, and coming to the surface- 



