^6 



the preparation of new generations destined to devastate the city. 

 A significant fact to which Mr. Corbett refers is that few or 

 no cases have occurred among the shipping in the port, and that 

 this immunity is attributed to the efi'ect of a police regulation 

 by which vessels are obliged at this seasoii to move to some 

 distance from the shore."* If cemeteries are the nurseries of 

 these germs of disease, if water be the vehicle by which they 

 are most easily distributed, and if the situation of our churchyards 

 and cemeteries favours their distribution, a clear case is made out 

 for the resort to some other method for the disposal of the remains 

 of those who, having done their work for good or ill, should 

 not be permitted to illustrate in this way that "the evil that 

 men do lives after them," the good being "oft forgotten with 

 their bones." 



"UTien such facts as these to whicli I have called your 

 attention are mentioned, at once the recollection goes back to 

 curious outbursts of disease when the remains of those plague- 

 stricken have been disturbed, and to the incidents of which 

 these facts supply a natural explanation. That greater evils have 

 not arisen from cemeteries is due to the fact that hitherto they 

 have not reached that terrible condition of the graveyards in 

 London and elsewhere, which caused the passing of the Extramural 

 Interment Act. TiU the sponge becomes absolutely saturated 

 it holds all the water; saturate it thoroughly, and the slightest 

 pressure causes the contents to exude. How thoroughly the 

 sponge must be saturated in such cemeteries as the Tower Hamlets, 

 and many other of the older metropolitan cemeteries, I leave you 

 to judge. We may be on the verge of some terrible outbreak, 

 of which the few dropping cases of epidemic are but the first 

 evidence. The first rocket that went off at Woolwich the other 

 day was followed by a volley of death-dealing missiles. It needed 



* "Daily News," 2nd October, 1883. — Yellow-fever fungus. Doctor Domingo 

 Freire, of Rio Janeiro, the discoverer of the yellow-fever fungus, crypto- 

 coccus xanthogenicu?, has made the experiment of transferring this 

 fungus into the system of animals by injection, and has obtained satis- 

 factory confirmation of his theory. The inoculated animals, after a very 

 short time, showed all the symptoms of yellow-fever, and, on dissection, 

 their blood was found to be full of germs of cryptococcus xanthogenicus. 



