(JKEMATION. 83 



economise area, gi-aves are dug 15 to 20 feet deep. These are filled 



by piling the iload to within a few inches of the Hurface. Were an 

 inquiry held, such as would bo instituted by a Royal or a Parliamentary 

 Commission, into the internal economy of our public cemeteries, the 

 result would probably startle the public into dcmuiidiiig an imnuvliate 

 change. 



A local paper I'ecently stated that — "Some terrible discoveries 

 as to the causes of the rapid spread and lengthened stay of epidemic 

 diseases in places where the principles of sanitary sepulture are imper- 

 fectly understood or not acted upon, have just been made by Dr. Freor, 

 an eminent physician of llio de Janeiro. That city is just recovering 

 from the ravages of a very deadly visitation of yellow fever, and Dr. 

 Freor, in his imjuirics into the causes of the epidemic, came upon 

 a dreadful fact that the soil of the cemeteries in which the victims 

 of the outbreak were buried was positively alive with microbian 

 organisms, exactly identical with those found in the vomitings and 

 blood of those who had died in the hospitals of yellow fever. From 

 a foot under the ground he gathered a sample of the earth overlying 

 the remains of a person who had died of the fever and had been 

 buried about a year before, and though it showed nothing remarkable 

 at first appearance, he found to his horror when he placed it under 

 the microscope, that it was thickly charged with these disease germs. 

 Many of the organisms were making spontaneous movements ; in 

 efi'ect, therefore, the cemeteries were so many nurseries of yellow 

 fever. Every shower of rain washes the soil and the fever seed which 

 is so thickly sown in it into the water-courses, and distributes 

 the poisonous germs all over the town and neighbourhood. ' Each 

 corpse,' says the doctor, ' is the bearer of millions of millions of 

 organisms that are specifics of ill. Imagine what a cemetery must 

 be in which the new foci are forming around each body.' How 

 terribly fatal these germs are is proved by the fact that the blood 

 of a patient injected into a rabbit killed the animal in less than 

 an hour, and the rabbit's blood injected into a. guinea-pig killed 

 it in about the same time, and the guinea-pig's blood injected into 

 another rabbit was also fatal, so that the chain of destruction is 

 apparently endless." 



Round these spaces devoted to the dead, the living accumulate, 

 until only the greater area distinguishes them from the surcharged 

 burial-grounds of town churches. By submitting the dead body to a 

 much higher temperature than that which Nature finds sufficient for 

 her purposes, it is rendered perfectly harmless to the living, presenting 

 hygienic advantages which must make its adoption only a question of 

 time. 



Burning the dead formed a part of that wonderful civilisation of 

 ancient Greece, to which we owe so much, and which will long hence 

 be viewed with undiminished admiration. Excepting in the case of 

 overheated haystacks and such artificial conditions, natural decom- 

 position rarely occurs at a temperature high enough to destroy animal 



