294 CREMATION AS A SANITARY MEASURE. 



devotees filled the highways from Palestine to the gates 

 of the city. By a heavenly vision the resting place of 

 the Martyr Stephen was revealed to Lucien and the re- 

 mains were taken up and removed to a church built in 

 their honor on Mount Sion, where the learned St. Angus- 

 tine makes special mention of over seventy miracles per- 

 formed by the relics of St. Stephen, of which three were 

 resurrections from the dead. These things are mentioned 

 merely to show what state of mind controlled the mem- 

 bers of the early Christian church and to show how 

 firmly earth burial became founded upon prejudice and 

 religious superstitions. It is a sanitary question and not 

 a religious one. Our sanitary welfare and our natural 

 affections are alone involved in the final disposition of 

 the dead, and the method that is most conducive to 

 public health and the requirements of human love is 

 assuredly the best. In some instances there is much 

 sentiment involved regarding the perpetuation of the 

 graves of loved ones, but cannot the same care be be- 

 stowed upon the resting place of the pure ashes left after 

 cremation as upon the putrefying body, for from the 

 very moment the vital spark abandons the living body 

 putrefaction begins its slow and loathsome process ; it 

 gradually X-)asses through the different phases of putrid 

 decomposition too horrible to behold or even describe, 

 until all the constituting elements of the decomposing 

 body are finally set free by a slow and dangerous process 

 of combustion. This process has been known to last, ac- 

 cording to circumstances, especially according to the 

 nature of the soil in which it takes place, ten, twenty, 

 fifty and even hundreds of years. While this slow and 

 horrible process is going on, every particle of matter 

 around it is being saturated and infected with these germs 

 of disea,se and death. This pollution of earth, air and 

 water takes place more readily in certain soils than in 

 others. For instance, in Louisiana, where the atmos- 



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