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[Vol. XX. No 500 



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CREMATION OF CHOLERA CORPSES. 



BY ALBERT S. ASHMEAD, M.D., LATE FOREIGN MEDICAL DIRECTOR OF 

 TOKIO HOSPITAL, TOKIO, JAPAN. 



Japan has almost everything, or believes that it has almost 

 everything, to learn from us; but there are a few things 

 which it would be wise for us to consent to learn from Japan. 

 The Japanese, a prey from time to time, like all Oriental 

 countries, to cholera epidemics, and, having the cholera 

 always with them endemically, have early found out that 

 the cholera corpses should be burned. 



There are in the city of Tokio six crematories. They are 

 not only destined to the incineration of cholera corpses; for 

 cremation is imposed as a religious duty by a number of 

 Buddhist sects. In the oldest cemetery in Japan, that of 

 Koya-san, near the great waterfalls in Wakayama-Ken, 

 700 English miles south of Tokio, cremation has been prac- 

 tised, as is generally believed, as a religious rite these 1200 

 years. 



Naturally, the rite of incineration had no difficulty in that 

 country in passing from the religious conception to a sani- 

 tary application. The first sanitary cremation edict was 

 issued by the government in 1718, during an epidemic which 

 seems to have been very destructive. Japanese documents 

 speak of that period with trembling awe; 80,000 a month 

 died in the city of Yedo; undertakers could uot make coffins 

 fast enough : grave-yards were all filled up. The Japanese 

 are singularly struck by the idea that the men who worked 

 at the cremation furnaces after sunset were themselves 

 changed into smoke before sunrise, and that the tomb stone 

 cutters of a day found (horribile visu .') their own names 

 carved on the morrow's tombstones ! Finally the priests of 

 all the sects united in asking for a general application of the 

 cremation rite; ashes alone, they said, should be buried; at 

 every burial-ground mountains of casks discouraged the 

 diligence of the grave-digger; a multitude of corpses (the 

 Japanese documents have the simplicity to add that they 

 were mostly poor persons) remained unburied for weeks. 

 The Japanese have long believed that this was a cholera epi- 



demic, the first that ravaged ih^ fertile siveet-flag plain; but 

 that is a delusion. Cholera paid them its first visit more 

 than a hundred years later. It was then that the i-eligious 

 character departed once for all from the cremation rite; for 

 the government, seeing that the fire was too slow, ordered 

 the bodies, wrapt in mats and quick-lime, to.be sunk into the 

 sea; cremation ever after was only a sanitary operation. 



In the past thirteen years there have been 456,080 reported 

 cholera patients in the Empire; of these .303,466 died, that is, 

 66|- per cent. Every one of these corpses has been burned. 

 Under police regulations, in the city of Tokio, there may be 

 eight public crematories (of course, this has nothing to do 

 with the private establishment of each Buddhist burial- 

 place), placed outside of the city-limits. The law requires 

 that they shall be constructed of brick and large enough to 

 burn at least twenty-five corpses at a time. Each furnace 

 must have a chimney over thirty feet high. Each crema- 

 tory is expected to have a separate furnace for burning dis- 

 charges, and a separate disinfecting room. This furnace is 

 to be of brick and capable of incinerating at least twenty-five 

 casks (bushels) at a time; its chimney must be thirty feet 

 high. The law requires further that the disinfecting com- 

 partment shall be divided into two spaces, one a bath-room, 

 not for the corpses, of course, but for persons suspected of 

 harboring the disease; the other a fumigating place. Crema- 

 tion can only be performed from sunset to suurise; the 

 corpses are not stripped of their clothing, and are one and 

 all accompanied by their burial certificate. 



In the Buddhist cemeteries cremation is thus performed. 

 The corpse is brought in a square wooden box or barrel (the 

 regular Japanese coffin) in a sitting position, according to 

 the national custom. A hole in the ground with sloping 

 sides awaits it, at the bottom of which are two stones, up- 

 right and parallel; across the top of these stones fire- wood 

 and charcoal are piled. Around the corpse, placed upon the 

 pile, a circular wall is built up, formed of rice-straw and 

 chaff, perhaps to a height of five or six feet, and the wall 

 itself is wrapped in wet matting, which during the whole 

 operation is continually moistened. The fire is kept up 

 during twelve hours, after which the ashes and bones are 

 picked up with chop sticks by the oldest represeutative of the 

 family, enclosed in a funeral urn, and buried after seven 

 days of various religious obseKvances. 



It is most regrettable that cremation has not with us that 

 religious origin which recommended it first to the Japanese. 

 Reason and good sense have never proved such strong 

 foundations; otherwise the advisability of the cremation of 

 cholera corpses would have occurred to us long ago. It is 

 useless to object that these precautions do not preserve Japan 

 from cholera epidemics. The disease is kept up there by 

 causes which cannot be reached by cremation. The houses 

 are built in unhealthy places, they are squalid and in every 

 way insalubrious; the water is wretched, infected by im- 

 purities dropping from ill-kept closets. There would be no 

 end, if we tried to enumerate all the causes of disease, which 

 render the wisest precautions useless. None of these causes 

 exists in our western countries, and the cremation of cholera 

 corpses would have yielded its whole sanitary benefit. If 

 we burned our corpses, the bacillus would be destroyed effec- 

 tively; in Japan, the dejections of the living, contaminating 

 the well-water, the system of promiscuous public bathing, 

 etc., keep it alive in spite of the cremation. 



When the cholera, some years back, made its appearance, 

 not in New York, indeed, but in its harbor, — that is, in the 

 quarantine station, — having been brought by an Italian 



