applied to Public Cemeteries. 97 



deposited coffin ; and, to make sure of this, there ought to be a protectin"- 

 stone, or slate, to be hereafter described, deposited when the grave is being 

 filled, at the height of 6 ft. above the last coffin, under a severe penalty. It 

 is only by some regulation of this kind, that burying several coffins in deep 

 graves can be conducted without injuring the health of grave-diggers; and 

 without the gas, which escapes from the earth brouglit up, endangering the 

 health of those who may be occasional spectators. 



In the years 1782 and 1783, when the disinterment of the burying-grounds 

 of Les Innocents in Paris took place under the direction of some eminent 

 French chemists, these philosophers endeavoured to analyse this gas, but were 

 unable to procure it. Fourcroy, speaking in tlieir name, says : — " In vain we 

 endeavoured to induce the grave-diggers to procure any of this elastic fluid. 

 They uniformly refused, declaring that it was only by an unlucky accident 

 they interfered with dead bodies in that dangerous state. The horrible odour 

 and the poisonous activity of this fluid announce to us that if it is mingled, as 

 there is no reason to doubt, with hydrogenous and azotic gas holding sulphur 

 and phosphorus in solution, ordinary and known products of putrefaction, it 

 may contain also another deleterious vapour, whose nature has hitherto 

 escaped philosophical research, while its terrible action upon life is too 

 strikingly evinced. These Paris grave-diggers know," Fourcroy adds, "that 

 the greatest danger to them arises from the disengagement of this vapour from 

 the abdomen of carcasses in a state of incipient putrefaction." (See Aimnles 

 lie Cliimie, vol. v. p. 154,, as quoted in Walker's Grave-Yards, p. 86. ; and 

 Vre's Diclio?iar7/ of Chemistri/, art. Adipocere.) 



While this inflation from gas is going forward, the aqueous part of decom- 

 pofiition, a " fetid sanies," exudes from the body, and sometimes, when inter- 

 ment is delayed too long, to such an extent as to drop from the coffin 

 before it is taken out of the house. This exudation, as already observed, is 

 greatly accelerated and increased by putting quicklime into the coffin. In the 

 free soil this fetid sanies is diffused by the rain in the subsoil, and carried 

 along in the water of the subsoil to its natural outlet, or to the wells which 

 may be dug into it ; and thus, while the gas of decomposition poisons both 

 the earth and the air, the fluid matter contaminates the water.* 



* Speaking of the infectious agency in the houses in the neighbourhood of 

 that part of London called Fleet Ditch, Dr. Lynch observes : — " The great 

 primary cause is, that the privies are in geneial under the staircase of the 

 wretched hovels of the poor, and the sulphuretted hydrogen, and the carbo- 

 nated hydrogen, and the noxious gases there generated, are the same gases as 

 are generated from the dead bodies in a state of decomposition; for the eva- 

 cuations from the body are decomposed animal and vegetable matter, and a 

 dead body is the same, it is decomposition of the dead body, or a general 

 state of disorganisation, and that produces exactly the same kind of gases. 

 There have been instances mentioned, where people have fallen down dead 

 from a rush of those gases in a concentrated form." (Report on Health of 

 Towna, &c., p. 161.) 



If the public were fully aware of the dangerous nature of the gases which 

 proceed from the decomposition of dead bodies in crowded churchyards, and 

 in vaults and catacombs, and of the poisonous nature of the water of de- 

 composition, 



\. They would not live in houses bordering on churchyards, which, though 

 already full, are still used as burying-grounds. 



2. They would not drink the water of wells dug in the vicinity of burial- 

 grounds, whether in town or country ; because, though the filtration of the 

 soil will purify the water from matter suspended in it, it will not free it from 

 what is held in solution. 



3. They would not attend service in any church or chapel whatever, in 



H 3 



