596 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



we may have done of harm to others during life. But, "being de- 

 ceased, I take it we can have no wishes or feelings touching this sub- 

 ject. What is best to be done with the dead is then mainly a ques- 

 tion for the living, and to them it is one of extreme importance. 

 When the globe was thinly-peopled, and when there were no large 

 bodies of men living in close neighborhood, the subject was an incon- 

 siderable one and could afford to wait, and might indeed be left for 

 its solution to sentiment of any kind. But the rapid increase of 

 population forces it into notice, and especially man's tendency to live 

 in crowded cities. There is no necessity to prove, as the fact is too 

 patent, that our present mode of treating the dead, namely, that by 

 burial beneath the soil, is full of danger to the living. Hence intra- 

 mural interment has been recently forbidden, first step in a series of 

 reforms which must follow. At present we who dwell in towns are 

 able to escape much evil by selecting a portion of ground distant — in 

 this year of grace 1873 — some five or ten miles from any very popu- 

 lous neighborhood, and by sending our dead to be buried there — lay- 

 ing by poison nevertheless, it is certain, for our children's children, 

 who will find our remains polluting their water-sources, when that 

 now distant plot is covered, as it will be, more or less closely by hu- 

 man dwellings. For it can be a question of time only when every 

 now waste spot will be utilized for food-production or for shelter, 

 and when some other mode of disposing of the dead than that of 

 burial must be adopted. If, therefore, burial in the soil be certainly 

 injurious either now or in the future, has not the time already come 

 to discuss the possibility of replacing it by a better process ? We 

 cannot too soon cease to do evil and learn to do well. Is it not indeed 

 a social sin of no small magnitude to sow the seeds of disease and 

 death broadcast, caring only to be certain that they cannot do much 

 harm to our own generation ? It may be granted, to anticipate objec- 

 tion, that it is quite possible that the bodies now buried may have lost 

 most, if not all, their power of doing mischief by the time that the 

 particular soil they inhabit is turned up again to the sun's rays, 

 although this is by no means certain ; but it is beyond dispute that the 

 margin of safety as to time grows narrower year by year, and that 

 pollution of wells and streams which supply the living must ere long 

 arise wherever we bury our dead in this country. Well, then, since 

 every buried dead body enters sooner or later into the vegetable king- 

 dom, why should we permit it, as it does in many cases, to cause an 

 infinity of mischief during the long process ? 



Let us at this point glance at the economic view of the subject, for 

 it is not so unimportant as, unconsidered, it may appear. For it is 

 an economic subject whether we will it or not. No doubt a senti- 

 ment repugnant to any such view must arise in many minds, a senti- 

 ment altogether to be held in respect and sympathy. Be it so ; the 

 question remains strictly a question of prime necessity in the economic 



