ON THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 
171 
stituted only as a fancy process, in which the few who considered 
it a costly luxury might indulge. But applied to all the dead, 
it would in the course of ages become a direct robbery from 
the resources of the planet — a robbery as great, to use the illus- 
tration of Dr. Mohr, as that of the coal-fields which is now so 
extravagantly in progress. 
There is yet another objection to the process of cremation, 
which, hard and painful as it is, must still be admitted. The 
objection is, that the method of complete destruction by fire 
would conceal many cases of death from modes of death that 
are not lawful. On this point all who are best acquainted with 
the details of medical jurisprudence are unanimous. They tell 
us that, even under the system of burial in the earth, some 
murderers, who silently ply their awful crimes, skilfully escape 
justice. Give then to these criminals more advantage, let them 
know that evidence of their infamous work may be absolutely 
removed if they can only convey their victims legitimately to 
the furnace, and they will be emboldened beyond all measure that 
has heretofore existed. To meet this objection, which no one 
doubts is valid, it has been suggested that in doubtful cases 
portions of the viscera should be retained — should not, that is 
to say, pass into the fire. If this were done, however, it would 
only meet a part of the requirement of the analyst who, when 
once his analytical work commences, may demand for its com- 
pletion the whole of the soft tissues of the body ; neither 
would it meet a much more important requirement, viz. that 
the body be . not too hastily destroyed. In all the instances 
where an order for exhumation of the dead has gone forth, and 
these are the very cases now under consideration, the suspected 
murderer has so skilfully evaded suspicion that he has succeeded 
in consigning the body to the earth. What then if, instead of 
the earth, we were to let him consign it to the fire ? Gould 
we by any known device give a better means of escape from 
detection ? The medico-legal authorities are not wrong in this 
view which they take of the extreme danger of cremation. They 
know already too many instances in which, even with the pro- 
tection afforded by retention of the bodies of the dead in the 
preserving earth, the law has failed to seize the guilty hands 
that laid the bodies there, to be sanguine in favour of a process 
of disposal of the dead that shall act as a further temptation 
to the wicked for deeds of secret murder. 
The advantages claimed for cremation are that it is a sound 
sanitary protection ; that it removes instantly the decompos- 
ing mass of the lifeless and useless body ; that it is less 
objectionable to the mind than the process of burial; and that 
its adoption, by doing away with that reverence — it may be said 
superstitious reverence for the dead which now exists — would 
