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W. H. GKIBBLE. 
hundred or one thousand years, according to circumstances; 
it is simply the process of burning, a process which, during 
life, supports it, and which after death continues, until no part 
of the material composing that life remains. Mausoleum, 
metalic coffins, hermetically sealed cases, only retard the work; 
but, sooner or later, cases and bodies alike must yield to the 
life-supporting oxygen. Sir Henry Thompson says no dead 
body is ever placed in the earth without polluting it; so that 
after burial the bodies of those dying of contagious or infec¬ 
tious diseases are still a source of d. nger. The plague of 
Modena, in 1828, was shown by Prof. Bianci to be due to ex¬ 
cavations made among the burial-places of those dying @f 
plague three hundred years before. In 1843, a small town in 
England was almost depopulated by disease caused by using 
the rich soil of an old cemetery to enrich their gardens. The 
cholera of London, England, of 1854, is believed by men of 
science to have been caused by upturning the soil where 
were buried the plague-stricken of 1665, nearly two hundred 
3^ears previous. In 1853, during the epidemic of yellow fever 
in New Orleans, the mortality of one certain district reached 
the enormous per cent, of nine-twentieths, nearl}’ one half the 
population of that district, being double the death-rate of any 
other part of the city, and in this district were three large 
cemeteries, in which, the year previous, more than three thous¬ 
and bodies had been laid to rest. Dr. Freire gathered dirt a 
foot under the surface over the remains of a person dying of 
yellow fever a year or more previous, and found, under the 
microscope, that this dirt was full of ) 7 ellow fever germs. 
Dr. Koch, of Germany, and Dr. Carpenter, of England, state 
that the blood of animals dying from splenic fever may be 
dried, pulverized and kept for years, and still the disease germs 
survive, with power to produce that dreaded disease. Dar¬ 
win, as early as 1837, showed the agency of earth worms m 
raising from below to the surface, and Prof. Pasteur’s experi¬ 
ments have proven that earth worms bring to the surface 
myriads of bacteria from decomposing dead, that positively 
contain the specific germs that propagate disease. Some 
sheep dying of anthrax were buried very deep in the field 
