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CREMATION 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER MODES OF SEPULTURE. 
 
 BY 
 
 R. E. WILLIAMS, A.M 
 
 " Omnes homines terra et cinis sunt." — Ecelesiasticus xvii. 3^. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
 
 1884. 
 

 Copyright, 1884, by R. E. Williams, A.M. 
 
 LC Control Number 
 
 tmp96 028665 
 
PEEFAOE. 
 
 Inhumation, the practice of burying the dead 
 in the ground, is no doubt a custom deeply in- 
 trenched in the honest convictions of some and 
 in the equally honest prejudices of others. To 
 some the custom seems to be sanctioned by Chris- 
 tian doctrine, and it is certainly favored by those 
 sentimental associations which ancient usage has 
 established between mortality and the grave. In 
 fact, religion, poetry, and rhetoric may be said to 
 have combined their forces in defence or in main- 
 tenance of the custom. All persons of ordinary 
 information are, however, aware that in the last 
 few years weighty objections to the practice of 
 inhumation have been pressed upon public atten- 
 tion in a manner which entitles them to respect. 
 These objections are, for the most part, grounded 
 in that superior knowledge of sanitary science 
 which distinguishes the present age. They have 
 been most earnestly insisted upon in the coun- 
 tries of Europe most advanced in science and 
 in civilization, Germany, Italy, France, and they 
 have been generally put forward and commended 
 by men of science, often physicians eminent in 
 their profession. And it may be added that the 
 
 3 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 objections have engaged most attention and re- 
 spect among persons whose special knowledge, 
 theoretical or practical, best qualified them to 
 grasp the full significance of the facts and rea- 
 sonings involved. 
 
 Dr. C. Gr. Hussey, of Pittsburg, whose long 
 career as a man of business has lessened neither 
 his early love of science nor his interest in its 
 " application to the relief of man's estate," sug- 
 gested the attempt made in this little volume to 
 discuss the subjects of interment and the substi- 
 tution of a better method. Taking earnest in- 
 terest in the reform and regretting that it has 
 not been more agitated in this country, he not 
 only procured the preparation of the essay, but 
 furnished for it hints in the form of facts and 
 arguments. 
 
 No apology can be needed for the freedom 
 with which the subjects of burial and cremation 
 are here treated. The writer has tried to say 
 clearly and frankly what he thinks, happy in 
 enjoying the felicity (ages ago called rare by a 
 great writer,* though now common) of being 
 able to exercise such liberty without fear of any 
 very serious consequences. 
 
 R. E. W. 
 
 Pittsburg, Penna., February 4, 1884. 
 
 * Kara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis, et qua* 
 sentias dicere licet. — Tacitus, Hist. i. 1, 
 
CREMATION 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHEE MODES OF SEPULTUKE. 
 
 MODES OF SEPULTURE. 
 
 In putting the dead out of sight, mankind 
 must always have been more or less influenced 
 by their notions respecting the nature of life or 
 the soul. If in the early ages they regarded 
 death as the end of all, they must have looked 
 upon the corpse of their fellow-man as mere rub- 
 bish, at once offensive and defiling, of which 
 they might properly rid their dwelling in what- 
 ever way seemed to them easiest or most expe- 
 ditious. As a matter of fact we know that such 
 was not the practice of primitive man, whether 
 of the higher or the lower races, no trait of 
 those ancient nations being better attested than 
 their care for the dead. Their care for the dead 
 was evidently inspired by a psychology which 
 owed nothing to the speculative genius of meta- 
 physicians or to the researches of physiologists. 
 
 1* 5 
 
6 CREMATION. 
 
 This psychology was the simple product of the 
 popular mind, and whatever development it un- 
 derwent in some cases should be credited to the 
 poets or to the theologians rather than to the phi- 
 losophers. In its earliest form or simplest ex- 
 pression it can be most clearly traced among the 
 Greeks. In the twenty-third book of the Iliad 
 we are enabled to look directly into the early 
 Greek mind, and see how it regarded the dead 
 and their relation to the living. 
 
 Achilles, grief-stricken by the recent death of 
 his beloved friend Patroclus, and "heavily moan- 
 ing" in his troubled slumber, was visited by the 
 spirit of the deceased. Patroclus appeared pre- 
 cisely as he had looked in life ; " like himself in 
 all respects, as to size, and beautiful eyes, and 
 voice," says the poet, even his garments being 
 apparently the same. Standing over Achilles as 
 he slept, the spirit reproached him with forget- 
 fulness and neglect of the duty he owed his 
 friend, which it implored him to discharge. The 
 duty in question was that of rendering to the 
 dead body those services which were deemed 
 essential to the repose of the soul. " Bury me," 
 says the spirit, " that I may as soon as possible 
 pass the gates of Hades," and the explanation is 
 added that until his remains should be buried 
 " the souls or images of the deceased with whom 
 he was appointed to dwell would not permit him 
 to mingle with them beyond the river." 
 
CREMATION. 7 
 
 In the passage of Homer, of which a portion 
 is here cited, we have to do with that belief con- 
 cerning the dead and their relation to the 
 living which has been most widely entertained 
 both in -ancient and in modern times by man- 
 kind in a certain stage of civilization. The soul 
 or spirit is conceived as " a thin, unsubstantial 
 human image," comparable to vapor or a shadow, 
 the latter being the name sometimes given it. 
 It is supposed to be " the cause of life and 
 thought in the person it animates, 55 and also to 
 " possess independently the personal conscious- 
 ness and volition of its corporeal owner. 55 To it is 
 ascribed the power of leaving the body to which 
 it is attached, and of moving with incredible ve- 
 locity through space. Though " mostly impalpa- 
 ble and invisible, 55 it is deemed capable of exerting 
 great physical force, and of appearing to men, 
 both asleep and awake, as a phantasm or visible fig- 
 ure, apart from any material body. And perhaps 
 most noteworthy of all is its assumed ability " to 
 enter into, possess, and act in the bodies of other 
 men, of animals, and even of inanimate objects. 55 
 The extensive prevalence of this belief will not 
 be questioned by any one who reflects that it 
 furnishes foundation for the popular recognition 
 of the demoniac, the fetish, and the ghost. Upon 
 the notion that the soul could easily leave its 
 habitation in one body and take up its abode in 
 another the doctrine or theory of metempsy- 
 
8 CREMA TION. 
 
 chosis, or transmigration of souls, was readily en- 
 grafted, — a belief which has been held by count- 
 less millions, and which at the present time is 
 probably held by a greater number of confessors 
 than any other doctrine of the future life. 
 
 When speaking or thinking of the doctrine of 
 a future life, as prevalent among savage or half- 
 savage tribes, it is necessary to guard against the 
 misleading effect of familiar terms. To ascribe 
 to such people any definite or precise conception 
 of the immortality of the soul, as the doctrine is 
 understood among enlightened nations or has 
 been maintained by philosophers, would imply 
 failure to apprehend the condition of the barba- 
 rian mind. All that we can safely say is that 
 the savage very commonly believes in the con- 
 tinued existence of the soul after the death of 
 the body. In other w r ords, the savage is very 
 often a sincere believer in ghosts, being unable, 
 it would seem, to believe that an existence or a 
 principle of so much energy and significance has 
 utterly and instantly become a nonentity. Some 
 time at least must elapse before he can so think 
 of the deceased; and in the mean time, if he 
 dreams of the departed, he believes that he has 
 seen him, and regards the vision as evidence of 
 his survival in aerial or shadowy form.* How 
 rapidly in such cases evidence corroborative of 
 
 * E. B. Tyler's Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 19. 
 
CREMATION. 9 
 
 the conclusion accumulates it would be easy to 
 illustrate from the experience of even enlightened 
 communities, where such primitive notions touch- 
 ing the spirits of the departed still linger as su- 
 perstitions among the less instructed members. 
 
 A belief in the vitality and activity of the soul 
 after the death of the body seems to have pre- 
 vailed universally among our x^orth American 
 Indians, the belief being clearly revealed in their 
 mortuary customs, though the exact significance 
 or relation of the details may not be always trace- 
 able. The modes of sepulture and the funeral 
 usages of our aboriginal tribes have been re- 
 cently investigated and described with great ful- 
 ness and lucidity by members of the Bureau of 
 Ethnology connected with the Smithsonian In- 
 stitution.* One noteworthy outcome of these re- 
 cent researches is the general fact that every mode 
 of disposing of the dead ever practised in the Old 
 World — that is, every mode ever heard of as 
 there practised — is found in use or to have been 
 at some time in use among one or more than one 
 of these native tribes. Inhumation is at present 
 and seems to have been always the most common 
 usage; but it is practised with considerable vari- 
 ation, not only in the attendant ceremonies, but 
 
 * See Introduction to the Study of the Mortuary Customs 
 among the North American Indians, by Dr. H. C. Yarrow, 
 Act. Assist. Surg. U.S.A. 
 
10 CREMATION. 
 
 in other respects. Thus, while the Mohawks of 
 New York and some other tribes placed the 
 body in an upright position in a large round 
 hole prepared for the purpose, the Carolina 
 tribes, having enclosed the body in a cane hur- 
 dle, placed it horizontally in a grave about six 
 feet deep and eight feet long. The Pimas of 
 Arizona tie the bodies of their dead with ropes, 
 passing the ropes around the neck and under 
 the knees, and then drawing them tight until 
 the body is doubled up and forced into a sitting 
 posture. A perfectly round hole, four or five feet 
 deep, and hollowed out at. one side of the bottom 
 into a sort of vault, is the receptacle into which 
 the body is thrust, with whatever exertion of 
 strength may be found needful. The Coyotero 
 Apaches are even less careful of dignity or ten- 
 derness in putting away their dead, being con- 
 tent to deposit them in the cavity left by the re- 
 moval of a rock or the stump of a tree. Having 
 crammed the body into the smallest possible 
 space, they replace the rock or the stump, and 
 then arrange a number of stones around its base. 
 On the other hand, the Klamath and Trinity 
 Indians of the Northwest coast receive credit 
 for exhibiting " considerable taste and laudable 
 care" in their treatment of the dead : enclosing 
 the body in such a coffin as they can provide by 
 placing four boards around it, they " cover it 
 with earth to some depth." "A heavy plank, 
 
CREMATION. \\ 
 
 often supported by upright head- and foot-stones, 
 is laid upon the top, or stones are built up into a 
 wall about a foot above the ground, and the top 
 is flagged with others." Around the graves of 
 the chiefs even " neat w T ooden palings are ar- 
 ranged, each pale ornamented with a feather 
 from the tail of the bald eagle." Furthermore, 
 these graves are placed near the dwellings of the 
 tribe, and thus seem to be the objects of some 
 care. The Muscogulges, the Chickasaws, and 
 some other tribes bury the dead in the wigwams 
 or lodges in which they die, and the Eound 
 Valley Indians of California, who occupy thatched 
 houses, follow the same custom, but "the house 
 thus used is always torn down, removed, rebuilt, 
 or abandoned." 
 
 Next to those Mounds which have been the 
 subject of so much investigation and discussion, 
 and which were certainly places of sepulture, the 
 stone graves or cists of Tennessee are no doubt 
 the most interesting relic of the mortuary cus- 
 toms of extinct Indian tribes. They show, as 
 Dr. Yarrow remarks, the manifest care taken by 
 the survivors to provide for the dead what they 
 considered a suitable resting-place. They are, 
 in fact, " burying-grounds with regular graves." 
 Whoever constructed them " formed an excava- 
 tion twelve or eighteen inches deep, placed stone 
 slabs at the bottom, ends, and sides, forming a 
 kind of stone coffin, and after laying in the body, 
 
12 CREMATION. 
 
 covered it over with earth." These ancient cem- 
 eteries are, says Major Powell, exceedingly abun- 
 dant throughout the State; often hundreds of 
 graves may be found on a single hill-side. Both 
 their construction and arrangement show not less 
 clearly than the more celebrated Mounds that 
 they are the work of a people different from any 
 of the existing aborigines. Competent observers 
 have been struck by the resemblance of these 
 Tennessee cists to graves of the reindeer period 
 in Europe. 
 
 Caves, from time immemorial, have been used 
 as burial-places, and caves which have been used 
 for the purpose by the Indians have been found 
 in nearly every State of the Union. In Utah 
 Territory, in Colorado, and in Alaska caves still 
 used as places of burial by the Indians have been 
 described, though in reference to one or two of 
 them it has not been fully ascertained whether 
 the cave is the place in which the bodies are de- 
 posited soon after death, or the place into which 
 the osseous relics from many temporary graves 
 are gathered for preservation and security. With 
 cave-burial may perhaps be classed burial in the 
 fissures of rocks, which are really used by some 
 tribes as the last resting-places of their deceased 
 members. 
 
 Tribes living so far apart as the Seminoles of 
 Florida and the Miamis of Ohio practised what 
 is called surface-burial, sometimes using hollow 
 
CREMATION. 13 
 
 logs such as they found in the woods ; sometimes 
 splitting a tree and hollowing out the halves so 
 as to receive and enclose the body, the reunited 
 parts being then held together by withes ; and 
 sometimes simply covering and protecting the 
 body with a pen of logs. 
 
 Cairn-burial, in early times so common in the 
 British Islands, is still very common among the 
 tribes of the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra 
 Nevadas. In the Gaelic, Irish, and Welsh lan- 
 guages the word cairn means a heap or pile, and 
 such, in fact, is the monument which the Indians 
 referred to erect over the dead body, which is 
 placed in a cavity left by the removal of an im- 
 bedded stone. The cavity is, however, well lined 
 with skins, and poles are so arranged as to pro- 
 tect the body while supporting the huge cairn 
 heaped over it. 
 
 The Crows, the Blackfeet, and some tribes of 
 the Sioux dispose of their dead by placing them 
 in a lodge, either a new one set up or an old one 
 formally set apart for the purpose. Certain tribes 
 on the Northwest coast use as receptacles for the 
 dead " wonderfully carved, large woo '1 en chests, 
 which sometimes rest upon a platform and some- 
 times rest upon the ground/' In shape they re- 
 semble a small house with an angular roof, and 
 " each one has an opening through which food 
 may be passed to the corpse," — the same sort 
 of box formerly used by the Creeks, Choctaws, 
 
 2 
 
14 CREMATION. 
 
 and Cherokees, whose ideas and customs have 
 been much modified in the last hundred years 
 by Christian teaching and association. 
 
 Another mode of sepulture very commonly 
 practised even' by some tribes who occasionally 
 use other methods is exposure on scaffolds. 
 These are attached to trees, if trees are acces- 
 sible; and where trees are not convenient the 
 scaffold is constructed with forked posts, upon 
 which cross-pieces are laid to support the floor- 
 ing of small poles. The corpse, before being 
 placed on the scaffold, is sometimes tightly 
 wrapped in skins or blankets, and is sometimes 
 placed in a box. When the body has been for 
 some time exposed in this manner it is taken 
 down, and the bones at least carefully buried. 
 
 Cremation as a mode of disposing of the 
 dead is at present, as apparently it has always 
 been, practised by certain tribes on the western 
 slope of the Rocky Mountains; and there is 
 abundant evidence that it w T as formerly, if it is 
 not now, common among more eastern tribes. 
 Some investigators find or think they find con- 
 clusive indications that it was a custom among 
 the Mound-builders, a view rather probable, in- 
 dependently of positive evidence. 
 
 Mummification, sometimes by mere exsicca- 
 tion or drying of the body, sometimes by em- 
 balming, and sometimes by a combination of 
 both methods, was formerly, if it is no longer, 
 
CREMATION. 15 
 
 practised by some tribes. We are told that cer- 
 tain tribes of Virginia were religious in thus 
 preserving the remains of their chiefs; and ac- 
 cording to recent researches, some tribes of the 
 Northwest coast embalm or mummify the bodies 
 of males alone, while other tribes thus honor all 
 the members of certain classes. 
 
 As some tribes living on the coast and on 
 rivers bury their dead in the water, and as it is 
 credibly stated that the Caddocs, Ascena, or 
 Timber Indians leave those warriors who fall in 
 battle to be consumed by beasts and birds of 
 prey, thus exposing them to what they deem the 
 most honorable mode of burial, one may safely 
 affirm that every method of sepulture ever heard 
 of in the Old World has its counterpart in the 
 New. The custom of the Parsees of Bombay at 
 the present day — a custom brought by them from 
 their ancient home in Persia — of exposing their 
 dead to be devoured by vultures is familiarly 
 known ; but the usage of the Timber Indians 
 finds a closer parallel in the practice of the an- 
 cient Colchians and Iberians, who, while cre- 
 mating persons of ordinary or commonplace 
 character, distinguished the eminently brave and 
 honorable by devoting their mortal remains to 
 be devoured by well-bred dogs kept for the pur- 
 pose. Both the ancient and the modern people 
 may be presumed to have thought it a higher 
 destiny to nurture the nobler animals, — better be 
 
16 CREMATION. 
 
 the food of dogs than of worms ; and if the life 
 of the hero was to be prolonged under novel 
 conditions, — a widely prevalent belief among 
 savages, — then there could be no question 
 whether the quadruped or the reptile was to be 
 preferred, or which of them w r ould afford the 
 more dignified mansion. 
 
 All the Indian tribes whose modes of sepul- 
 ture have been reviewed assume in their mortu- 
 ary rites that the spirit, soul, eidolon of the de- 
 parted still exists, is aware of the care taken of his 
 remains, and is benefited by the care or injured by 
 neglect. Whether the body is buried in the ground 
 or consumed by fire or devoured by beasts, the 
 spirit with its shadowy form survives; and 
 whether it is to be happy or miserable in its 
 disembodied state and new environment is be- 
 lieved to depend somew T hat upon the attention it 
 receives at the hands of survivors. Hence rites 
 of sepulture, hence ceremonies of mourning sys- 
 tematically arranged and conducted, and hence 
 funeral feasts in which the spirit is supposed in 
 some way to participate, even as it is supposed 
 to enjoy in some way the food set for its con- 
 sumption and the weapons of war buried or 
 burned with the body for its use. 
 . In recent discussions of the subjects of inter- 
 ment and cremation it has been usual to attach 
 some importance to the practice of the great 
 nations of classical antiquity. Italian advocates 
 
CREMATION. 17 
 
 of cremation habitually appeal to the sentiment 
 inspired in educated minds by recollections of 
 the great people in whom they claim a hereditary 
 interest, assuming, if not directly asserting, that 
 by adopting the reform they recommend the 
 Italians will discard a barbarian innovation and 
 resume the well-approved usage of their re- 
 nowned predecessors, or progenitors, as some of 
 them fancy. Italians, however, are not the only 
 friends of the proposed change who seek to rec- 
 ommend it to liberal minds, by treating it as the 
 revival of a custom of universal prevalence among 
 both Greeks and Romans during the most pros- 
 perous and splendid ages of those highly civilized 
 peoples. But in this mode of advocating the 
 reform there is some misrepresentation or un- 
 intentional exaggeration. 
 
 Among the Greeks interment, or burial in the 
 ground, was undoubtedly the first mode of sepul- 
 ture, but incremation was certainly introduced at 
 a very early date as an alternative. The passage 
 already cited from the Iliad shows that it was 
 practised at least occasionally in the heroic age, 
 some scholars supposing that it was first adopted 
 during the Trojan war to facilitate, or rather to 
 render practicable, the transportation of the mortal 
 remains of the Greek chiefs to their homes over 
 sea. Indeed, according to one form of a Greek 
 legend, Hercules was the originator of cremation, 
 finding it necessary to burn the body of Argius 
 b 2* 
 
18 CREMATION. 
 
 in order to fulfil the vow he had made to convey 
 the remains to the dead man's father, Likymnios. 
 In the historical times of Greece there is abun- 
 dant evidence that the two modes of sepulture, 
 interment and cremation, were both practised, 
 the choice being apparently left to the predilec- 
 tion of individuals or families. Or, the selection 
 may have been determined by the particular 
 school of philosophy which the persons followed 
 or favored. We know that Thales and his dis- 
 ciples, regarding water as the origin of all things, 
 reckoned it most fit that the body should be re- 
 duced to its original elements by putrefaction ; 
 while Heraclitus, on the other hand, holding fire 
 to be the first principle, he and his sect preferred 
 cremation. 
 
 Pious care for deceased friends and positive 
 reluctance to part wholly with their mortal re- 
 mains were notable traits of the Greek character, 
 traits which led to the practice of burial in their 
 houses. In one of his dialogues * Plato expressly 
 states that the usage existed in early times, and 
 as they must by degrees have discovered the in- 
 conveniences of the custom, it seems probable 
 that cremation was adopted, by some at least, as a 
 substitute, which, while entirely unobjectionable 
 on the score of health and comfort, enabled them 
 to retain the cherished relics in their dwellings. 
 
 * In the dialogue Minos. 
 
CREMATION. 19 
 
 The coexistence of the two modes of sepul- 
 ture, interment and cremation, among the Greeks 
 must be a familiar fact to every person who has 
 read one of the most popular and easily accessible 
 books, Plutarch's " Lives." Indeed, the great 
 biographer by his incidental statements makes the 
 point so clear, that one cannot but wonder at the 
 doubts and questions which have been raised on 
 the subject. In his life of Theseus, Plutarch cites 
 the legend according to which " a coffin of a man 
 of extraordinary size" was found in the hero's 
 grave, proving that even in the heroic age the 
 usage of burial existed. In his life of Solon the 
 same w 7 riter describes the contest between Athens 
 and Megara for the possession of Salamis, where 
 the claims of each party were founded on the dif- 
 ferent modes of burial. And where at the close 
 of the same biography the author pronounces 
 " absurd and fabulous" the current story that 
 Solon's ashes had been scattered about the island 
 of Salamis, the comment show 7 s that the crema- 
 tion of the legislator's body was presupposed. 
 Moreover, Plutarch expressly mentions the crema- 
 tion of Timoleon and of Philopoemen. The truth 
 seems to be that the general practice differed in 
 different cities or states. Thus, while inhuma- 
 tion or interment was the exclusive custom in 
 Sicyon, in Sparta, and in some other cities, cre- 
 mation was the prevalent though not exclusive 
 custom in Athens and in most of the cities in 
 
20 CREMATION. 
 
 Magna Grsecia. The assembly before which 
 Pericles delivered his famous funeral oration had 
 come together, as Thucydides states, to deposit 
 in tombs the bones of those who had first fallen 
 in the war. " Having erected a tent, they laid 
 out the bones (osta) of the dead three days be- 
 fore," * says the historian, — a statement which im- 
 plies that the bodies had been already cremated. 
 In his account of the memorable pestilence which 
 swept away so large a part of the population of 
 Athens, the same writer mentions as one of the 
 abuses which resulted from the demoralizing in- 
 fluence of the calamity, " the shameless modes 
 of sepulture 55 to w T hich some had recourse, " for 
 on the piles prepared for others, some anticipat- 
 ing those who had raised them, would lay their 
 own dead relatives and set fire to them; and 
 others, while the body of a stranger was burning, 
 would throw on the top of it the one they were 
 carrying, and go away. 55 f That cremation was 
 not the exclusive usage even in Athens is an ob- 
 viously fair inference from a passage in Plato 5 s 
 dialogue, the Phsedo, in which Socrates, when 
 questioned by his disciple Crito as to which mode 
 of sepulture he should prefer, declared his indif- 
 ference. 
 
 Among the Etruscans and other tribes of an- 
 cient Italy cremation seems to have been a com- 
 
 * Thucydides, ii. 34. f Id., ii. 52. 
 
CREMATION. 21 
 
 mon, if not the prevalent usage, though there is 
 reason to believe that in the early ages of Rome 
 interment was preferred by certain families. 
 Plutarch states that King Numa's body was not 
 burned, for the reason that he himself forbade it. 
 In the code of the Twelve Tables (452 B.C., year 
 of Rome 302), both modes w T ere recognized in 
 the law, w T hich prohibited the practice of either 
 within the walls of the city.* So late as in the 
 674th year of Rome, Sylla, having outraged the 
 mortal remains of Marius and dreading retalia- 
 tion at the hands of his adherents, ordered by 
 will that his own body should be burned, thus 
 departing from the custom of his family, the Cor- 
 nelian Gens, who had always inhumed their dead. 
 At this time, however, in consequence probably 
 of the increasing intercourse of the Romans with 
 the East, cremation had become common, and it 
 is certain that from this time onward the practice 
 met with such favor as soon made it almost the 
 only mode of sepulture, at least among the upper 
 and well-to-do classes. And such it continued 
 to be during many generations until it very grad- 
 ually gave place again to inhumation or interment, 
 partly no doubt under the influence of Christian 
 teaching and example. 
 
 The first Christian congregation in Rome was 
 undoubtedly a Jewish community, and during a 
 
 * Cicero de Legibus, lib. ii. 58. 
 
22 CREMATION. 
 
 considerable period Jews occupied a position of 
 controlling ascendency in the Roman Church. 
 While the opinion of Merevale that the Roman 
 Christians occasionally at least burned their dead 
 should not be lightly rejected, there is no doubt 
 that they generally followed the Hebrew usage 
 and buried the entire body in the ground. It is 
 pretty certain that the Jews in Palestine always, 
 or nearly always, inhumed their dead, in part in- 
 fluenced by Egyptian custom and, in early times 
 at least, perhaps influenced by the notion, cer- 
 tainly entertained by them, that the soul or ra- 
 tional life continued for some time after death to 
 have more or less intercourse with the body. 
 The custom of interment, with or without em- 
 balming, having become established among the 
 early Christians through Hebrew influence, it is 
 easy to perceive how the fitness of the mode 
 might seem to them to be confirmed or ratified 
 by their belief concerning the sacredness of the 
 body and " the resurrection of the flesh." True, 
 in the " Octavius"* of Minutius Felix, a Chris- 
 tian " apology" of the third century, the heathen 
 interlocutor of the dialogue, having directly as- 
 serted that the Christians execrate the funeral 
 pile and sepulture by fire on account of their be- 
 lief in the resurrection, the apologist, an intelli- 
 gent Roman lawyer, replies that Christians have 
 
 * Octavius, c. 10, 31. 
 
OB EM A TION. 23 
 
 no fear of injury or loss by cremation, but have 
 adopted the ancient custom of inhumation as 
 more eligible and commodious. While such was 
 the view of the more thoughtful and well-in- 
 structed class, there is no room for doubt that in 
 the common sentiment of the majority of the 
 early Christians some ground existed for the 
 heathen's mocking imputation. Christians early 
 misunderstood St. Paul's language (1 Cor. xv. 
 35, 36, 50) to mean exactly what he emphatically 
 denies, namely, "The resurrection of the flesh or 
 corporeal frame,"* and their persecutors some- 
 times took occasion to deride the belief and en- 
 hance the pain of the living by exposing the 
 bodies of their martyred friends to wild beasts and 
 birds of prey, or by burning them and casting 
 their ashes into the nearest river. The Chris- 
 tian belief was thus der'ded in the martyrdom 
 of Polycarp, and in that of the Christians of 
 Lyons and Vienne. 
 
 There are no records by which to trace with 
 any degree of fulness or exactness the gradual 
 cessation of the custom of cremation in the 
 Roman world. Tertullian, in the second or 
 early in the third century, refers to certain 
 heathen as objecting to cremation for w r hat ap- 
 pears to him a superstitious reason, the fear of 
 
 * Dean Stanley's Christian Institutions, p. 295 in Scrib- 
 ner's edition . 
 
24 CREMATION. 
 
 injuring the soul believed to be still connected 
 in some way with the body.* With this weak 
 reason he contrasts what he deems the better 
 reason which prevented Christians from cre- 
 mating their dead, namely, " Unwillingness to 
 treat even the dead body with harshness or bar- 
 barity," and then presently he scoffs at the rude 
 inconsistency of the heathen multitude in first 
 savagely (atrocissime) burning their dead, and in 
 then most gluttonously (gidosissime) feasting them ; 
 " with the same fires, doing them good and 
 evil."f Of course Tertullian alludes to those 
 funeral banquets which among peoples in a cer- 
 tain stage of civilization have been celebrated in 
 all parts of the world. The intimate association 
 of these banquets, often idolatrous in form, with 
 the practice of cremation very probably sug- 
 gests one of the reasons which rendered the early 
 Christians so tenacious of a different mode of 
 sepulture. As evidence of the reality of the 
 peril the fact may be mentioned that, before the 
 close of the fourth century, Augustine bitterly 
 complains in a letter that in some of the African 
 churches the funeral banquets were the occasion 
 of revelling and drunkenness, scandalous to the 
 neighboring heathen. How slowly the change 
 from cremation to interment took place is ap- 
 parent from the mention, in the Theodosian 
 
 *De Anima, c. 51. f De Resurrections, c. 1. 
 
CREMATION. 25 
 
 code, of both customs as still existing a.d. 438. 
 Macrobius, however, who wrote somewhat earlier, 
 about a.d. 420, expressly states that the custom 
 of burning the dead had then wholly ceased, and 
 that all he knew about it he had learned by read- 
 ing of the past.* His statement doubtless refers 
 chiefly to Rome, or possibly to Italy, and the 
 presumption is that in the outlying provinces of 
 the empire the custom continued many years 
 longer. Indeed, a law of Childeric the Third, 
 and another of Charles the Great, prohibiting 
 the practice, shows it still alive on the northern 
 side of the Alps in the eighth century. Under 
 the Roman empire proper it was never pro- 
 hibited by statute or rescript; even the Chris- 
 tian emperors refusing, if they were asked, to 
 interfere with a practice which had been sanc- 
 tioned by the approval and example of so large 
 a part of civilized mankind, and to which no ob- 
 jection could be fairly alleged on the score of 
 either decency, good morals, or religion. 
 
 Some writers slightly conversant with history, 
 and accustomed from education and habit to 
 regard inhumation as the mode of sepulture pre- 
 scribed by divine institution and the very nature 
 of things, have been at considerable pains to ac- 
 count for the origin of the other mode. In the 
 light of modern research concerning primitive 
 
 * Saturnalia, lib. vii. c. 7. 
 3 
 
26 CREMATION. 
 
 culture such speculations on the subject of cre- 
 mation seem rather superfluous, if not futile. 
 We have seen the two modes coexisting for cen- 
 turies among the tribes of ancient Greece and 
 Italy, and even among the Indians of North 
 America. When, furthermore, we recollect that 
 throughout much the greater part of Asia, from 
 the earliest times until the present day, crema- 
 tion has been the ordinary mode of putting away 
 the dead, we cannot feel much at a loss to ac- 
 count for the usage. It is surely safe to presume 
 that there is something in the method which 
 commends it to the favor of mankind indepen- 
 dently of any religious dogmas or philosophical 
 theories which have been sometimes or may be 
 associated with the practice. No doubt the con- 
 ception of fire as the great purifying element has 
 frequently formed part of the theory, religious 
 or philosophical, which recommended cremation 
 to the acceptance of heathen people ; but if they 
 ascribed personality to the element, invoking it 
 in solemn or in spontaneous prayer, their idolatry 
 was both more graceful and less degrading than 
 that practised by other pagans at the inhumation 
 of their dead. In connection with this topic 
 the ancient Hebrews are usually cited for their 
 stern and steadfast opposition to sepulture by 
 fire. In truth, if Jerome, who spent many years 
 in Palestine, understood the Hebrew language 
 and customs, the mortal remains of good Jewish 
 
CREMATION. 27 
 
 
 
 kings were often cremated by way of special and 
 peculiar honor. For proof see in the Vulgate 
 (Jerome's) version, Jeremiah xxxiv. 5, and four 
 or five other passages in which the English trans- 
 lation mentions " burnings for", the dead. How- 
 ever, whether Jerome or our modern Hebraists 
 are right, the fact mentioned by Suetonius,* that 
 among the multitude who gathered around the 
 funeral pile of Julius Caesar in the Forum Jews 
 were most conspicuous, keeping up their lamen- 
 tations during several nights, seems to show that 
 even the ancient Jews had not been taught to 
 regard cremation with the least abhorrence or 
 aversion. Indeed, that they did not so regard 
 the practice it would be easy to prove even from 
 the Hebrew Scriptures, but the point is not 
 worth making. 
 
 Of the theories or speculations in which the 
 attempt is made to trace the custom of crema- 
 ting the dead in various countries to a single 
 source, one only seems worthy of mention, — the 
 curious one which ascribes the origin of the 
 practice to the ancient Hindoos, from whom as 
 from a centre it was gradually diffused. The 
 chief supporter of the view, a Rev. Dr. Jamieson, 
 appears to have found the suggestion of it in the 
 juxtaposition or collation of two facts of dif- 
 ferent orders, — one of them, the tremendous 
 
 *Lib. i. c. 84. 
 
28 CREMATION. 
 
 domination of solar heat in Hinciostan, which 
 naturally instigates the people to pay their de- 
 voirs to it in the form of fire. This notion he 
 sees confirmed in a fact mentioned by the 
 romancing biographer of Alexander the Great, 
 Quintus Curtius, that in India persons enfeebled 
 by age or by illness were judged by their sages, 
 the gymnosophists, to make a fine and truly re- 
 ligious ending by cremating themselves alive. 
 Quintus Curtius is poor authority on such a sub- 
 ject, but in the passage* to which Dr. Jamieson 
 refers, he says that unless the persons cremated 
 were still breathing when they mounted the pile 
 the sages held that the fire was polluted by the 
 offering, — a statement which, if true, would imply 
 that these Hindoo sages fully sympathized with 
 those ancient followers of Zoroaster, the Parsees, 
 who refused to burn their dead for the express 
 reason that the act would be an indignity offered 
 to their divinity, the most pure and omnipotent 
 Sun. 
 
 In truth, it is scarcely more certain that the 
 first Aryan emigrants to India cremated their 
 dead in their new home than that the first Aryans 
 who wandered westward or northwestward from 
 the central table-land carried the same custom 
 with them in their migrations. The Celts, the 
 Scythians, the Lithuanians, the Germans, the 
 
 * De Rebus Alex., lib. viii. c. 9. 
 
CREMATION. 29 
 
 Scandinavians, etc., were all cremation! sts when 
 first met with in history, and the convenience 
 and general fitness of the mode must have 
 been from the first even strikingly manifest 
 under the inclement skies of Middle and North- 
 ern Europe. In the alternately clamp and frozen 
 regions inhabited by most of these tribes fire 
 would have no terrors even for the timid, and 
 besides the mere difficulty of excavating graves 
 at certain seasons, fire, as a mode of sepulture, 
 would commend itself both to the senses and to 
 the imagination of the dwellers in the sombre 
 North as the very emblem of life and hope. 
 
 3* 
 
CREMATION. 
 
 This superficial survey of the modes of sepul- 
 ture which have prevailed in different ages and 
 nations has seemed an appropriate introduction 
 to some observations by way of comparing or 
 contrasting the two chief methods mentioned, 
 those of cremation and interment. While in 
 Italy, in Germany, in Austria, and, to some ex- 
 tent, in France and Great Britain, the subject 
 has been earnestly discussed in the last twenty 
 years, relatively little has been written about it 
 in this country. But it would be a mistake, I 
 believe, to infer from the general silence that the 
 question is here generally regarded with either 
 contempt or indifference. On the contrary, it 
 engages the earnest thoughts of many. Those 
 who make themselves known as interested in 
 the practical question involved speedily discover 
 that they have sympathizers on all sides of them, 
 even persons for whom the thought of death, 
 whether of themselves or of near kindred, re- 
 ceives a fresh tinge of gloom from the thought 
 which an inveterate custom makes its associate, 
 the thought of slow corruption and its foul con- 
 comitants. The number is not small, and it is 
 30 
 
CREMATION. 31 
 
 believed to be very large, to whom this thought 
 is the single bitter constituent in the general 
 doom, and it is not rendered in the least less 
 repulsive by the reflection that the constituent 
 is no necessary or inevitable ingredient, but a 
 purely human addition to the cup. It is one 
 of the horrors of death simply because the time- 
 honored usage of inhumation is so generally 
 sustained by opinion. Until recently opinion — 
 called by Pascal Queen of the world — has been 
 strong enough to suppress complaint, to awe even 
 protest or incipient remonstrance into submissive 
 silence. As a consequence of this rigorous rule, 
 compliance with the universal custom is a matter 
 of necessity from the mere absence of the means 
 by which the abominations of interment might 
 be avoided. And besides, if the means were 
 available, much more than ordinary courage 
 must be possessed and exercised by every one 
 who for himself or friends prefers a mode of 
 sepulture more scientific and less abhorrent and 
 revolting to the sensibilities.* 
 
 The charge that cremation is a violation of the 
 respectful tenderness due to the dead has been 
 often made, and no doubt seems to some well 
 founded. It is a very ancient objection to the 
 practice, having been, as we have seen, one of 
 the reproaches which Tertullian flung at the 
 
 * See note A at end of volume. 
 
32 CREMATION. 
 
 heathen of the third century. Certainly neither 
 Tertullian nor those who repeat his objection in- 
 tend to ascribe sensation to the dead, the real 
 ground of their reproach being merely the ap- 
 pearance of rude violence in burning, as it were 
 rubbish, what lately was most precious, and in 
 thus seeming callous to the feeling of sympathetic 
 beholders of the scene. It is noteworthy that 
 the Aryan cremationists of ancient India sought 
 to avoid or to counteract this subjective effect of 
 their action by invoking the fire in a prayer for 
 tender treatment of the body, imploring the 
 element " not to scorch the face or rend the skin 
 or lacerate the mortal remains" committed to its 
 power.* They thus appealed to the imagination 
 to allay the pain which imagination caused. In 
 truth, even inhumation, even to hide cherished 
 remains in the ground and leave them to their 
 cold, dark solitude, must have seemed at first a 
 proceeding almost equally offensive on the score 
 of tenderness. It is probable enough that the 
 feeling had some influence in leading the early 
 Greeks, with their lively sensibilities and imagina- 
 tive nature, to bury their dead in their dwellings, 
 as it led other tribes who believed in the con- 
 tinued intercourse of the soul with its inanimate 
 body to bury their dead in caves or artificial 
 tombs, where they could visit them. Embalming 
 
 * Rig Veda, x. 18. 14. 
 
CREMATION. 33 
 
 for the preservation of the body in a place easily 
 accessible was another custom inspired by the 
 same sentiment, in some cases at least, and a 
 much more general mode of soothing sensibility 
 unavoidably wounded was the practice of dress- 
 ing the corpse in costly raiment, and of burying 
 with it articles greatly esteemed or admired, — 
 usages familiar at the present day. But the sen- 
 timent which suggested such modes of mitigating 
 the loneliness of the grave to the imaginations 
 of survivors long ago became unconscious in the 
 prevalence of its effects ; the graveyard became 
 the cemetery, that is, " the sleeping-place" of the 
 departed, or it is " God's Acre," a place conse- 
 crated as the abode of peace and unbroken rest. 
 Religion and poetry harmonize in recognizing 
 the impressive repose that reigns within its pre- 
 cincts, and to those who confine their survey to 
 the surface, the place may often well seem to 
 clothe the grave with a vesture of purity and 
 beauty sufficient to conceal or put out of mind 
 its repulsive features. 
 
 Happily or unhappily, with the change of times 
 men also change; they change in their mental 
 habits. An ever-increasing number of those 
 who were formerly content to follow imagina- 
 tion, or, in Bacon's phrase, to accept the show 
 of things, now prefer sterner guidance as they 
 seek, by independent scrutiny, to get at realities. 
 Now, the truth clearly is, that those who shrink 
 
34 CREMATION. 
 
 in horror from the thought of sepulture by fire 
 to the thought of sepulture in the ground as a 
 refuge have never been at pains to comprehend 
 the conditions which they thus prefer. They 
 have never, in common parlance, realized the 
 abominations of the grave by attending the body 
 to its misnamed resting-place, or home of peace. 
 These phrases and others of like import are part 
 and parcel of the poetical or fictitious system by 
 which, in a less enlightened age, a part of man- 
 kind endeavored to hide from themselves and 
 from others the dread mvsteries of the charnel- 
 house and the vault. These processes were for- 
 merly in some degree mysteries, at least to the 
 majority, but they are mysteries no longer, and 
 however revolting the subject, there is really no 
 sufficient reason for reticence, if it should not 
 rather be said that the time for the utmost free- 
 dom of speech concerning them has fully come. 
 Wegmann-Ercolani, the eminent Swiss physician 
 and philanthropist, who has written so much and 
 so well on the subject of cremation, is a guide 
 whose statements touching this topic one may 
 adopt safely, that is, in the assurance of -falling 
 into no excess or exaggeration of language. 
 " The grave," he says, " presents the most ter- 
 rible spectacle which it is possible to conceive, 
 whether the body within it is that of a famous 
 statesman under a magnificent monument or 
 that of a pauper in a potter's field. In either 
 
CREMATION. 35 
 
 case a most foul and intolerable stench meets 
 the daring investigator who opens the abode of 
 peace. And however great the horror and dis- 
 gust caused by the sense of smell, the impressions 
 produced by inspection are yet more horrible. 
 The brain, the noblest part of man, which may 
 shortly before have furnished the wisdom that 
 saved an empire, — the brain has fallen out of its 
 bony case, a shapeless, unctuous, stinking mass, 
 abhorred even by the worms which so raven- 
 ously seize upon the flesh, the heart, the lungs, 
 and especially the intestines. The eye-sockets 
 are empty, and every part, except the bones, is 
 rotten/revolting, harrowing to the senses in the 
 highest degree." And then he puts the question, 
 " Why, in the name of a merciful God, should we 
 subject ourselves and those we love to so dread- 
 ful a condition while science at once offers us 
 ways and means of avoiding it, by a rapid and 
 complete destruction of the body?" "Verily,'' 
 says the same writer in another place, " verily, 
 the man of sensibility, animated by pious rever- 
 ence for the dead, who, laying aside all illusions 
 and self-deception and aided at once by science 
 and by imagination, looks into the grave and for 
 a moment watches the process of decaj^, will 
 never again speak or think of the common mode 
 of sepulture as the mode enjoined by respect or 
 inspired by affection or by tenderness for the 
 departed." 
 
36 CREMATION. 
 
 The inanity, or rather the mendacious signi- 
 ficance of our current terms and phrases touch- 
 ing the grave as a place of rest, the home of 
 peace and so forth, becomes apparent from an- 
 other point of view. In the quaint language of 
 Sir Thomas Brown,* — with the change of a single 
 word, — every reader must have seen reason to 
 ask, " Who knows the fate of his bones, or how 
 often he is to be buried ? Who hath the oracle 
 of his dust, or whither it is to be scattered ?" 
 No fact is more notorious than the desecration of 
 graves; no trait of civilized mankind is better 
 established, or more glaringly manifest, than 
 their indifference, if not their contempt, for what, 
 in cant or in solemn mockery, they call, or used 
 to call, the sanctity of the tomb. There is not a 
 city or town in the country which has not been 
 partly built upon violated graves ; scarcely a rail- 
 way or a superior highway could be found whose 
 construction did not involve the removal of 
 skeletons, or even bodies imperfectly decayed, 
 mortal remains laid down by sorrowing kindred 
 in the consoling faith that they should lie there 
 undisturbed. The simple, naked truth is that 
 when a few years have passed over a grave, no- 
 body not connected by blood with the occupant 
 seems to question either the right or the duty .to 
 remove the re]ics, if any reason satisfactory to 
 
 * " Epistle Dedicatory" of his Hydrotaphia, or Urn Burial. 
 
CREMATION. 37 
 
 common sense can be given why the removal 
 should take place. The Chinese entertain the 
 solemn belief that by disturbing the bones of 
 their relatives, or by allowing them to be dis- 
 turbed, they bring calamity upon themselves and 
 their families, — a belief fatal to the introduction 
 of railways and even of commodious highways. 
 We pity or we despise their pious superstition, 
 smiling superior in the conviction of our better 
 knowledge and more enlightened religion; and as 
 if to illustrate both, when we resolve to remove 
 the bones and skeletons of former generations 
 from the pathway of progressive enterprise, we 
 frequently neglect to secure even decency of 
 handling in the performance of the task. The 
 grave-digger in Hamlet was a model of thought- 
 ful reverence in comparison with the men some- 
 times employed to handle the relics of humanity, 
 so sacred theoretically and so contemned in fact. 
 However, no reflection is intended upon those 
 who recognize the necessity of removing the 
 dead for the sake of the living. About the 
 urgency of the necessity there can be no ques- 
 tion. With the advance of science and indus- 
 trial development in all directions, preserving 
 and protracting human life and increasing the 
 means of subsistence, the multiplication of man- 
 kind goes on at a rate never seen before; so 
 mighty and overwhelming the vital tide rolls for- 
 ward, so imperious is the demand of living men 
 
 4 
 
38 CREMATION. 
 
 in need of room, that but little respect for the 
 needs of the dead is possible. The pressure in- 
 creases every year, and it must continue to 
 increase at a ratio which warrants the confident 
 anticipation of a pressure, in the near future, be- 
 fore which sentiments and usages now respected 
 by some as almost sacred must disappear as insig- 
 nificant. In Europe temporary cemeteries have 
 long been a necessity. Many years ago Jacob 
 Grimm declared that in the church-yards of Ger- 
 many it was hardly possible to find a grave which 
 had not been at some time disturbed for the ad- 
 mission of additional occupants. In the tem- 
 porary cemeteries just mentioned, a few years 
 limit the right of the actual tenant, whose remains 
 are then taken up and consigned to the smallest 
 space required to hold them. Switzerland allows 
 such removal after seven years, and Germany 
 allows it after fifteen years, — a most liberal term, 
 as France concedes only five years as the longest 
 period during which the inhabitant of one of 
 these graves may repose undisturbed in his 
 sepulchre, his so-called place of everlasting rest. 
 
 In our vast country it is of course quite true 
 that, except locally or in certain cities, this terri- 
 ble pressure of the living upon the dead for room 
 is not yet experienced, but it may be truly said 
 to be imminent in all its ghastly intensity. Al- 
 ready, in almost every considerable city of the 
 land, burial in a fairly commodious cemetery is 
 
CREMA TION. 39 
 
 the privilege of the comparatively rich, while the 
 tastefully decorated and eligible " fields of the 
 silent' 7 in which the rich repose are often watched 
 with a grudging and speculative eye, before which, 
 could they read its expression, the subterranean 
 tenants would tremble for the validity of their 
 titles. As regards the most beautiful and attrac- 
 tive of our ornamental cemeteries, the continued 
 reservation of the ground for its original purpose 
 is simply a question of time. The land, whose 
 exchangeable value is a continual growth, is 
 already admitted to be too valuable for such a 
 use, and in the Great Republic, where families 
 are sustained by no law of primogeniture or en- 
 tail, and where, therefore, wealth does not usually 
 remain in families through the second generation, 
 it is easy to forecast the time when there will be 
 no sentimental influence of blood or birth suffi- 
 cient to resist the financial or economical reasons 
 in favor of secularizing even the cemetery now 
 most venerated or admired. 
 
 The reasons already mentioned are far from 
 being all the grounds which render one's right 
 to his grave the most uncertain and insecure of 
 tenures. To the grounds specified must be added 
 those accidents by flood which occur much more 
 frequently than the inattentive reader of news- 
 papers would suspect, accidents which sweep 
 away the sheltering earth and expose in some 
 cases scores or hundreds of bodies, some of them 
 
40 CREMATION. 
 
 recently interred, to be devoured by dogs and 
 hogs, or trodden under foot. Then the body- 
 snatchers are everywhere on the alert, those 
 " human wolves," as Shenstone calls them,* to 
 whom no unguarded grave is sacred, and whose 
 victims are much more numerous than sensitive 
 persons are willing to believe. And the Jerry 
 Crunchers, in the pursuit of their nefarious 
 traffic, hardly cause more anxiety among the 
 poor, or relatively poor, than those who rob graves 
 in pursuit of a ransom occasion to the wealthy. 
 The robbers who carried away the body of the 
 late A. T. Stewart from St. Mark's church-yard 
 in New York, and those who stole the body of 
 the late Earl of Crawfurd from the Dun Echt 
 mortuary chapel in Aberdeen, are well under- 
 stood to be the members of an ignominious fra- 
 ternity whose infamous audacity and enterprise 
 render it expedient to protect by an armed guard 
 the graves of the late President Garfield and 
 others by whose remains these peculiar brigands 
 might hope to make great gain. 
 
 * " Where is the faith of ancient Pagans fled? 
 
 Where the fond care the wandering manes claim ? 
 Nature, instinctive, cries, protect the dead, 
 
 And sacred be their ashes and their fame! 
 Arise, dear youth ! e'en now the danger calls ; 
 E'en now the villain snuffs his wonted prey ; 
 See, see ! I lead thee to yon sacred walls, — 
 Oh ! fly to chase these human wolves away." 
 
 Shenstone 1 s Elegies. 
 
CREMATION. 41 
 
 These facts and others of like tenor easily pro- 
 ducible, which prove how little sanctity or even 
 respect attaches to the grave, and how slight is 
 the tenure by which even those most sumptu- 
 ously interred hold possession of their subter- 
 ranean dwellings, seem to show several things. 
 They show that very many persons who descant 
 on the practice of inhumation as a venerable in- 
 stitution of ancestral authority, which it would 
 be impious to lay aside, are mere slaves of custom 
 or routine. They show that those many excellent 
 and sincere adherents of the ancient usage who 
 favor it because it seems to them a decent and ap- 
 propriate mode of performing a duty of affection 
 and civilization, are being rapidly brought to face 
 conditions which must imperatively require them 
 to examine the subject with reference to reform. 
 Such persons cannot be supposed content very 
 long with a custom which is carried out on a 
 basis of fictitious assumptions. They will not 
 long be satisfied to buy cemeteries and build 
 monuments for themselves or others, in the full, 
 rational assurance that after a few years, say a 
 hundred, or fifty, or even less, the cemeteries and 
 the monuments shall give place to cotton-mills 
 or warehouses or railway stations. And once 
 again, these facts, as they show the scandalous 
 and wholly unsatisfactory operation of the custom 
 of interment, and, by consequence, the necessity 
 of reform, constitute an argument in favor of 
 
 4* 
 
42 CREMATION. 
 
 cremation, since cremation is the only alternative 
 mode seriously proposed. 
 
 These facts, however, are not those upon which 
 the advocates of cremation rely as chief grounds 
 of the proposed reform. In urging the necessity 
 or the importance of a change, it is no doubt a 
 strong argument in its favor if the actual usage 
 presents such offensive features and abuses as 
 have been pointed out in the practice of inter- 
 ment. But the reformer might be met with the 
 offer of amendment or removal of the corruptions 
 and abuses as being merely incidental evils, a 
 resort from of old familiar to the defenders of 
 things as they are. To employ it with satis- 
 factory results in the case of inhumation would 
 be difficult, even if the practice were fairly open 
 to no other objections than those already men- 
 tioned, which, however, is far from being the 
 case. The sanitary argument against the cus- 
 tom is one which has never been successfully an- 
 swered, which cannot be successfully answered, 
 and which, from the nature of the facts upon 
 which it rests, cannot be weakened in its practi- 
 cal effect by any amendment generally practicable 
 of the mode of sepulture against which it is 
 directed. And what is here said as to the in- 
 efficiency of any possible amendment may be 
 said with equal pertinence of improved or ad- 
 vantageous conditions under which the custom 
 may prevail. Some American physicians, while 
 
CREMA TION. 43 
 
 conceding all, or nearly all, that the supporters of 
 cremation in Europe allege against interment 
 there, sometimes deny the validity of the objec- 
 tions on this side of the ocean. The reasons 
 they give may be plausible, but that is the best 
 that can be said of them. As shown in preceding 
 paragraphs, deficiency of room for the accommo- 
 dation of the dead is already a condition here, 
 with its repulsive and horrid consequences in full 
 view near our great cities, — and when one reflects 
 how rapidly population here increases, with the 
 development of all the incidents that in Europe 
 have made the question of sepulture a burning 
 question, one cannot help thinking these medi- 
 cal objectors very short-sighted. The truth is 
 that we have cities, New Orleans being one of 
 them, to which every argument for cremation, 
 valid in Europe, is already circumstantially and 
 emphatically applicable, and there is really no 
 city or town in the land in which a wise fore- 
 sight would not perceive in the introduction of 
 cremation a needed safeguard against probable 
 peril to health and life. 
 
 When in 1874 the great London physician, Sir 
 Henry Thompson, published as his conviction 
 that " no dead body is ever placed in the soil 
 without polluting the earth, the air, and the 
 water above and about it," the saying at once 
 called forth a corroborative response from emi- 
 nent physicians and men of science in nearly 
 
44 CREMA TION. 
 
 every part of Europe and in some parts of the 
 United States. The fact thus asserted, the pol- 
 luting nature of the dead body decaying in the 
 ground, is just as well established and as gener- 
 ally accepted by scientific men as is the poison- 
 ous quality of arsenic or strychnine. Incidents in 
 illustration of the fact are sufficiently abundant, 
 though baldly stated, to fill a good-sized volume. 
 A few of them must here suffice to show the 
 extremely dangerous quality of those mortal re- 
 mains which civilized mankind are accustomed 
 to dispose of, with so little thought of the mis- 
 chief they may produce when taken into the 
 human system. The general purpose for which 
 the facts are cited seems to render a careful clas- 
 sification or systematical co-ordination of them 
 unnecessary. 
 
 Instances of the sudden death of grave-diggers 
 caused by descent into vaults are literally multi- 
 tudinous, it being, in fact, one of the recognized 
 perils of the business. Sir Henry Thompson 
 mentions cases that had recently occurred at St. 
 Botolph's Church, London, at Merthyr Tydvil, in 
 Wales, at Harwick, and at other places. In 
 September, 1852, three grave-diggers in Paris 
 suddenly died from accidentally inhaling the 
 concentrated miasma which escapes from coffins. 
 There is, however, no need of drawing further 
 on the plentiful store of such facts at command, 
 as it is generally admitted that fetid air exhaled 
 
CREMA TION. 45 
 
 from the dead is fatal if breathed in a concen- 
 trated state. Even when dissipated by the wind 
 or mixed with the atmosphere, it is well known 
 to lower the vital powers of persons living near 
 old graveyards, — a fact fully attested by physi- 
 cians during the discussion of the question in 
 England respecting burial in cities. In that dis- 
 cussion it was shown that low fevers, often fatal, 
 resulted from the same cause. The famous Dr. 
 Riecke testified that putrid emanations from 
 graves operate in two ways, one set of effects 
 being produced through the lungs by impurity 
 of air from the mixture of irrespirable gases, the 
 other set through the olfactory nerves by power- 
 fully penetrating and offensive smells. 
 
 Dr. Southwood Smith says that when present 
 in the atmosphere morbific animal matter is con- 
 veyed into the system through the thin and deli- 
 cate walls of the air-vesicles of the lungs in the 
 act of respiration, and instances how the vapor 
 of turpentine, if only inhaled while walking 
 through a recently-painted room, will exhibit its 
 effects in some of the fluid excretions of the body 
 even more rapidly than if it had been taken into 
 the stomach. 
 
 Some of the most illustrative facts bearing 
 upon the subject are furnished by the old Eng- 
 lish churches with their burial vaults. Dr. Cope- 
 land relates that a gentleman of his acquaintance 
 was poisoned by a rush of foul air from the grated 
 
46 CREMATION. 
 
 openings at the side of the church-steps; he was 
 seized with a malignant fever, which he commu- 
 nicated to his wife. There are well-authenticated 
 cases of pew-openers (sextons) being infected 
 while shaking and cleaning the mattings of 
 church-floors, these mats being saturated with 
 the poison of the vaults. 
 
 Such facts may seem to Americans at the first 
 glance rather far-fetched, if not far-away, when 
 they think of their beautiful cemeteries so iso- 
 lated and so carefully regulated. But really we 
 cannot feel much more confident or comfortably 
 secure than those dwellers in the neighborhood 
 of the pestilential old graveyards of London, who 
 remained persistently incredulous about the cause 
 assigned for prevalent epidemics because they 
 could smell nothing offensive in the foul air they 
 daily breathed. The truth was that medical men 
 accustomed to the dissecting-room could instantly 
 recognize the peculiar odor; they could even 
 distinguish it from the stench of the sewers. It 
 is, indeed, a fact too well established for denial 
 or doubt that medical men accustomed to the dissect- 
 ing-room can detect the peculiar odor in any cemetery 
 that has been in use during a few years, — a fact by 
 itself adapted to suggest the expediency as well 
 as the desirableness of a reform wherever grave- 
 yards exist. It shows that danger may lurk, or 
 rather may hover, in the air about us unsuspected, 
 even in places so adorned as to attract visitors, at 
 
CREMA TION. 47 
 
 the very season of the year and hour of the day 
 when the atmospherical conditions render them 
 most deleterious. 
 
 In illustration of the peril to which allusion is 
 made a very significant fact is the extreme vital- 
 ity of the morbid germs which lodge in graves 
 and about them. Dr. Koch, of Germany, and 
 Drs. Ewart and Carpenter, of England, are author- 
 ities for the statement that the blood of an animal 
 that died of splenic fever may be dried and kept for 
 years and then pulverized into dust, and yet the 
 disease-germs may survive with power to produce 
 infection. Such a fact helps to make credible 
 the statements of medical books concerning the 
 origin of some celebrated epidemics. In 1828, 
 we are told, the plague broke out at Modena, in 
 Italy, as the consequence of an excavation in 
 ground where three hundred years previously 
 the victims of the plague had been interred. At 
 Eyam, in Derbyshire, an excavation made a few 
 years ago in ground wherein victims of the plague 
 had been buried in 1665 caused an outbreak, not 
 of the plague exactly, but of a malignant epidemic 
 new to that region. In 1843 the population of 
 Minchinhampton, England, was nearly decimated 
 by a disease manifestly caused by using as a fer- 
 tilizer for their gardens the rich soil of an aban- 
 doned graveyard. In 1823 an outbreak of the 
 plague in Egypt was confidently traced to the 
 reopening of a disused graveyard at Kelioub, 
 
48 CREMA TION. 
 
 fourteen miles from Cairo. Dr. Lyon Playfair's 
 opinion that the fevers so prevalent in Rome 
 during a part of the year are due to exhalations 
 from the soil impregnated with animal matter, 
 may serve to clinch the truth. 
 
 As a single specimen of a numerous class of 
 facts showing the deleterious qualities of dead 
 bodies may be mentioned the fact established by 
 vital statistics, that in France, Switzerland, and 
 England the trades of the grave-digger and the 
 undertaker rank among unhealthy occupations. 
 As to the grave-diggers in France, Dr. Pietra 
 Santa says that, though only the strongest men 
 choose the work, the* duration of their lives is 
 only two-thirds of the common life of their com- 
 patriots; a statement which implies a vast im- 
 provement in the nature of the occupation in the 
 last few hundred years. In the middle ages, 
 when burial in churches was common, the grave- 
 digger's chances of life w r ere pretty much the 
 chances of a soldier of a forlorn-hope. " They 
 fell victims by hundreds to their horrible duties," 
 says Wegmann-Ercolani ; who, by the way, ob- 
 serves that even now they are " mostly pale of 
 face and seldom healthy;" meaning those of 
 Switzerland, or perhaps speaking generally. 
 
 Upon the manner in which graveyards exert 
 their defiling and poisonous influence through 
 air and water much light has been shed by the 
 great chemist of Munich, Professor Pettenkofer. 
 
CREMATION. 49 
 
 While preparing for the Bavarian government 
 a report on the cholera epidemic of 1854, it oc- 
 curred to him that the air in or under the ground 
 might be as worthy of examination as the water 
 there, or as the air above the surface. It was 
 not, however, until 1870 that he engaged in those 
 elaborate investigations which have made ground- 
 air (grundluft) as familiar a word in chemistry 
 and in common life as ground-water (grundwasser). 
 He showed that the ground-air actually differs in. 
 composition from the air of the atmosphere. To 
 be sure, it is made up of the same gases, viz., 
 oxygen, nitrogen, and carbonic acid, but the pro- 
 portion of these gases in the air beneath our feet 
 is subject to great variation, while in the atmos- 
 phere about us it is nearly constant. Most prac- 
 tically important is the fact experimentally estab- 
 lished by Pettenkofer, that the amount of carbonic 
 acid in the ground-air is very much greater than 
 in the air of the atmosphere, though varying 
 somewhat in quantity with the season, and in- 
 creasing with the depth. He showed that the 
 ground is pervaded by water and gases to the 
 depth of twelve or even fourteen feet, the ground- 
 water occupying the pores and crevices of the 
 earth when the air is driven out. He showed 
 that the ground beneath our feet is the scene of 
 continual movement or circulation, the ground- 
 water and the ground- air changing places. Rain- 
 water not evaporated enters the earth and trickles 
 q d 5 
 
50 CREMATION. 
 
 down until it encounters an impervious or water- 
 tight stratum, in its descent expelling air impreg- 
 nated with morbid germs, which are thus mingled 
 with the air we breathe. By the descent of the 
 water fresh supplies of organical germs are car- 
 ried down to lodge there and be again expelled, 
 or else conveyed by the ground-water into the 
 nearest wells or streams. The whole movement 
 much depends upon the alternation of dry and 
 wet weather, w r ith warmth, as it may serve or 
 may be needed. Every one perceives that if 
 Pettenkofer's researches and conclusions are 
 sound, then every dead body put into the ground, 
 however far down, is and must be a source of 
 corruption and infection ; his investigations being 
 in fact a complete experimental demonstration 
 of Sir Henry Thompson's declaration cited some 
 pages back. Furthermore, those who have in 
 Germany w 7 atched the course of certain epi- 
 demics, typhus fever, for example, concede that 
 the great chemist was right in connecting the 
 outbreak of zymotic epidemics with the sinking 
 of the ground-water, and the consequent acces- 
 sion of morbid germs to the atmosphere. But 
 Pettenkofer's investigations have been introduced 
 here for the reason that they furnish an easy 
 explanation of facts which, in whatever way ex- 
 plained, prove irresistibly the infectious and 
 poisonous agency of decaying animal bodies. 
 Thanks to the microscope and to the scientific 
 
CREMATION. 51 
 
 rigor and skill with which it is now employed, 
 the fact can be determined in many cases wdth 
 absolute certainty. Only two or three examples 
 need be cited, being illustrations of w T hich re- 
 ports can be easily found in the medical journals 
 or in text-books. 
 
 Some years ago a frightful epidemic raged in 
 the Italian villages of Ritondella and Bollita, of 
 which the origin was unmistakably traced to the 
 cemeteries. They occupied the top of a hill, from 
 whose base issued the springs used by the vil- 
 lagers for all household purposes, the rain-water 
 which supplied the springs receiving its deadly 
 quality from the human remains through which 
 it passed. More recently the Monumental Ceme- 
 tery at Milan, situated on a hill to the north 
 of the city, was proved to be the source of a 
 fatal epidemic that prevailed in parts of the city, 
 — the w r ells being the channels of communica- 
 tion. 
 
 Professor Reinhard, a distinguished chemist, is 
 authority for the following statements. Large 
 steers, victims of the cattle plague, had been 
 buried near Dresden at a depth of twelve feet. 
 In the following year the water of a well one 
 hundred feet from the fosse had a fetid color and 
 indicated the presence of butyrate of lime. 
 
 Striking illustrations of the truth of Petten- 
 kofer's results were recently exhibited in a ceme- 
 tery at Manchester, England. There graves, only 
 
52 CREMATION. 
 
 a few hours after they had been excavated and 
 left standing open, had to be chemically or me- 
 chanically ventilated before men could descend 
 into them, being literally full of carbonic acid 
 gas, which had flowed into them from the sur- 
 rounding soil. It was the ground-air which, if 
 left undisturbed, would have been forced upward 
 into the atmosphere by the next sinking of the 
 ground-water caused by rain. As has been often 
 proved, this poisonous air frequently finds its way 
 into churches whose floors are below the level of 
 the adjoining church-yards. It is the air, often 
 bearing germs more deadly than itself, which 
 hangs over cemeteries, rendering them at times 
 dangerous places in which to linger. In the 
 strata of air lying in a prolonged calm above a 
 cemetery Professor Selmi, of Mantua, discovered 
 an organic corpuscule (the septo-pneuma) which 
 considerably vitiates the atmosphere, altering it 
 to the detriment of the human economy. " This 
 substance," says Dr. Pietra Santa, " which it is 
 easy to collect and isolate, if placed in a solution 
 of glycose, produces the phenomenon of putrid 
 fermentation, and gives birth to a considerable 
 quantity of bacteria similar to those which are 
 manifested in butyric fermentation. Some drops 
 of this solution injected under the skin of a 
 pigeon brings on the symptoms of typhic in- 
 fection, and death supervenes on the third day. 
 Infiltrated into water-courses the substance has 
 
CREMATION. 53 
 
 doubtless carried infection and death into impor- 
 tant towns." 
 
 Another fact of like import is furnished by the 
 investigations of Dr. Freire, of Rio de Janeiro, 
 respecting the causes of the epidemic yellow 
 fever in that city. He found that " the soil of 
 the cemeteries in which the victims of the dis- 
 ease had been interred was literally alive with 
 microbian organisms precisely identical with 
 those found in the excreta and blood of those 
 who had died of yellow fever in the hospitals." 
 This minute organism, we are told, permeates 
 the soil of cemeteries even to the surface. The 
 peril to life and health involved in such a fact is 
 fully comprehended only when we recollect the 
 astonishing vitality of the germs of pestilence, 
 as illustrated in foregoing statements concerning 
 the reproduction of the plague by opening the 
 ground in which its victims had been interred 
 centuries before, though the peril must seem 
 sufficiently real even to those who reject those 
 statements as incredible. 
 
 In connection with this topic it is worth while 
 to make brief mention of those interesting, though 
 not generally known, researches of Professor 
 Selmi concerning what he calls alcaloidi cadaverici, 
 or ptomaines. By protracted experiments, the 
 Professor showed, and his results have been con- 
 firmed by other investigators, that the common 
 constituents of the human body, as the brain, the 
 
 5* 
 
54 CREMATION. 
 
 blood, fibrin, etc., perfectly innocuous in health, 
 are rapidly converted by decomposition, under 
 certain conditions of heat and moisture, into 
 deadly poisons, named ptomaines. He even 
 showed that death does not always precede the 
 change, but that when the disease is one that in- 
 duces internal decomposition of the plasmatical 
 or the histological elements, the transformation 
 into ptomaines may take place while the patient 
 is alive, and also immediately after death, before 
 any indication of external putrefaction becomes 
 apparent.* 
 
 Two facts must be mentioned, for the reason 
 that they set forth the danger to which we may 
 be exposed not only without our own apprehen- 
 sion or suspicion of its presence, but actually 
 while we deem ourselves peculiarly safe. The 
 first of them is the fact " well established," says 
 the London Lancet, " that the surest carrier and 
 most deadly fruitful nidus of zymotic contagion 
 is the brilliant, enticing-looking water charged 
 with the nitrates which result from decompo- 
 sition of animal matter." In other words, water 
 impregnated with the nitrates and nitrites fur- 
 nished by adjacent graves is often peculiarly 
 
 * Ptomaines od Alcaloidi Cadaverici e Prodotti Analoghi 
 da certe Malattie in Correlazione colla Medicina legale. Me- 
 morie del Prof. Francesco Selmi. Bologna, 1881. See also 
 Note B. 
 
CREMATION. 55 
 
 tempting to the appetite from its brilliant, spark- 
 ling appearance and mineral quality. And yet 
 those who indulge the taste thus flattered imbibe 
 disease and, it may be, death. The second fact 
 just alluded to is the fact that the soil deemed 
 best adapted to the purposes of a cemetery, be- 
 ing dry, close, and yet porous, is precisely the 
 soil in which the subterranean circulatory sys- 
 tem ascertained by Pettenkofer is most perfectly 
 exemplified. In such a well-chosen graveyard 
 the ground-water and the ground-air most easily 
 and perfectly change places, and most effectually 
 convey from the greatest depth and to the 
 greatest distance those organic germs which are 
 the seeds of epidemics. 
 
 Other facts might be urged in illustration of 
 the danger to health which lurks in graveyards, 
 and indeed in every grave, but enough has been 
 said, it is believed, to establish the case to the 
 satisfaction of reflecting and candid persons. 
 The Roman saying, that the health of the people 
 is the supreme law, applies with as much force 
 to sanitary as to political and social conditions, 
 and therefore any custom which can be shown 
 to be injurious to the popular health is a proper 
 subject for agitation and reform. Though crema- 
 tion, the only adequate substitute for interment, 
 has been somewhat discussed in this country, 
 Americans are considerably behind the leading 
 nations of Europe in the amount and character 
 
56 CREMATION. 
 
 of the interest they have shown in its considera- 
 tion. 
 
 Italy is the country in which the reform has 
 been carried forward with most energy and suc- 
 cess. It was started there with some slight ante- 
 cedent advantage in the legislation of some of 
 the states, as when, in July, 1822, the bodies of 
 the poet Shelley and his friend Captain "Williams, 
 cast up by the sea, were burned on the shore, the 
 act w^as one prescribed by the quarantine laws of 
 Tuscany. About the year 1856, a memoir pre- 
 pared by Dr. Coletti, Rector of the University 
 of Padua, for the Academy of Science and Liter- 
 ature in that city, strongly commended the prac- 
 tice of cremation. In 1866, Dr. Giro published 
 an essay in which he contended that inhumation 
 is a practice opposed to humane sentiment, public 
 health, and high civilization. This paper was 
 widely read by the educated classes, and it is said 
 to have attracted the particular attention of phy- 
 sicians, whose professional experience and knowl- 
 edge enabled them to recognize the truth of the 
 most important statements and conclusions of 
 the essayist. It is certain that the year 1869 
 witnessed a noteworthy increase of interest in 
 the subject, not lessened by a resolution in that 
 year passed by the International Medical Con- 
 gress at Florence. It was introduced by Profes- 
 sors Coletti and Castiglione, and in the name of 
 public health and civilization it expressed the de- 
 
CREMATION. 57 
 
 sire of the Congress " that every possible means 
 should be employed to obtain such legislation as 
 might be necessary to render legal the substitution 
 of incineration for inhumation in disposing of 
 the dead." The year 1870 was notable for the 
 number of papers published and discussions held 
 on the subject, French physicians and men of 
 science taking part in the debate with reference 
 to the dead of the Franco-German war then in 
 progress. In 1871 the Medical Congress assem- 
 bled in Rome passed substantially the same res- 
 olution that it had passed in Florence, using 
 somewhat stronger terms ; and in the same year 
 Dr. Pini published a remarkable paper in favor 
 of cremation. In 1872 important papers on the 
 same side of the question were published by Drs. 
 Ayr, Valeriani, Peyriani, and Polli, the most val- 
 uable being the paper in which Dr. Polli gave 
 account of his experiments in the cremation of 
 animals at the Milan gas-works. In 1873 inter- 
 est in the subject among the Italians had almost 
 become enthusiasm ; it was widely extended as 
 well as intense. The Royal Institute of Science 
 and Letters of Lombardy petitioned the Italian 
 Parliament to " take prompt measures to secure 
 for Italy the honor of having inaugurated the 
 great and beneficent reform, and of having thus 
 set the example to other civilized nations." In 
 the same year Drs. Brunetti and Gorini per- 
 formed their famous experiments, in which they 
 
58 CREMATION. 
 
 showed how completely the body could be re- 
 duced to ashes without the exhibition of any 
 sight, sound, or smell to move the disgust or 
 wound the sensibilities of the most susceptible 
 or fastidious. 
 
 In 1874 a memorable meeting was held at 
 Milan, at which representatives of all classes 
 were present, for the purpose of organizing a 
 cremation society. After speeches by several 
 eminent men, the meeting unanimously requested 
 the Italian government to legalize cremation of 
 the dead under the immediate supervision of the 
 syndics of the communes, leaving the mode of 
 sepulture optional, however, — that is, allowing 
 persons and families to practice cremation or 
 not as they pleased. Such was the regular be- 
 ginning of the new mode in modern Italy, though 
 during several years before bodies seem to have 
 been cremated without either permission or inter- 
 ference on the part of the authorities. In fact, at 
 this meeting in Milan Dr. Lombardi, the Sicilian 
 poet, delighted sentimental admirers of the new 
 mode by stating that certain persons of his ac- 
 quaintance had bten accustomed to plant, with 
 a beautiful result, the seeds of small flowering 
 plants in the ashes of their deceased friends. At 
 present cremation is regarded with steadily-in- 
 creasing favor in Italy. Several furnaces are in 
 operation and others in preparation, and the in- 
 dications are that it will be preferred Itv a large 
 
CREMA riON. 59 
 
 majority of the people, to whom, in the words 
 of Professor Gaetano Pini, it seems " a poetical 
 and humane means of destroying our bodies and 
 of delivering them from putrefaction when they 
 have been stricken by death/'* 
 
 Of Professor Brunetti's experiments, before 
 mentioned, the results were exhibited at the 
 Vienna Exposition of 1873 in the form of three 
 and three-fourths pounds of delicate white ashes 
 in a glass box, inscribed with the words, Vermibns 
 erepti, puro consumimur igni. It is hardly possible 
 to describe in words too strong the effect produced 
 upon intelligent visitors by the sight. It operated 
 like infection. The municipal authorities of Vi- 
 enna at once took steps to introduce cremation as 
 an alternative for all who should prefer the method. 
 Multitudes of Germans were not less impressed, 
 and lost little time in beginning the agitation 
 for reform. Dr. Richter (who is also a univer- 
 sity professor), Staff Physician Dr. Trusen, Med- 
 ical Counsellor Dr. Kuechenmeister, Dr. Baffin- 
 sky, Dr. Bernstein, Dr. Mosckau, Professor Bock, 
 Professor Reclam, and Dr. Siemens may be men- 
 tioned as a few of the conspicuous men who have 
 taken a leading part in the movement, and the 
 results of the discussion were long ago apparent 
 
 * " Mezzo poetico e gentile per disfare i nostri corpi colpiti 
 da morte e liberarli dalla putredine." — La Salute, Giornale 
 d'Igiene Popolare, vol. vii. p. 228. 
 
60 CREMATION. 
 
 in the establishment and activity of several ere- 
 mation-furnaces, one of which, the one^at Gotha, 
 had consumed one hundred and thirty-nine bodies 
 some weeks ago. In some states the government 
 has interfered with the movement, or the prac- 
 tical results would be more important than they 
 are. But they are by no means insignificant, 
 and the friends of cremation in Germany are so 
 well organized in societies for the promotion of 
 the reform by mutual co-operation that no doubt 
 is felt of the advancement of the cause.* 
 
 In Switzerland the reform has advanced more 
 rapidly than in Germany, having received a pow- 
 erful impulse from a ghastly phenomenon at 
 Zurich. The removal of the remains from one 
 of the principal graveyards having become neces- 
 sary, it was found on examination that all or 
 nearly all the bodies had been changed into that 
 peculiar substance named adipocere, of course 
 presenting a most offensive and even shocking 
 sight to surviving friends and relatives. In truth, 
 the impression was so profound and ineffaceable 
 that the recollection of it, after the lapse of thirty 
 years, gave animation to the efforts and effect 
 to the appeals of those w T ho, inspired at Vienna, 
 have been laboring to introduce the practice of 
 cremation. Many clergymen, both Catholic and 
 Protestant, Oberpfarrer Dr. Lang at the head of 
 
 * See Note C. 
 
CREMATION. 61 
 
 them, have favored the movement, and the well- 
 known Professor Kinkel and Dr. Wegmann-Er- 
 colani may stand as representatives of the many 
 laymen by whose activity the cause has pros- 
 pered. 
 
 Even the great London physician, Sir Henry 
 Thompson, confesses how deeply he was im- 
 pressed by Brunetti's exhibition at Vienna, 
 though he is known to have derived his convic- 
 tion in favor of cremation from a previous study 
 of the subject. His articles in the Contemporary 
 Review in 1874 were read with deep interest and 
 respect on the Continent as well as in England. 
 Naturally, in England the conservative spirit so 
 predominant there took the alarm, and showed 
 in many petty comments and untimely sneers 
 how gladly it would disable the innovator. 
 And yet the only person who stepped forward to 
 encounter him in argument was Mr. Holland, 
 the salaried inspector of burials, — a circumstance 
 which Sir Henry did not fail to call attention to 
 in his rejoinder. 
 
 Though the agitation transferred to Great 
 Britain by Sir Henry Thompson has been there 
 carried on with less outward display, the interest 
 taken in the question is believed to be not less 
 real or general than on the Continent. From 
 the English literature of the last three hundred 
 and fifty years it would be possible, if I am not 
 mistaken, to form a catena or chain of testi- 
 
G2 CREMATION. 
 
 monies favorable to cremation as the more grace- 
 ful and judicious mode of sepulture. As an 
 illustration of what is meant take two or three 
 specimens. In his celebrated political romance* 
 Sir Thomas More represents the citizens of his 
 commonwealth as thinking very ill of a person 
 " whom they see depart from his life agaynst his 
 will," " and them that so die, they burie with 
 sorow and silence." " Contrariewise all that de- 
 parte merely (merrily) and ful of good hope, for 
 them no man mourneth ;" . . . " and at the last, 
 not with mourning sorow, but with a great rever- 
 ence they bourne (burn) the bodies." Passing 
 over intermediate writers, we find Robert Southey 
 in a letter saying, that " the custom of interment 
 makes the idea of a dead friend more unpleas- 
 ant, — we think of the grave, corruption, and 
 worms ; burning would be better." Southej^, as 
 everybody knows, was, after his hot youth, one 
 of the most conservative of men, a Tory of the 
 Tories indeed, and devoutly religious withal. 
 And then w 7 e have a man of so different a temper 
 and breeding as Benjamin Disraeli (Lord Beacons- 
 field) declaring that " what is called God's acre 
 is really not adapted to the country which we 
 inhabit, the times in which we live, and the spirit 
 of the age." All these expressions of opinion 
 and feeling were given long before the present 
 
 * Utopia (Arber's Reprint), p. 147. 
 
CREMATION. 63 
 
 discussion began, and of course before the re- 
 sources of modern science had been thought of 
 as furnishing means of cremation compared with 
 which the classical funeral pyre should seem 
 barbarous. 
 
 When the Roman satirist* bade the lovers of 
 militaiy glory place Hannibal in scales and find 
 how little he weighed, and in reference to Alex- 
 ander, of Macedon, the same writer observes 
 that only death shows how small are the little 
 bodies of men,f he was thinking of the remains 
 left by the flames of the pile. And yet, unless 
 favored by a strong wind, the cremation of those 
 days would be very imperfect. Sylla, the burn- 
 ing of whose body did so much to extend the 
 practice of cremation among the Romans, had 
 acquired the sobriquet of Felix, or The Lucky, 
 from the uniformly good fortune which had at- 
 tended him through life, and ancient historians 
 do not neglect to state that he was lucky even to 
 the last, as a strong wind suddenly arose by 
 which his funeral pile was thoroughly kindled 
 and his mortal remains reduced to ashes. In the 
 Homeric passage already referred to, when, as 
 the poet says, " the pile of dead Patroclus burned 
 not," Achilles invokes Boreas and Zephyrus to 
 
 * Juvenal, Sat. x., 148, 173. 
 
 f " 3Iors sola fatetur 
 
 Quantula sint hominum corpuscula, 
 
64 CREMATION. 
 
 make the fire effectual. These citations, by no 
 means necessary to prove so familiar a truth of 
 nature, may serve to quicken or revive in some 
 memories their conception of what is sometimes 
 called classical sepulture. 
 
 The disclosure of long-buried urns, and modern 
 experiments upon the ancient mode of cremation, 
 leave no doubt that even under the most favora- 
 ble conditions cinders and scraggy clinkers would 
 generally be found among the human ashes of 
 the funeral pyre. But Professor Brunetti, of 
 Padua, Professor Re clam, of Leipsic, and Dr. 
 Siemens, of Berlin, have each contrived a method 
 by w T hich the combustion is so perfect as to leave 
 no such repulsive remnants. It is not here neces- 
 sary to enter into details easily accessible to those 
 who desire to investigate the subject. It will be 
 deemed sufficient to say that any one of three or 
 four slightly different arrangements of apparatus 
 for cremation can be set up at no very great ex- 
 pense, in connection with an edifice for the ac- 
 commodation of relatives and other attendants. 
 Those funeral rites and ceremonies deemed by 
 Christians appropriate can be performed with 
 the great advantage of avoiding all exposure to 
 rain, cold, damp ground, and such like causes of 
 much sickness and many deaths every year under 
 the existing custom. 
 
 As to the preservation of the remains, there 
 will be ample opportunity for the exercise of 
 
CREMATION. 65 
 
 judgment and for the indulgence or gratification 
 of sentiment. The relics, precious to affectionate 
 kindred, are absolutely harmless wherever de- 
 posited. In twenty minutes, or a little more, the 
 body has been resolved into its primary constitu- 
 ents and distributed for the uses each is divinely 
 intended to subserve ; a process too disgusting 
 and horrible for contemplation, or even a thought, 
 as it goes on in the grave, but as here effected by 
 the pure agency of fire, most beautiful and con- 
 soling. The water, nearly seventy-five per cent, 
 of the whole, the carbonic acid and ammonia, 
 have gone into the atmosphere in the form of 
 gases and perhaps a little vapor; the mineral 
 constituents, more or less oxidized, the lime, 
 phosphorus, magnesia, etc., remain in the ashes. 
 It is really difficult to conceive that rational 
 affection, following the departed with cherished 
 memories of their looks and ways in life, would 
 rather think of them as rotting in the ground, 
 hideous skeletons, or yet w^orse, still masses of 
 corruption and worms, than as at once become a 
 portion of the all-pervasive life of nature, and 
 the little heap of ashes that may be kept in a 
 graceful urn, or in a flower-vase. 
 
 To some it is no slight recommendation of this 
 mode of sepulture that it removes all possibility 
 of premature burial, — a dread from which even 
 the strongest minds are not exempt, as proved by 
 the directions prescribed in the wills of the late 
 e 6* 
 
66 CREMATION. 
 
 Lord Lytton and other eminent men, to avoid 
 even the possibility of the horror. The practice 
 of " body-snatching," whether for traffic or for 
 ransom, would be ended forever by its general 
 adoption. But one of the strongest arguments, 
 or greatest practical inducements, for the intro- 
 duction of the mode is the reduction it would 
 effect in the expense of funerals. True, the 
 wealthy or the ostentatious might make the mode 
 as costly as they pleased, as we know that the 
 grandees and rich aristocracy of Rome, even 
 under the Republic, laid out vast sums in build- 
 ing and decorating tombs in which only an urn 
 or a few urns were placed. There is, however, 
 no doubt that in this cotmtry the cost of sepulture 
 might and probably would be so much reduced 
 as to render the change of custom an object of 
 even national economy. This topic has been so 
 well presented by the Rev. Mr. Beuglass, of New 
 York, that I cannot do better than cite the para- 
 graphs in which he compares the two modes of 
 cremation and interment with reference to ex- 
 pense. 
 
 " Apart," he says, a from the burial lot and 
 the tombstone and the expense of carriages, the 
 average cost of a funeral among the lower mid- 
 dle classes in and about New York is not far 
 from one hundred and fifty dollars. The average 
 cost of burial lots in "Woodlawn and Greenwood, 
 each containing space for six graves, is about 
 
 
CREMATION. 67 
 
 four hundred and fifty dollars, or say seventy- 
 five dollars a grave. The cost of single graves 
 in the public lots is twenty-five dollars each. 
 The cost of a modest head-stone and foot-stone 
 and their erection will add seventy-five dollars 
 more, making a total of two hundred and fifty 
 or three hundred dollars. These three hundred 
 dollars, more or less, have to be paid in advance 
 by the poor, to raise which they alone know 
 what sacrifices must be made. 
 
 " On the other hand, apart from carriage hire, 
 which we may assume to be about the same in 
 each case, the cost of cremation decorously per- 
 formed, including the case in which the body is 
 carried to the crematory, should not exceed forty 
 dollars, while the cost of the terra-cotta urn of 
 classic pattern, the most tasteful and appropriate 
 possible, could not exceed five dollars. Add ten 
 dollars for a niche in the columbarium in which 
 the urn may find a permanent resting-place in 
 case the friends should not wish to take it to 
 their homes, and still another five dollars for an 
 inscribed tablet under the niche, and we have 
 sixty dollars, as against four or five times that 
 sum for earth-burial." 
 
 Of course the expense would somewhat vary 
 with the place, but there is no place where the 
 difference would not be as much in favor of cre- 
 mation as the cheaper as it is in New York. 
 When to the consideration of the cost of inhuma- 
 
68 CREMATION. 
 
 tion we add the great and ever-increasing value 
 of the ground near large cities set apart for 
 cemeteries, we have an economical argument of 
 prodigious force in favor of the change. 
 
 The cause of cremation has been somewhat 
 injured by some of the arguments urged in its 
 support. One of the reasons offered in its favor 
 by Dr. Rudler, of Paris, is the advantage that 
 might be derived from the combustion of bodies 
 in the form of illuminating gas for general pur- 
 poses ; and even Sir Henry Thompson made the 
 mistake — surprising in such an advocate — of 
 proposing that the ashes should be used as a 
 fertilizer. Grossly utilitarian considerations seem 
 especially out of place and incongruous in view 
 of the refined character of the proposed reform ; 
 a reform w^hich appeals directly to sentiment 
 against the coarse and vulgar habit of consign- 
 ing the honored or beloved dead to slow putre- 
 faction and the devouring worm. Of such rea- 
 sons for cremation, however, it is best to say with 
 Dante,* — 
 
 " Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa." 
 
 Of some of the opposition to cremation it is 
 impossible not to see the source in mere antago- 
 nism to the new. Though an ancient mode of 
 sepulture, it has been long in desuetude, and it 
 
 * Inferno, iii. 51. 
 
CREMA TION. 69 
 
 must therefore be opposed, — a state of mind in 
 many which causes a German writer on the sub- 
 ject to recollect a pungent saying of Heine's 
 brilliant enemy, Theodor Boerne. Pythagoras, 
 said Boerne, having discovered a wonderful geo- 
 metrical truth, forthwith expressed his joyful 
 thanks by sacrificing a hecatomb, — that is, a 
 hundred oxen, — and ever since, when anything 
 new is brought forth or commended to public 
 attention, forthwith all the oxen, in a sort of 
 panic fear, begin to bellow. Really, some of 
 the objections offered to cremation much remind 
 one of the voice of bullocks, even association 
 with which the Son of Sirach deemed unpropi- 
 tious to mental illumination. It is not intended, 
 however, thus opprobriously to characterize all 
 the reasons offered against the proposed reform, 
 some of which are entitled to respectful treat- 
 ment and such answers as may be forthcoming. 
 
 It is objected that cremation is of heathen 
 origin and tendency. But it has been shown 
 that inhumation is equally of heathen origin, 
 and that even after Christianity had been widely 
 diffused in the Roman world inhumation was still 
 preferred to cremation by some of the heathen 
 for reasons of their own. Moreover, it is cer- 
 tain that on many of the Christian tombs in the 
 catacombs letters are inscribed which the histo- 
 rian Merevale regards as evidence that the early 
 Christians sometimes burned their dead. But 
 
70 CREMATION. 
 
 we can well afford to concede the contrary, ad- 
 mitting that the Christian custom has always 
 been interment. Though they did not adopt 
 cremation from the heathen, they adopted and 
 adapted mat^ other customs, such as their mode 
 of celebrating Christmas, Easter, New Year's 
 day, and other festivals. Then, though they did 
 not adopt cremation, they adopted the funereal 
 urn with its ashen contents, — the urn having been 
 one of the most common symbols in churches and 
 church-yards in very early times and through the 
 middle ages down to the present day, — while 
 " peace to his ashes" is a phrase of constant cur- 
 rency in the funeral sermons of the Christian 
 clergy, — a phrase which must have always re- 
 minded intelligent hearers of the practice in 
 which it originated, the practice of incineration. 
 It is, indeed, not quite comprehensible how the 
 phrase could have come into such general use 
 if Christians never practised cremation, and cer- 
 tainly if the use implies nothing else, it implies 
 that the custom alluded to must have been re- 
 garded without either disgust or disapproval. 
 Manifestly they saw nothing of heathen ten- 
 dency in the mode, and at the present day it is 
 surely too late to discover what they failed to 
 detect. 
 
 To discuss the objection founded upon the 
 doctrine, or rather upon the misapprehension of 
 the doctrine, of the resurrection would almost 
 
CREMATION. 71 
 
 seem an affront to the intelligence of the least 
 instructed Christian. Since, however, the actual 
 Bishop of Lincoln, Dr. Wordsworth, has expressed 
 his fear that the immediate effect of introducing 
 the practice of cremation would be to undermine 
 the popular belief in that article of faith, a few 
 words may be said on the subject without offence. 
 Probably the Christian faith, the doctrine of the 
 resurrection included, is in more peril to-day 
 from the vocal demonstrativeness of professional 
 defenders who run to meet imaginary enemies 
 than from the practice of cremation, though it 
 had become the prevalent custom. Lord Shaftes- 
 bury, an earnest Christian, settled the point 
 started by the Bishop when he said, " If burn- 
 ing the body interfered with the resurrection, 
 what would become of the blessed martyrs?" 
 In a former page we have seen that even in the 
 third century intelligent Christians perceived 
 nothing in the practice of cremation incompati- 
 ble with the belief in the resurrection. In truth, 
 then and for centuries afterwards, a favorite sym- 
 bol of the resurrection — a symbol that figured in 
 popular hymns, in sermons, and in the pictorial 
 adornment of churches — was that mysterious 
 Arabian bird which dies by fire and revives in 
 
 its offspring : 
 
 " Jam sponte crematur 
 Ut redeat; gaudetque mori festinus in ortum."* 
 
 *Claudiani Eidyllia, i. 57. 
 
72 CREMATION. 
 
 Dr. Wordsworth received the most effectual 
 answer from his episcopal brother, the Bishop 
 of Manchester, who said that " no intelligent 
 faith can suppose that any Christian doctrine is 
 affected by the manner in which or the time in 
 which this mortal body of ours crumbles into 
 dust/' adding the important advice that " Chris- 
 tians should in mind dissociate the resurrection 
 from all physical conditions." 
 
 Somewhat allied to the foregoing objection is 
 the objection derived from the language of the 
 Bible in the divine sentence upon Adam, " In 
 the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till 
 thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast 
 thou taken ; for dust thou art and unto dust shalt 
 thou return." In order to perceive condemna- 
 tion or disapproval of cremation in such language 
 one must regard rather the dead letter of the 
 text than its metaphysical meaning and vivifying 
 thought, as the body which is consumed by fire 
 returns at last to the ground as inevitably as the 
 body that rots in " the cold obstruction" of the 
 
 grave. 
 
 Really, it is neither sound theology nor healthy 
 piety that strives continually by appeals to the 
 letter of Scripture to place Christianity as a high 
 wall across the pathway of improvement. By 
 looking too intensely, however reverently, at the 
 letter while overlooking the spirit of the sacred 
 books, theologians have been often led to uphold 
 
CREMATION. 73 
 
 strange usages. No doubt the Scriptures teach 
 that the body of a pious man is a temple of the 
 Holy Ghost, — but when the soul has left its tene- 
 ment of clay the tenement is a temple no longer, 
 but a mere habitation of worms. It is mere 
 matter of dangerous quality that must be put 
 away out of sight to prevent harm. If not 
 already, it speedily becomes poison, and to regard 
 it as anything else is sheer superstition or igno- 
 rance or affectation. To put it away where it can 
 do no mischief to the living is a social duty, even 
 as to put it away in a manner least painful or 
 disagreeable to sensitive kindred is a duty of 
 common courtesy. To combine the two duties 
 in the most effectual method prescribed by 
 science and mechanical skill, irrespectively of 
 old prejudices or anile traditions, is a duty dic- 
 tated by Christianity. To appeal to the book of 
 Genesis or to Paul's epistle to the Corinthians as 
 containing texts which prohibit that mode of 
 action, or suggest doubts as to the pi'ety or pro- 
 priety of such action, is a bit of pedantry at 
 which St. Paul, if he revisited the earth, would 
 smile grimly, or perhaps laugh quietly, accord- 
 ing to his mood, or the condition of his " thorn" 
 at the moment. Certainly, it would amuse, if 
 it did not provoke him into some show of irrita- 
 tion. 
 
 The only scientific objection yet urged against 
 cremation is one which might be justly dismissed 
 
 D 7 
 
74 CREMATION, 
 
 as irrelevant, inasmuch as it assumes a state of 
 facts which nobody contemplates as a proper or 
 even possible consequence of the establishment 
 of the custom. The objector assumes that one 
 result of the introduction of the custom would 
 be the combustion of all, or nearly all, animal 
 bodies at death, and then he argues that such a 
 substitution of the combustion of animal remains 
 for their natural decay would cut off the great 
 source of ammonia, which is the actual staple of 
 the vegetable kingdom. The equilibrium of ani- 
 mal and vegetable life would be destroyed, says 
 the objector, and the result would be disastrous. 
 If this objection had not been first presented by 
 a chemist of some reputation for science it would 
 have attracted no attention, — it would have been 
 ascribed to ignorance or grave misapprehension 
 on the part of the objector. At present, the ob- 
 jection is remembered chiefly as one of the dead 
 Professor Mohr's many crotchets, a love for 
 which in the pursuit of originality injured not a 
 little his professional reputation. In fact, the 
 ammonia diffused in combustion reaches the 
 ground and performs its part in the vegetable 
 kingdom not less certainly and really more 
 rapidly than if the body had been buried. And 
 again, animal remains are by no means as alleged 
 the only source of ammonia. In a paper by 
 Schoenbeiri published in 1846, it was shown that 
 during the evaporation of water, whether in the 
 
CREMATION. 75 
 
 cold or at the boiling-point, nitrate of ammonia 
 is always formed. In the manufacture also of 
 illuminating gas sal ammoniac in great quantities 
 is produced.* Indeed, the assertion of a well- 
 known local chemist that in Pittsburgh alone 
 sufficient ammonia is produced to supply the 
 continent is only a legitimate hyperbole. The 
 objection is, in fact, both false and impertinent. 
 
 There is only one other objection that may 
 seem worthy of a moment's notice, — the medico- 
 legal objection that cremation would increase 
 crime by favoring the impunity of its perpetra- 
 tors. If, it is urged, the victim of poison or 
 other secret and unlawful mode of killing could 
 be forthwith carried off to the furnace and con- 
 sumed, the temptation to commit such crimes 
 would be indefinitely multiplied. Most likely, 
 the result would be the very reverse of what is 
 thus anticipated. "With the introduction of the 
 new method, there would doubtless be an in- 
 crease of vigilance; there would be a functionary 
 bound to take note of any suspicious circum- 
 stance sufficient to warrant delay and investiga- 
 tion. And in the case of actual crime, in the 
 mere promptitude or earliness of the inquiry 
 there would be a great advantage. "In every 
 autopsy, but especially in every autopsy under- 
 taken for forensic purposes," says Casper, " it is 
 
 *See Wagner's Chemische Technologie, 1873, p. 272. 
 
76 CREMATION. 
 
 greatly to be desired that the forensic physician 
 should be enabled by the legal authorities to 
 undertake the examination as soon after death 
 as possible, before any of those various post- 
 mortem, phenomena already described can occur 
 to obscure facts, or to render their establishment 
 impossible, as may only too readily be the case 
 where putrescence has already set in." * At pres- 
 ent the investigation is generally undertaken 
 when it is too late, in cases of poison at least. 
 But really the danger would be quite insignifi- 
 cant. Embalming offers as ready means as 
 cremation of concealing the traces of poison 
 administered to kill, and yet who knows of any 
 one resorting to the method ? Let the poisoner 
 have his victim embalmed, and he can never be 
 convicted on any evidence furnished by the re- 
 mains. 
 
 Besides such general objections as those briefly 
 reviewed, very peculiar reasons are sometimes 
 assigned in justification of American indifference 
 to the subject. Of one of these reasons, the 
 grand roominess of the country, the inadequacy 
 has been already shown. The roominess is cer- 
 tainly growing less with the lapse of every day, 
 
 * Handbook of the Practice of Forensic Medicine, based 
 upon Personal Experience. By Johann Ludwig Casper, M.D., 
 Professor, etc., vol. i. p. 61. (Sydenham Society Publication, 
 London, 1871.) 
 
CREMATION. 77 
 
 and if the reform is really a good thing, we 
 manifestly surrender our own advantage by fail- 
 ing to embrace and use it at once, as by retain- 
 ing the ancient usage we increase the difficulty 
 of change, in full anticipation of making it at a 
 more convenient season. Another reason as- 
 signed why we may rightly feel comfortably 
 content in our indifference is notable and sur- 
 prising. It would be absurd for us, we are told, 
 to take alarm at the dangers alleged to lurk 
 beneath the ground while we take no heed of 
 the more manifest dangers that lie, in full view, 
 on the surface, filling with offal and animal 
 bodies the very streams from which we draw the 
 water we drink. As a stroke of satire or trait 
 of irony the reason is good; as an argument 
 against reform it is laden with all the abuses and 
 abominations of our actual condition, social, 
 sanitary, and political. The practice mentioned 
 is an outrage upon decency, a violation of the 
 laws of health, — a practice which will certainly 
 be abolished along with, if not before, the custom 
 of inhumation. It must, however, be admitted 
 that animal remains exposed to the air and 
 speedily consumed by the natural scavengers of 
 land and water, are unquestionably less dele- 
 terious and dangerous than they would be if 
 buried in the earth. 
 
 7* 
 
IS" O T E S. 
 
 Note A, page 31. 
 
 Probably the first person of European extraction 
 whose remains were formally cremated on this side 
 of the Atlantic was Henry Laurens, so eminent as a 
 statesman before and during the war of the Kevolu- 
 tion. Of Huguenot descent, he was born in Charles- 
 ton, S. C, in 1724, and died in the same place in 
 1792. He had received a first-rate education in 
 Europe, and though engaged in business as a mer- 
 chant during many years, he acquired great distinc- 
 tion as a writer on political subjects, his pamphlets 
 on the public questions of the time attracting much 
 attention. Appointed minister to Holland, he was 
 captured on the voyage thither by a British ship, and 
 was confined for some time in the Tower as a rebel. 
 There he was often visited by his friend of other 
 years, Edmund Burke, by whose influence he was at 
 length released. His remains were cremated in his 
 garden, according to an injunction and detailed direc- 
 tions given in his will. Laurens was greatly esteemed 
 and loved by Washington, to whose military family 
 he belonged when in active military service. 
 
 Henry Barry, of Marion, in South Carolina, is 
 
 79 
 
80 NOTES. 
 
 mentioned as an early cremationist, whose remains 
 were burned in accordance with his own injunction. 
 
 The next instance is believed to have been that of 
 the Baron de Palm, whose cremation at Washington, 
 Pa., in December, 1876, was made so much of a sensa- 
 tion by the newspapers. His remains were consumed 
 in the crematory which the late Dr. Julius P. Le 
 Moyne, of Washington, Pa., had constructed for his 
 own use. 
 
 Dr. Le Moyne was, during many years, a physi- 
 cian of great local repute for knowledge and skill in 
 his profession. His fame as a physician would have 
 been much greater if he had not early become in- 
 terested in the anti-slavery movement, to which he 
 devoted much of his time and energy. Of the doc- 
 tor might be truly said what Julius Caesar said of 
 young Brutus, — Quicquid vult valcle vult. It was 
 certainly true of his wish concerning American sla- 
 very, upon which he waged relentless war as long as 
 it existed ; and not very long after its overthrow, 
 Dr. Le Moyne took up the practice of cremation as 
 one worthy of his best endeavors to commend to 
 public favor as the only right mode of sepulture. 
 It would be interesting to know whether this step 
 was spontaneous, the result of his own reflection, or 
 was suggested by the published reports of the agita- 
 tion of the subject in Europe. Whatever may have 
 been the origin of his conviction, there can be no 
 question that he made the subject his own by action 
 as well as by thought. Besides much speaking and 
 some writing in commendation of the method, he 
 erected at his own expense the furnace which still 
 
NOTES. 81 
 
 stands, and which has afforded a considerable number 
 of persons, in anticipation of death, the consolation 
 of knowing that their remains would escape the 
 horrible doom of becoming the habitation of worms 
 while slowly rotting in " the cold obstruction" of 
 the ground. 
 
 Note B, page 54. 
 
 In the presence of such facts is it wholly absurd 
 or too fanciful to suspect that the Greeks, with their 
 acute sensibilities and penetrating glances into the 
 life of nature, were not influenced by mere supersti- 
 tion in entertaining what seem their extravagant 
 notions about the defiling quality of the dead body ? 
 They believed that a corpse polluted whatever was 
 brought near it, and that not only men, but even the 
 gods who touched or even looked upon it, were thus 
 rendered unclean. In the " Hippolitus" of Euripides, 
 line 1437, Diana is made to say, " It is not lawful for 
 me to behold the dead." In the "Alcestis" of the 
 same poet Apollo declares that he must leave the 
 beloved abode of Admetus lest he should be defiled 
 by the death of Alcestis, then about to take place. 
 Even a man's peculiar genius or guardian spirit, the 
 Greeks thought, did not stay with him until the end, 
 but withdrew before life had quite departed. See 
 the subject fully illustrated by Lessing in his essay, 
 " Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet." — Lessing's Werke, 
 Band v. s. 37. 
 
82 NOTES. 
 
 Note C, page 60. 
 
 In Germany the reform has had the advantage of 
 whatever prestige it could derive from literature. 
 The greatest name in German literature, that of 
 Goethe, can be fairly cited in favor of cremation. 
 In the " Naturl. Tochter," Aufzug iii. Auftritt 4, one 
 of the characters breaks forth in a noble strain of 
 poetry in commendation of the wiser custom of the 
 ancients, weiser Brauch der Alten, etc. Platen 
 also, said to be the favorite poet of the German 
 ladies, has glorified fire-sepulture in a beautiful epi- 
 gram, in which he invokes the holy flames to return 
 and purify the dark, pestiferous atmosphere of death. 
 And genial, popular Justinus Kerner, in a brilliant 
 little poem of thirty lines on Cremation versus Burial, 
 has set forth the advantages of one and the abomi- 
 nations of the other mode in terms which must for- 
 ever remain in the reader's memory. These passages 
 of poetical argument are all quoted and applied by 
 German writers on the subject. Among these Ger- 
 man writings one is particularly commended to the 
 attention of German-American readers, — "Die Lei- 
 chenverbrennungvonden Gesichtspunkten derPietat, 
 der Aesthetik, der Beligion, der Hygiene, der Ge- 
 schichte, des Eechts und der National Oekonomie." 
 Though the author, Mr. E. Schmidt, takes occasion 
 to ventilate certain crotchets foreign to his subject, 
 he writes with animation and vigor, and his tract 
 cannot be read without a good result. 
 
 THE END.