Wetness accelerates decay. When we hear the rain fall in the silent night, we are compelled to think, shuddering, how the horrible process of destruction begins in the grave of some beloved one whom we have recently buried.
The same stench that assails our nostrils when we approach a corpse that has lain a long time above ground, meets us when we open a grave; the same poisonous gases are evolved under ground from a decaying corpus as upon the surface of the earth. It makes no difference whether the grave we explore be that of a prime minister, upon which a magnificent monument rears its costly shaft high into the air, or that of a common criminal who tried to enjoy existence by spending three-quarters of his lifetime in prison; the result remains the same: in each we find the disgusting and sickening evidence of slow destruction,—a formless, putrid mass of flesh, and sometimes numberless revelling worms.
The conditions under which decomposition can take place are a certain degree of moisture and a constant supply of air. When a corpse is embedded in a soil that is very wet, a curious change takes place. There is no decay, but instead a fatty metamorphosis, giving the body a waxy appearance and preserving its original form. The result of this transformation is called adipocere. The process by which the body is changed into this stearine-like mass is entitled saponification, and is not very well understood as yet by the scientists. Such preserved bodies were found in the burial-grounds at Paris, Brussels, London, and many other cities.
THE CREMATORIUM AT VARESE.
(From Dr. Pini’s work.)
In 1874, the cemetery board of the burial-ground at Zuerich, Switzerland, discovered that the bodies interred in the graveyard since 1849 had not undergone decomposition, but had turned into adipocere. This horrible discovery materially assisted the progress of incineration in Switzerland.
Tripp relates that when eight bodies were taken up in a cemetery near Worcester, England, the soil of which was composed chiefly of gravel and clay that was always very moist and at times so wet that the water had to be pumped out of the graves, the undecayed body of a nineteen-year-old girl was found which had been buried 51 years and had undergone saponification; the other corpses were decomposed, also the coffins, while the casket which had contained the saponified body was preserved.
I have seen but one saponified corpse. It was at the museum of the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons; I have forgotten whether it was a man or woman. But I still remember how I shuddered at the sight and how I walked close up to the glass case to make sure that the waxy mass within was a human being.
It is superfluous to point out here that cremation puts a stop to saponification. One need not be a chemist to know that a body cannot turn into adipocere after it has been reduced to ashes.
Whenever the earth of a graveyard yet contains enough oxygen for the corpses deposited there, the dangers are very few; but whenever this is not the case, the bodies of the dead undergo a horrible metamorphosis, known as putrefaction, and become dangerous to the living on account of the poisonous gases and other effluvia generated.