THE MILAN CINERARIUM.
Incineration in war-time should be obligatory—must be so in fact. At present, cremation in portable furnaces is out of the question, because it would take too long. Only the bodies of prominent officers might be thus cremated and sent to the rear, so that they might rest under a monument erected by the grateful people of the country that they served. Under the existing circumstances, I think Creteur’s method would be the best. By this means, several hundred bodies could be destroyed at once. There ought to be a cremation corps in every division of an army. Better yet it would be to organize a neutral society, like the Red Cross Association, and call it the Society of the Black Cross. The members might wear a black cross on their caps and on the left arm. After a battle, the various corps of this society would begin their work, gathering the dead and committing them to the flames. Thus we would protect our brave soldiers, who offer up their lives for their beloved country and our sake, from pestilence and disease.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PROCESS OF MODERN CREMATION.
In beginning the consideration of the various processes of cremation, I ought to speak of the ancient pyre first; but since it was fully described in a previous chapter, I deem it best to dismiss it with this passing notice. I will remark, however, that were the introduction of cremation attempted with a view to the use of this barbarous mode, that is, if there were no alternative but to burn the dead in the old-fashioned way, I would not be the advocate of incineration; for the method of antiquity was not only obnoxious to the senses, but almost as dangerous to the living as burial in the earth.
It would take up too much space and would, moreover, be entirely useless to describe in detail the numerous European cremation apparatuses, of which those of Siemens, Brunetti, and Gorini are best known. The trouble with these furnaces is, that (1) the apparatus costs too much; (2) the process of cremation, when they are employed, is too expensive.
Therefore I will confine myself to a description of the cremation furnaces used in America.
The crematory at Washington, Pa., is a small, plain, brick building, containing but two rooms,—furnace and reception room. The retort is exactly similar to the ones used in making gas, and, indeed, the whole process is the same.
The Washington crematory is one story high, 30 feet long, 20 feet wide. The reception room is 20 feet square, including walls, and the furnace room 20 feet by 10 feet, including walls. Cremation is performed in a fire-clay cylinder or retort, called the incinerator, which is three feet in diameter by seven feet long, and the walls of which are from one to two inches thick. The retort is like those used in the manufacture of illuminating gas, but somewhat of a different shape. It is heated to a red heat by a furnace fire which is built underneath and kept burning for 20 or 30 hours before the cremation is to take place. The body is placed in an iron crib made in the shape of a coffin, with small, round rods, with feet three or four inches long to keep it up off the bottom of the retort. These feet are inserted into a flat strip of iron two inches wide and a quarter inch thick, turned up at the ends so that the crib with the body will slide into the retort easily. In addition to the ordinary burial garments, the body is covered with a cloth wet with a saturated solution of sulphate of alum (common alum), which even when burned, retains its form and prevents any part of the corpse from being seen until the bony skeleton begins to crumble down. The incinerator receives to itself the intense heat of the fire below, but does not admit the flames. The consequence is that the corpse, when introduced into the retort, is not, in a proper sense of the word, burned. It is reduced to ashes by the chemical application of intense heat. Gases are driven off or absorbed, and, being carried down into the fire from the incinerator and led back and forth 25 feet through its flames, are utterly consumed. Even the smoke of the fire is consumed, and nothing can be seen issuing from the chimney but the quiver of the heat. The process might be called, says an eye-witness of a cremation in this furnace, the spiritualization of the body, the etherealization or sublimation of its material parts. The time required to complete the operation is about two hours. A very small portion of the remains is ashes, but the mass is in the form of calcined bones in small fragments, very white, odorless, entirely deprived of all animal matter, and may be preserved any length of time without change.
There are four to seven pounds of these remains from various sized adult bodies, and can be placed for preservation in a marble or terra-cotta urn, into which a photograph of the deceased, with appropriate record, can be placed before introducing the remains. This urn can be placed in the columbarium of the crematory, kept among the cherished memorials of the family of the departed, or placed beside other remains previously buried in cemeteries or graveyards.
Dr. Le Moyne favored placing the remains of the dead in a one-gallon salt-mouthed druggist’s bottle, with a large ground stopper. After his death, however, the bottle-urn idea proved impracticable, therefore the ashes were generally placed in a sealed tin box.