Undoubtedly in populous communities and in crowded districts the burial of dead bodies is liable to be a source of danger to the living. As early as 1840 a commission had been appointed, including some of the earliest authorities on sanitary science,—namely, Drs Southwood Smith, Chadwick, Milroy, Sutherland, Waller Lewis and others,—to conduct a searching inquiry into the state of the burial-grounds of London and large provincial towns. By the report[10] the existence of such a danger was strikingly demonstrated, and intramural interments were in consequence made illegal. The advocates of burial then declared that interment in certain light soils would safely and efficiently decompose the putrefying elements which begin to be developed the moment death takes place, and which rapidly become dangerous to the living, still more so in the case of deaths from contagious disease. But these light dry soils and elevated spots are precisely those best adapted for human habitation; to say nothing of their value for food-production. Granted the efficiency of such burial, it only effects in the course of a few years what exposure to a high temperature accomplishes with absolute safety in an hour. In a densely populated country the struggle between the claims of the dead and the living to occupy the choicest sites becomes a serious matter. All decaying animal remains give off effluvia—gases—which are transferred through the medium of the atmosphere to become converted into vegetable growth of some kind—trees, crops, garden produce, grass, &c. Every plant absorbs these gases by its leaves, each one of which is provided with hundreds of stomata—open mouths—by which they fix or utilize the carbon to form woody fibre, and give off free oxygen to the atmosphere. Thus it is that the air we breathe is kept pure by the constant interaction between the animal and vegetable kingdoms. It may be taken as certain that the gaseous products arising from a cremated body—amounting, although invisible, to no less than 97% of its weight, 3% only remaining as solids, in the form of a pure white ash—become in the course of a few hours integral and active elements in some form of vegetable life. The result of this reasoning has been that, by slow degrees, crematoria have been constructed at many of the populous cities in Great Britain and abroad (see Statistics below).
The subject of employing cremation for the bodies of those who die of contagious disease is a most important one. Sir H. Thompson advocated this course in a paper read before the International Congress of Hygiene held in London in 1891; and a resolution strongly approving the practice was carried unanimously at a large meeting of experts and medical officers of health. Such diseases are small-pox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, consumption, malignant cholera, enteric, relapsing and puerperal fevers, the annual number of deaths from which in the United Kingdom is upwards of 80,000. Complete disinfection takes place by means of the high temperature to which the body is exposed. At the present day it is compulsory to report any case in the foregoing list, whenever it occurs, to the medical officer of health for the district; and it is customary to disinfect the rooms themselves, as well as the clothes and furniture used by the patient if the case be fatal; but the body, which is the source and origin of the evil, and is itself loaded with the germs of a specific poison, is left to the chances which attach to its preservation in that condition, when buried in a fit or unfit soil or situation.
The process of preparing a body for cremation requires a brief notice. The plan generally adopted is to place it (in the usual shroud) in a light pine shell, discarding all heavy oak or other coffin, and to introduce it into the furnace in that manner. Thus there is no handling or exposure of the body after it reaches the crematorium. The type of furnace in general use is on the reverberatory principle, the body being consumed in a separate chamber heated to over 2000° Fahr. by a coke fire. In a few instances a furnace burning ordinary illuminating gas instead of coke is in use.
(H. Th.)
Statistics.—The following statistics show the history of modern cremation and its progress at home and abroad:—
Foreign Countries.—The first experiment in Italy was made by Brunetti in 1869, his second and third in 1870. Gorini and Polli published their first cases in 1872. Brunetti exhibited his at Vienna in 1873. All were performed in the open air. The next in Europe was a single case at Breslau in 1874. Soon after, an English lady was cremated in a closed apparatus (Siemens) at Dresden. The next cremation in a closed receptacle took place at Milan in 1876. In the same year a Cremation Society was formed, a handsome building was erected, and two Gorini furnaces were at work in 1880. In 1899 the total number of cremations was 1355. In Italy 28 crematoria exist, viz. at Alessandria, Asti, Bologna, Bra, Brescia, Como, Cremona, Florence, Genoa, Leghorn, Lodi, Mantua, Milan, Modena, Novara, Padua, Perugia, Pisa, Pistoia, Rome, San Remo, Siena, Spezia, Turin, Udine, Verona and Venice. The total number of cremations in Italy in 1906 was 440.
In Germany the first crematorium was erected at Gotha; it was opened in 1878, and the total cremations down to September 1st, 1907, numbered 4584. At Ohlsdorf, Hamburg, the crematorium was opened in November 1892, and the total cremations down to September 1st, 1907, numbered 2521. At Heidelberg the crematorium was opened in 1891, and the total cremations down to September 1st, 1907, numbered 1741. Throughout the German empire there are, in addition to the above, crematoria at Bremen, Eisenach, Jena, Karlsruhe, Mannheim, Mainz, Offenbach, Heilbronn, Ulm, Chemnitz and Stuttgart, besides over eighty societies for promoting cremation. The total number of cremations which took place in Germany in 1906 was 2057, making a total of 13,614 down to September 1st, 1907.
Other societies exist in Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland. At the crematorium at Copenhagen 77 bodies were cremated in 1906, the total being 500. The Stockholm crematorium was opened in October 1887, and the cremations in 1906 numbered 56. The Gothenburg crematorium (also in Sweden) was opened in January 1890, and the cremations there in 1906 were 14. Switzerland has four crematoria, viz. at Basel, Geneva, Zurich and St Gallen—524 cremations took place in that country in 1906.
In Paris a cremation society was founded in 1880, and in 1886-1887 a large crematorium was constructed by the municipal council at Père Lachaise, containing three Gorini furnaces. It was first used in October 1887 for two men who died of small-pox. The demand became large; an improved furnace was soon devised, the unclaimed bodies at the hospitals and the remains at the dissecting rooms being cremated there, besides a large number of embryos. In 1906 the number, including the last-named class, was 6906. The total number of incinerations at Père Lachaise down to December 31st, 1906 (including both classes) was 86,962; but the employment of cremation for the purposes named has deterred a resort to it by many. Had a separate establishment been organized for the public, its success would have been greater. A magnificent edifice has been constructed by the municipality of Paris for the conservation of the ashes of persons who have been cremated. Crematoria have been established also at Rouen, Rheims and Marseilles, and the construction of crematoria in other of the great provincial centres of France was in contemplation.
In Buenos Aires, since 1844, the bodies of all persons dying of contagious disease are cremated, and there is also a separate establishment for the use of the public.