The dangers of inhaling the atmosphere of churches or chapels under which burial-vaults are made use of or interments made, have been repeatedly pointed out.[107] In other lands besides our own have these dangers been suspected and detected. The Tuscan Government requested Signor Piattoli to thoroughly investigate the subject, and his report has been confirmed by eminent men of various nations. As having taken place in our own land, Dr. Copeland mentions the case of a gentleman who was poisoned by a rush of foul air from the grated openings on the sides of the church steps, and who died from a malignant fever in a few days' time, communicating the same to his wife with a fatal result. The same fever has been known to seize pew-openers when cleansing and shaking the mattings of the floor. After a vault had been opened, the smell was at times overpowering. It was the opinion of Mr. Chadwick, after examining some hundreds of witnesses of all kinds, that entombment in vaults was a more dangerous practice than interment in the earth, because of the liability of the coffins to burst.
We may, therefore, for our purpose, assume that, even under the most favourable circumstances, hurtful emanations must perforce rise out of burial-grounds, there being no more natural escape for the gases of decomposition than by levitation. These gases will rise to the surface through eight or ten feet of gravel, just as coal-gas will do, and there is practically no limit to their power of escape. The danger is always persistent in the cases of dry and porous soils, exactly those which are most fitted for cemetery purposes. In a churchyard at Stuttgart, in which only five hundred bodies were interred yearly, and not more than one in each grave, the north-west wind rendered the emanations from the dead perceptible in houses two hundred and fifty paces distant. It will thus be seen that the soil best fitted to ensure decay is exactly the worst one for neighbouring houses. Unless there can be some artificial means taken to bring about the slow combustion of these gases, as, for instance, by layers of charcoal, the gases must continue to escape in a foul condition. But who would recommend so extraordinary a procedure as this?
The dangers resulting from improper burial have of late been intentionally slighted, but there is abundance of evidence to prove that the air in the neighbourhood of choked-up graveyards is inimical to public health. Some sensitive people are even taken ill when walking past a cemetery.[108] I know myself a gentleman who can detect an unwholesome smell half a mile distant from a certain cemetery in the N.W. district of London. It is unfortunate that so little weight is attached to the report of the last Commissions upon Interments. The question of the poisoning of the air in the vicinity of burial-grounds is just now, however, undergoing a searching investigation at the hands of the Massachusetts State Board of Health, and an analysis will be prepared[109] of the answers elicited. Water believed to be contaminated with cemetery washings is sought for analysis. Questions are also asked as to the induction or aggravation of disease in houses contiguous to cemeteries, and whether the sickness was attributable to poisoned wells or foul air, or both. The report will, without doubt, confirm all that our leading physicians say as to the evils of injudicious burial. There must be something radically wrong where fresh meat becomes tainted in a single night.[110]
What shall we say of the poisoning of our wells and water-supplies by too adjacent burial-grounds? Professor Brande has instanced a case of a well near a churchyard, the water of which had derived not only odour, but colour, from the soil, and gave it as his opinion that the water in all superficial springs near burial-grounds is simply filtered through accumulated decomposition. Some wells near a churchyard in Leicester were disused some time ago because of a perceptible taint in the water, and, in Versailles, several wells which were situated below the churchyard of St. Louis stank so much as to require shutting up. During the Peninsular War, our troops suffered greatly from low fevers and dysentery, caused by being obliged to drink the water from wells which were sunk too closely to the interred sick. Troops have often been compelled to change their encampments owing to this kind of water-poisoning. Cases are on record where men have been seriously injured by excavating amidst some water which had drained from graves. In Paris M. Ducamp, not long ago, discovered a spring which was entirely derived from the rain which fell in the cemeteries and from the liquids of decomposition; and the foolish people, discovering that it possessed the peculiar sulphur-like taste which is always concomitant with decaying organic matter, purchased it as a mineral water!
Dr. Mapother has visited the churchyards of many Irish towns, and has 'generally found them placed on the highest spot near the most central part, whence of course all percolations descend into the wells.' One churchyard he particularly describes 'as lying so low that the water from the river overflows it in wet weather, and, notwithstanding this circumstance, from 30,000 to 40,000 people are supplied from this river.'[111]
Instances of water-poisoning have been several times noticed of late years. The monumental cemetery of Milan, for example, is situated upon a hill some 180 yards to the north of the city, and Professors Parvesi and Rotondi have discovered in the wells of the Place Garibaldi, the water of which is collected from the valleys below the cemetery, undoubted traces of organic matter. Professor Reinhard also relates that during the murrain some cattle which fell victims were buried near Dresden at a depth of twelve feet, but that during the following year the water of a well some 100 feet distant from the pit gave off a fœtid odour, and showed the unmistakable presence of deleterious matter. At even twenty feet distance the analysis discovered considerable impregnation. During the Prussian occupation of Chalons, the city was visited by an outbreak of typhus, and to arrest the progress of the epidemic the dead were massed together in a corner of the city cemetery and interred, being first covered over with a quantity of quick-lime. At the end of some weeks, and after an episode of wet weather, the drinking water in the neighbourhood was affected by the influx of matter from the interred bodies and the lime, as was proved by an analysis made by M. Robinet.[112]
The latest authenticated case of water-poisoning from infiltration of this kind is given by Dr. De Pietra Santa. He confines himself to quoting the example of the hamlets of Rotondella and Bollita, the cemeteries of which, placed upon the summit of a wooded hill, and at a considerable distance from the houses, have still been the means of carrying contagion into their midst. At the foot of the hill upon which the cemetery was perched emerged the springs destined for the daily use of the inhabitants, and these being the products of pluvial waters which had once spread over the surface of the two cemeteries, the water had filtered through the earth and become impregnated with the elements of the dead bodies. This contaminated water eventually produced a fearful epidemic. Dr. Pappenheim says that, if organic chemistry had made more progress, if, above all, the organic matters contained in drinkable waters were known, springs would be easily found containing putrefied substances, to the great injury of those who use the water, and it would be easily discovered that the evils came from a distant cemetery. People, however, are now more and more alive to the danger of subterranean infiltration from dead matter, and the use of wells in towns and cities is now nearly unknown. In Paris a law forbids the sinking of a well within one hundred yards of any cemetery, but in some cases two hundred yards has proved an insufficient distance. In parts of Germany, again, the minimum distance allowed by law is one hundred yards.
A great many cases could be raked up against the present mode of burial; but I will not act the part of a special pleader. One might, however, point out that instances have occurred in which burial-grounds have been washed away by the bursting of reservoirs. In 1854, at Herrenlauersitz, upwards of one hundred bodies, the majority still encoffined, were washed out of their resting-places by an inundation, and floated into gardens, harvest-fields, and houses, nor were they wholly recovered until a fortnight after the calamity.
It would be manifestly unfair to charge against proper interment the loose manner in which it is practised in many parts of the globe. But the evil is so persistent a one that I cannot refrain. It might be forgiven to the poor heathens of Eastern Australia to bury their dead in shallow graves, for there predatory animals are scarce, and want of civilisation could be pleaded for them. But how can we overlook the practices in the Mahomedan cemeteries of Calcutta? I am informed by a gentleman[113] who was for thirty years Church missionary there, that these burial-grounds of Islam 'have long been a crying evil, and the nurses of cholera, fever, and dysentery.' The bodies are also frequently devoured by jackals. So, for the matter of that, are the bodies of the Ainos.[114] But then the Ainos are heathens and the Mahomedans are—well, people who ought to know better. They are incorrigible, however, as I have myself seen. Even in Syria at the present hour many modern Moslem graves, although lined and roofed with slabs of basalt, are open and their inmates exposed.[115] But a travelled Osmanli would perhaps retort and point out that Père-la-Chaise was visited by a monomaniac who was able nightly to tear up a number of bodies.[116]