Embalming has continued to meet with supporters in most civilised countries, but little practical result follows, for the opportunities of practising it are few and far between. Some literature exists on the subject, and a few treatises have been published upon it in our own country, notably one by Surgeon Greenhill in 1705. Mummifying preparations were, I find, patented by Orioli in 1859, by Morgan in 1863, by Audigier in 1864, and by Larnandes in 1866. Suggestions for a partial embalmment were also published in 1860 by Copping and in 1863 by Spicer. The filling of the arterial and vascular systems with concentrated solutions was also proposed by Spear, Scollay, and by two Parisians, in the year 1867; and yet another patent was issued in 1868. But we may assume that an universal system of embalmment is undesirable in our times. There is no purpose to serve in withholding from nature her very own. Cases may be imagined in which the practice would be advisable; but, as a rule, the earth's surface is required for the living, not for the dead; and we have, at least here, no underground caves. Had the Egyptians lived in a damp climate such as ours, there would have been no embalming. It is not every country that is suited to the practice. The people of Etruria were, it is now supposed, Egyptian in descent, but they were content with images of mummies only. The failures we ourselves have met with, and which are to be seen in the Royal College of Surgeons Museum[64] and other places, are quite sufficient to disenchant anyone. The Egyptian authorities themselves eventually abolished the practice.[65] What would they have said if they had lived to see their revered dead and their sacred animals carted away and sold as a drug, or worse still, as a manure? Professor Coletti has wisely remarked that when a man passes over to the majority[66] he should speedily become 'a handful of simple earth and nothing more.'
There is a system of burial somewhat analogous to embalming, which consists of drying up the body, and then interring it. The ancient Peruvians used to dry their dead in the sun, and inter them in a sitting posture, bound in cotton cloth, the quantity of saltpetre in the ground completing the desiccation.[67] The Huacas or huge pyramidal burial mounds of these people, which were so constructed that each added body, with its funeral accessories, had its own clay-mortar enclosure, prove also that some rude attempt at embalmment was practised.[68] To the present day races are discovered which possess some knowledge of the art. A tribe in South Australia practise the following system. They place the deceased in a sitting posture near the top of the hut, and keep up fires until the body is dry, when they proceed to bandage it. Eventually they hide it away amongst the branches of trees.[69] In another remote part of the world, Japan, the Aino aboriginals, when a chief dies, lay the body out at the door of the hut, remove the viscera, and wash it daily in the sun for a whole year. When completely dried, the remains are put in a coffin and buried.[70] In India beyond the Ganges, the Looshais also practise a desiccation of the dead.[71] And the manner in which the body of our noble traveller Dr. Livingstone was prepared previous to bringing him home, would seem to point to the prevalence of such a custom, or to the tradition of one, amongst the African races.
There remains now only cremation to notice, the origin of which practice is lost in obscurity. It would serve little purpose to compile a mere list of the countries in which it was practised. Sufficient now to say that nearly all the ancient peoples observed it, the Chinese and the Jews being notable exceptions to this rule. The ancient Germans burnt their dead;[72] so did the ancient Lithuanians—placing the ashes in urns of unburnt clay, and burying them in mounds, as is proved by an exploration of the great barrows near Sapolia in Russia.[73] Over our own islands also, cremation seems to have been common. Urns are still unearthed from time to time in England, and in parts of Ireland—one part of Antrim especially—the ground is almost studded with burial sites of this character. In Scotland, too, many similar remains have been discovered. In Hindoostan the system is all but universal, and in Siam, where the ashes are frequently placed in urns of great value,[74] it doubtless existed from the first peopling of the country. The people of Pegu and Laos also burn their dead;[75] and in Burmah, when a Buddhist priest of rank dies, the body is embalmed in honey, laid in state for a time, and then sometimes blown up with gunpowder together with its hearse.
Scarcely a year passes over our heads without adding to our list of cremation-practising peoples. Thus we have lately learnt that amongst the Gāro Hill tribes of Bengal, the dead are kept for four days and burnt at midnight within a few yards of their residences, the ashes being put into a hole in the ground dug upon the exact spot where the burning took place, and a small thatched building erected over the grave, which is afterwards allowed to fall to pieces.[76] The Khāsi Hill tribes also practise cremation of the dead, and the ashes are collected in an urn, and temporarily buried close by, until it is deemed proper to remove them to the family depository of the tribe.[77] Some of the Aracan tribes of Further India also burn their dead, leaving at the place of cremation some packets of rice, a neglect of which custom is a bar to inheritance.[78] And not only from remote Asia do instances of cremation come before us, but from America, where the practice was little suspected. Thus the Cocopa Indians there practise it to the present day, laying the body upon logs of mezquite wood, burning it, with the effects of the deceased, and placing the ashes in urns with peculiar ceremonies.[79] The Digger Indians also burn their dead, the nearest relative collecting the ashes and mixing with them the gum of a tree. This they smear on their heads in evident imitation, one would suppose, of the Israelites when in mourning.[80] I could quote numerous other examples of the practice of burning the dead, tracing them satisfactorily, I have reason to think, to sanitary motives. Some of the systems observed, however, are excessively puzzling; for instance, the triple treatment of the Singpho people, who embalm, burn, and bury in rotation. The bodies are first of all dried in coffins made for the purpose, whereupon the mummy is burnt, the ashes being deposited in mounds, which last are eventually covered over with conical roofs.[81]
Many other strange matters connected with mortuary observances, incomprehensible I am afraid at present, would confront the student of burial customs. Why, for instance, should the Greeks who burnt their dead place in the tomb vases and other things esteemed by the deceased?[82] and why do we find the same practice in vogue as far off as Madagascar, where they do not burn their dead?[83] Why also should the Scythians of old have burnt the body, and also the chattels of the deceased?[84] Why should the Patagonians of to-day bury the body and burn the chattels,[85] and the Shan-doo tribes of Aracan, where cremation is common, burn neither and bury both?[86] Or if these questions are easily answered, why, if not for sanitary reasons, should any people have gone to the trouble and expense of cremation, when exposure or burial in the earth was so easy to perform and absolutely costless?[87]
When the necessity for cremation has once become a settled conviction with a people, nothing but the pressure of a conquering race or religion inimical to the practice will eradicate it. In parts of Madras where fuel is dear, the body is reduced to ashes with dried cow-dung and wood. In Siam, if poverty forbids immediate cremation, the body is first buried, and when the cost of the process can be borne, the body is disinterred and given to the purifying flame. Rather too than lose the benefits of cremation, when wood was scarce and when it was forbidden to cast the partly consumed bodies in the river, the poor people of Bengal, with, for that race, even avidity, are closing with the proposal of Sir Cecil Beadon to erect a Cinerator, and thus departing from their ancient traditional routine.[88] Not even the recurring cases of premature burning, such as that not long ago at Ramkistopore, can wean the Hindoos from the burning ghat. They will risk their lives in war time in order to collect fuel to bury a dead comrade.[89] In any country where cremation is practised, it is only when there is absolutely no property whatsoever that burning is omitted. For instance, a Zaisaugh amongst the Kalmucks, whose property will pay for a proper offering, can have his dead body burnt, and only the utterly poor are buried or abandoned.[90] More than this, in order to establish apparently a proper regard for the practice, and preclude any laxity in its observance, a sham burning is carried out by some peoples. Should, for example, a Khāsi Hill tribe man die whilst on a distant expedition, and his body not be recoverable, some cowries or shell money are burnt with the deceased man's clothes, and the ashes placed in the family repository.[91]
There are several spurious kinds, or half-and-half schemes, of cremation. For instance, the Fresendajians place their dead in vases of aquafortis.[92] Caustic potash and other chemical substances have also been proposed for placing in the coffin.[93] A quasi-burning—the burial of the bodies in quicklime—is also practised by the Sephardic Jews of Gibraltar and North Africa. Even recently, the Spanish and Portuguese Jews have made use of this system at the Mile End cemetery, London.[94] During the Prussian occupation of Chalons, numbers of typhus-stricken dead were interred in this material, but the result was unsatisfactory.[95] At York can be seen a casting inside which a Roman lady was so burned, but whether intentionally or not, it is impossible to say.