A serious peril to health.

Date:
[between 1800 and 1899]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A serious peril to health. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    SANITARY LEAFLET,—No. 6. A SERIOUS PERIL TO HEALTH, ri^HE Lancet, from which the above title is borrowed, speaks out strongly respecting the danger to the public health arising from our ordinary mode of burial. It draws particular attention to the condition of certain Cemeteries within the Metropolitan District. These burial-places are pronounced to be replete with risk to such as are called upon to attend funerals no less than sources of peril to the neighbourhood wherein they are situated. Even the entire Metropolis is threatened. So imminent has the peril become that the chief organ of the Medical profession is compelled to urge the immediate inter- vention of the Secretary of State and the withdrawal of the Government licence. Again, the Bishop of Manchester, as President of the late Social Science Congress, refers to the like peril. In his inaugural address special reference is made to our cemeterial system. Cemeteries, he remarks, are becoming not only a difficulty, an expense, and an inconvenience, but an actual danger. And this from two causes. One cause is the choaked condition of burial-grounds; the other, the practice of burying the dead in solid coffins. The revolting result is, as Mr. Seymour B^den testifies, that decomposed bodies are kept in an ever-augmenting state of decay for an indefinite period, until they lie incapable of further change— a reproach to our intelligence, and a source of poison to the soil for any time to come.