Disposal of the dead : a plea for legislation / by Francis Seymour Haden.

  • Haden, Francis Seymour, 1818-1910.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Disposal of the dead : a plea for legislation / by Francis Seymour Haden. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    9/12 (page 9)
    proportions in which they are needed—plants are nourished, animal life is renewed, and the atmosphere itself is replenished and purified. Does cremation do the same thing or anything like the same thing ? Would it be the same thing—for what is true of part is true of the whole—if the rainfall, say, of three years came down upon us in three hours ! The statement is inexact and unscientific, and there I leave it. Again, in their arguments agamst burial as a principle, it is noticeable that the advocates of cremation deal largely in germs and other matters equally occult and speculative, and, by a pretty free use of Pasteur's term, especially, seek to shake our faith in the plan pursued by nature for the resolution of dead matter since the beginning of the world. Well, all I can say to that is that, without being in a position either to affirm or to deny the existence of these hostile germs and the harm they do, I should like to hear from the cremationists something of the friendly germs and the good they do. If it should come to be proved, which is possible, that the great operations of nature, destructive as well as constructive, are carried on chiefly by germs, all I can say is that I am prepared to think as highly of germs as I do of chymical action or of any other of those forces, physical or vital, by which nature is pleased to work. I object, however, to their employment as missiles, and to their being held up at us as bugaboos. More seriously. To take cremation on its dangerous side ; its aiivo- cates, strange to say, encouraged by a mere failure of jurisdiction in the prosecution of a recent case, make much of the law and assume it to be in their favour, whereas the judgment of Sir James Stephen amounts to no more than this, that cremation is only not illegal, because the law, having had no reason to contemplate its revival, has made no provision against it. In the same way it has made no provision against can- nibalism, and, till lately, had made none against the unforeseen use of explosives. Such a judgment, therefore, ougiit no more to be regarded as an encouragement to cremation than as an expression of the insufficiency of the law to prevent it. Nor, one would have thought, is the revolting incident on which that judgment is founded—the finding of a crazy old man at the top of a mountain trying to burn iiis child in a barrel and threatening to do the same to his bull Morgan —an incident of a nature to commend itself to anybody. Be this, however, as it may, as a commentary on the little value to the cremationist of such a judgment, the practical fact remains that the medico-legal objections to cremation, since it would facilitate all those forms of secret murder the evidence of which is only to be found in the body of the victim, are insuperable. To be convinced of this we have only t«) consider the circumstances which usually surround one of the commonest of those forms—murder by poison; the variety, the subtlety, often the novelty, of the poisonous agent; the extreme improbability that the sur- geon called in—if he be called in—has ever seen its effect either on man or on animals ; the care now taken by a class of well-meaning but mis- chievous enthusiasts that he shall not see it ; the symptoms of the dying state which are common to death by poison and to death from disease ; the advantage of preparation on the side of the poisoner; and, finally, the fact that discovery when made is generally made at