A quartercentury of cremation in North America ; being a report of progress in the United States and Canada for the last quarter of the nineteenth century; to which have been added, as an afterthought, a few words about the advance in Europe during the same period.

  • Cobb, John Storer.
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A quartercentury of cremation in North America ; being a report of progress in the United States and Canada for the last quarter of the nineteenth century; to which have been added, as an afterthought, a few words about the advance in Europe during the same period. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    by these living agencies. In his report On the Formation of Mould, before the Geological Society of London, he shows that, in some old pasture land, every particle of the superficial layer of earth, over- lying different kinds of subsoil, has passed through the intestines of these terricoke. In the case of one field that he examined he found that, in the course of fifteen years, more than three inches of this worm- mould had been formed, and in another that, in eighty years, these creatures had deposited their mould to an average depth of thirteen inches. Professor Koch, having made observations in the same direction, maintains that, almost without regard to the depth at which a body may be interred, the spores are liable to ascend to the surface and infect those who come within the reach of their influence. So likewise with respect to the malarial fevers which run riot in Rome and the surrounding country. In the atmosphere of the marshes about the city, Klebs and Thomasi Crudeli claim to have discovered bacteria identical with those found in the blood of patients suf- fering from the disease. Before leaving this branch of the subject, brief refer- ence must be made to one more element of danger which we shall have to face so long as we continue to consign our dead to the earth. Recorded instances of disease produced by the premature re-opening of graves are numerous, so that we cannot possibly plead ignorance of the probable — nay, of the almost inevita- ble — consequences of the act. The late M. Navier, a physician and a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris, has left a carefully written dissertation showing the dangerous results which, in many given instances, have followed the opening of graves before the bodies therein con- tained were quite dissolved. He mentions different 12