Oak-Hill Cemetery, or, A treatise on the fatal effects resulting from the location of cemeteries in the immediate vicinity of towns / by a physician.

  • Mackall, Louis, 1801-1876.
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Oak-Hill Cemetery, or, A treatise on the fatal effects resulting from the location of cemeteries in the immediate vicinity of towns / by a physician. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    OR A TREATISE, On the fatal effects resulting from the Location of Ceme- teries in the immediate vicinity of Towns. The following Treatise is intended to awaken the people of the District, and particularly the inhabitants of Georgetown, to a sense of a most serious danger, which threatens their health and their lives; and to induce them to unite in making an effort to avert from themselves a dreadful calamity. To this end, it is proposed to state the impressions of the most intelligent communities, in relation to the practice of inhumation in or near towns: to give the opinions of learned divines, and of eminent medical men, who have patiently investigated this subject, and to present some of the facts on which these opinions and those impressions were founded. We will then proceed to show, that the establishment of the Oak-Hill Cemetery, in the vicinity of Georgetown, must necessarily be followed by the most fatal consequences. The governments of antiquity that were remarkable for their intelligence, the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans, regarded this subject as one of vast importance,—examined it with the greatest attention, and were led to the wise determination to prohibit the location of burial-places unless at a distance from their towns or cities. About the middle of the last century, the governments of mo- dern Europe seem to have forgotten the experience of the an- cients, and to have disregarded their wise precaution. Actuated by their religious zeal, the people foolishly imagined that the bu- rial of their bodies in consecrated ground, and especially in the neighborhood of churches, would be a protection against the ene- my of their souls; and consequently, the custom of burying in the midst of cities, in and near the churches, became almost uni-