XXIX. WE RECOMMEND that nuisances endangering human life or health, be prevented, destroyed, or mitigated.

Nuisances are divided, in law, into two principal classes:1. Those which affect the community, or the public, denominated public nuisances; and 2. Those which affect the rights or injure the property of individuals, denominated private nuisances. Some nuisances have a disagreeable and some a pecuniary character only. Others, a vital or sanitary character. The last class, only, immediately concerns this recommendation.

A street, highway, or bridge, is common property, and any obstruction, pit-hole, or defect, which endangers the lives of travellers, is a nuisance. Horses, cattle, swine, or other animals, going at large in such street or highway, may also be a nuisance. Locomotive steam carriages, steamboats, or other vehicles, or stationary steam engines, may become so by the manner in which they are managed. The manufacture, storage, and use of gunpowder and fireworks may be a nuisance, if within the neighborhood of living beings, since they endanger life. Gas, camphine, and other burning fluids, are often destructive of life. These and all other nuisances of a sanitary character, which often occasion direct accidental injury or death, should be so regulated as not to become dangerous to health and life. Those who cause them are liable to prosecution and damages. There is another class of nuisances which are equally obnoxious. Every kind of trade or occupation,any filth and other substance, which corrupts the atmosphere,every kind of food or drink that is unwholesome, though it should not produce immediate death or disease, if it endangers the health or gradually injures it,-is a nuisance; and every man who causes a nuisance transcends his right, and renders himself liable to prosecution. Boards of Health should make such regulations, that no person should prevent any other person from the free enjoyment of life and health; and no artificial obstruction should be permitted, that may destroy or injure either.

XXX. WE RECOMMEND that measures be taken to prevent or mitigate the sanitary evils arising from the use of intoxicating drinks, and from haunts of dissipation.

That intemperance is an enormous evil is universally acknowledged. That it is the cause of a vast amount of direct sanitary suffering,-of unnecessary sickness, and of unnecessary death, to those who indulge in it; and of a still greater amount of indirect sanitary suffering and death to their associates, relatives, and dependents, is equally true. The evil consequences are so great, and so widely diffused, that they have long since arrested public attention. Good citizens, moral reformers, religious teachers, and other classes of philanthropists, have deplored the evil, and devised various measures for its removal. It still exists, however, and fills the cup of suffering, and provides a premature grave for many and many a person, who might otherwise have lived to become a blessing instead of a curse to humanity. It is unnecessary, however, here to discuss the subject. Through thousands of channels it is brought to public notice. These channels should be widened and deepened, and the number should be increased, until all shall feel their influence. Local Boards of Health, by a careful observation of the sanitary evils of intemperance, and the local and personal circumstances under which they occur, and by adopting and enforcing such salutary regulations as will remove or mitigate them, may confer an immeasurable benefit upon the people.

XXXI. WE RECOMMEND that the laws for taking inquests upon the view of dead bodies, now imposed upon coroners, be revised.

In our judgment, every matter relating to life, to health, and to death, should, to some extent, come under the cognizance of Boards of Health. The cause of the death of every person who dies should be fully known to them; and in their offices records of inquests upon dead bodies should be preserved. These Boards, and especially the medical health officers, are presumed to be better informed than others in relation to such questions as present themselves in investigations of this kind; and hence they would be able to act more intelligently and correctly. It sometimes happens that inquests are held when there is no occasion for them, and unnecessary expenses are incurred. For the last nine years, this State has paid, for coroners' inquests,

$6,968 95; and, for the four last years, the average annual payments have been $1,030 33. This would be avoided, in part, if Boards of Health had some control over the subject, so far as to decide when inquests are necessary or expedient. We would suggest, either that some members of the local Boards of Health should be authorized and appointed to perform the duties now imposed upon coroners, in relation to holding inquests, or that the Boards should be consulted on the expediency of holding such inquests; and that, in all cases, a copy of the verdict of the jury should be returned to the Board.

XXXII. WE RECOMMEND that the authority now vested in justices of the peace, relating to insane and idiotic persons, not arrested or indicted for crime, be transferred to the local Boards of Health.

By the present laws of the State, no insane or idiotic person, other than paupers, can be committed to any hospital or place of confinement, except on complaint, in writing, before two justices of the peace, or some police court. Paupers may be committed by the overseers of the poor. By these proceedings, this unfortunate class of persons appear on the records as criminals, while they are guilty of no crime, unless the possession of an unsound mind be considered one. A sanitary question, merely, is often the only one presented in such cases, and it has occurred to us that the local Boards of Health would be the proper tribunals before whom they should be brought, and by whom they should be disposed of. It may be supposed that such Boards will be better acquainted, generally, with the medical jurisprudence of insanity, than justices of the peace; and their decisions will be, more than those of criminal courts, in accordance with the spirit of humanity which has been extended to that class of persons.

XXXIII. WE RECOMMEND that the general management of cemeteries and other places of burial, and of the interment of the dead, be regulated by the local Boards of Health.

The Revised Statutes provide that towns may grant money for burial-grounds, and that Boards of Health "shall make all regulations which they may judge necessary for the interment

of the dead, and respecting burying-grounds in their towns." This is all the legal authority that is necessary for the purposes of this recommendation. Boards of Health and the selectmen of towns have ever had the management of these matters in this State. There are few if any states or countries, where more excellent regulations relating to the burial-grounds and the interment of the dead exist, where the ceremony of burial is conducted with more propriety, and where greater respect is paid to the deceased. Yet in some particulars improvement might and ought to be made. The history and condition of burial-grounds, and the regulations for the interment of the dead, are intimately connected with public health, and should form a part of the sanitary regulations of every city and town. We can, in this connection, notice only some general matters, which the subject suggests.

There are two principal objects which should be kept in view in these regulations,-1. To pay proper respect to the dead; and 2. To protect the health of the living. To accomplish these objects, there are several matters to be considered.

1. Plans for obtaining a place of burial. Several have existed in this State. One plan permits a family to select a private place of burial on its own estate. This is adopted in some parts of this Commonwealth, especially in the western and southern counties, but we cannot but regard it as highly objectionable. In this country, estates do not descend to successive generations of the same family, as in Europe. In the vicissitudes and revolutions of American life, the owners of property, real as well as personal, often change; and there is no security that the remains of a person, if deposited on an estate he owned, will remain undisturbed by other owners who succeed him. The occupant has no guaranties from a public or responsible body that it shall be so. This single consideration, in our judgment, should induce every one to discontinue the custom, and even to remove the remains already so deposited to a more secure and quiet resting-place.

Another plan allows proprietors, under an act of incorporation, to sell lots, or places of burial, under such regulations as they choose to make. This is of recent date, and originated

at Mount Auburn. This model cemetery was consecrated as a burial-place of the dead, Sept. 21, 1831. Cemeteries were subsequently incorporated at New Bedford, April 12, 1837; at Worcester, Feb. 23, 1838; at Hingham, Feb. 28, 1839; at Braintree, Feb. 18, 1839; at Salem, Feb. 19, 1839; at Dudley, March 23, 1840; and at Lowell, Jan. 23, 1841. A general law, passed March 17, 1841, allows ten or more persons in any town to organize themselves into a corporation for these purposes; and, since that time, numerous companies and cemeteries have been established in different parts of the State. Some object to these companies, however, because they make the burial of the dead too much a matter of commercial speculation.

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Another, and the more general plan, vests the ownership of all burial-grounds in the town, which grants to families and to individuals, sometimes gratuitously, and sometimes for a consideration, rights for family lots, for tombs, and for single graves. This plan has been in existence from the first settlement of the State; and we much prefer it to the others. ery town should have the exclusive control in these matters, for many reasons, which it is unnecessary now to mention. The city of Roxbury has set a noble example, in the establishment, in its corporate capacity, of the beautiful Forest Hills Cemetery.

The place of burial should be selected in a somewhat secluded, and not in the most conspicuous part of the town, and should be combined with such natural scenery as will tend to inspire those feelings of solemnity and decorum which properly belong to the "city of the dead." It should not be where it would ever be liable to be encroached upon for buildings, roads, or any other purpose; but where the tenants may remain forever undisturbed in their quiet resting-place. And it should be large enough to meet the wants of the probable future growth of the town which it is designed to accommodate. Parts of such a cemetery might be assigned to a particular religious denomination, and, if desired, specially consecrated for its use. It should never be within a populous city or village. Such a site is now generally regarded as dangerous to the health of the living;