year to year, and if the ground is thoroughly worked and aided with lime or other inorganic fertilizers, it thus disposes of the refuse. Without indicating preferences, which must often be relative, and must depend on the facilities and on the exactness of administration, we thus plainly indicate the most common and available means for dealing with the soiled liquid sewage of the household.

MODES AND PLACES OF INTERMENT.

BY DAVID WARMAN, M.D., TRENTON.

The disposal of the dead is none the less a sanitary question than the care of the living. Disease and pestilence are recognized evils. Whatever contributes to produce them must, if possible, be removed. We know that pestilential influences arise from various causes, and we provide against them. Much has been written upon the subject of contamination of the air from sewer gases and pollution of the soil and water by cesspools, and kindred topics, but a comparatively limited amount of attention has been given to the interment of the dead. It seems, therefore, imperative that a knowledge of the modes of burial, and the dangers that may arise from the improper disposal of the remains of our beloved dead, should become more extended. The experience of the past shows the importance of the careful consideration of this subject. The welfare of the living must not be lost sight of, while all proper respect is shown to the dead. The question of how and where the dead shall be disposed of, is one that is eminently sanitary. The dead should be so buried that the living may not suffer.

The disposal of the dead has varied at times, simply from fear of desecration of the grave. In the time of the resurrectionists, many bodies were buried in quicklime, and a resident of Dundee was so fearful lest the coffin of his child should be disturbed that he arranged an explosive apparatus, which was buried with the coffin. The methods in modern use are, as every one knows, first, intramural and extramural; second, cremation. The latter method is the burning of the dead.

This very ancient method of disposing of the dead has in modern times been, to a certain extent, revived. In England a society has been formed to introduce the practice, and in Germany cremation.

has also made some progress. It has also been used to a limited extent in the United States. The serious and almost insuperable objection is the facility with which cremation would conceal certain crimes, such as poisoning, and render identity in other cases impossible. Cremation has not been accepted in this country, and there is nothing to deplore in the fact. It can doubtless be a useful mode of disposing of the dead in many cases, yet we do not think that either sanitation or sentiment demand it; and in many parts of the country it will be a long time before it can be made practicable or economical.

The other method, of intramural and extramural interment, or the enclosing of the dead in a grave, either within cities or beyond their confines, is generally adopted by all civilized races.

There are few countries where more excellent regulations relating to 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, than in our own land, 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 the 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 mind, in these regulations: first, to pay proper respect to the dead, and, second, to protect the health of the living. To accomplish this there are several matters to be considered. The first important lesson for us to learn is, that the dead and living were never intended to be brought in close proximity.

That interment or enclosing the dead in a grave is a most ancient custom there cannot be a doubt. Amongst the ancient Jews, to have no burial was reckoned among the greatest of calamities. The exposure in any manner of their dead (even criminals) was looked upon as a pollution of their land. The Egyptians and Asiatics practiced interment from the beginning of time. Subsequently it became the custom to burn the bodies of the dead. By Homer's description of the funeral of Patroclus, it would appear that the Greeks used burning as early as the Trojan war. They also had recourse to interment, as seen by their historians, who give an account of the manner in which bodies were placed in the grave; Plutarch tells us they were laid with their faces toward the east or towards the

west; and Cicero informs us that, in early times, as those of Cecrops, interment was altogether made as by the Greeks; but we have ample testimony, in history, that it always took place without their cities, particularly among the Jews and Greeks, from whom the Romans derived the custom. We have several passages in the New Testament showing that the Jews buried their dead without the city. Servius, in giving an account of the unhappy death of his colleague, Marcellus, which happened in Greece, says that he could not, by any means, obtain leave of the Athenians to allow him a burial-place within the city.

The Romans observed the same custom from the first building of their city; it afterwards became a law, as settled by the Decemviri, "Neither burn, or bury within the city." They generally buried near the highways-in fields appropriated for the purpose. Their reasons seem to have been founded on sacred as well as civil considerations; among the former, that the passers-by might see the graves and be reminded of their own mortality-hence, as Varro tells us, the inscription upon the monuments, "Sta. Viator;" among the latter, "that the air might not be corrupted by the stench of putrefying bodies." The ancient Persians never buried in cities or towns. Their kings were interred on a high hill, on the east of Persipolis; generally, throughout Persia and the Levant, there were no burial-places except those without the city. The cemeteries of the Turks were always without the town, that the air might not be corrupted by the vapors arising from the graves; they, in like manner as the Romans, also bury by the sides of the highways, that travelers may be reminded to pray to God for the deceased. Eusebius informs us that when the Christians, by favor of Constantine, built churches in the cities, they had their burial-places outside. According to Gregory of Tours, it was not until the latter part of the sixth century (about A. D. 590) that funeral places and cemeteries within the towns were consecrated or tolerated. Hesperian informs us that the ancients greatly disapproved the innovation of burying in towns and churches; and, on that account, the councils of their bishops made several canons and decrees against intramural and church burial.

Whether the ancients burned or interred their dead, they never made choice of the place of divine worship, either to bury the dead or deposit the ashes. For centuries after Christianity was established, they never presumed to make God's temple the charnel of the dead.

On the contrary, when the ancient mode of burial without the city began to be neglected, burials in the churches were approved by authority.

The being buried in or near a church, we are told, originated with the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, who, although he did not desire to be buried within the church (a thing in his day unheard of), was resolved that his remains should be deposited as near as possible to it; they were accordingly interred in the porch of the great church at Constantinople. Subsequently the practice increased and persons of quality claimed a similar privilege. Their inferiors, although they claimed not the right of being buried within the porches, deemed it an honor to be buried as near thereto as possible; hence another reason assigned for large courts and yards around churches.

Intramural burials and church-yards, it would seem, originated in the idea that persons passing the graves of their dead relatives or friends, on their way to worship, might be reminded to offer up prayers for them.

With reference to burying in churches, the custom did not arise earlier than the year 1076. In the reign of William the Conqueror, the Council held at Winchester, under Laufranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, by the ninth canon, opposed burial in churches. It soon after, however, became a custom, and vaults were built under the altars.

"It is horrid," said the Austrian Emperor, "that a place of worship, a temple of the Supreme Being, should be converted into a pesthouse for living creatures."

The following extract is from a sermon preached by Bishop Lattimer, in 1552, which proves that even at that early period, when the population of London could scarcely have been one-sixth of what it is now, the nuisance of intramural interments was found to be dangerous to health, if near a church or the houses of the living. "The citizens of Nain," observed the Bishop, "hadd their buryinge-place withoute the citie, which no doubt is a laudable thinge, and I doe marvel that London being soe great a citie, hath not a burial-place without; for no doubt it is an unwholesome thinge to bury within the citie, especialle at such a time when there be great sicknesses and manie