be properly drained, and that it should be at a sufficient distance from subterraneous sources of water-supply; and in such a position with respect to them, that the percolation of foul matters from one to the other may be impossible.

The Massachusetts State Board of Health (report of 1875) notices the following examples of water-pollution which had been recently reported: "At a meeting at Milan, Dr. Polli, to prove that inhumation taints air and water, referred to certain researches of Prof. Selmi, of Mantua, and to chemical analyses of the waters of Milan, by Professors Parvesi and Rontondii. M. Ducamp discovered, in Paris, a well, the water of which was entirely derived from cemeteries. It had acquired a sulphur-like taste, so that the people bought it for mineral water." The following case is also furnished: "In the last remarkable report of the Faculty of Medicine of Saxe, Reinhard relates that nine large and several smaller victims of the cattle plague were interred at Dresden, at a depth of ten or twelve feet. It was found, the next year, that the water from a well situate one hundred feet from the pit in which they were buried, had a foetid odor, and contained butyrate of lime. At a distance of twenty feet it had the disgusting taste of butyric acid; and each quart contained about thirty grains of this substance." The water from grave-yards contains ammonium and calcium nitrates, and nitrites, and sometimes fatty acids and much organic matter. Lefort found a well of water, at St. Didier, more than three hundred feet from a cemetery, to be highly contaminated with ammoniacal salts, and an organic matter left on evaporation. The water was clear at first, but had a vapid taste.

A recent report on the preservation of the anthrax germ in graves, furnishes the following fact: "In Livingston county, New York, on a sandy soil over a heavy clay soil, the graves were carefully fenced in by direction; but nearly a year after, during a rainy period, the liquid, oozing out on the river-bank between the clay and sand and opposite one of the fenced graves, was licked by six of the cattle, ali of which promptly perished of anthrax. The grave was now fenced in down to the water, and no further deaths occurred."

In the selection of a cemetery site, the pollution of wells and of water-supply should receive especial attention. Thus, it is stated in a collection of reports concerning the cemeteries of the town of Versailles, that the water of the wells which lie below the church-yard of St. Louis could not be used on account of its stench. In consequence of various investigations, in France, a law was passed prohibiting the

opening of wells within 100 metres of any place of burial; but this distance is now said to be insufficient for deep wells, which have been found, on examination, to be polluted at a distance of from 150 to 200 metres. In some parts of Germany the opening of wells nearer than 300 feet has been prohibited.

Each

In the report of the Board of Health of New Jersey, 1880, we find the following from a writer in the northern part of the State: "Another great nuisance in some parts of the county is the graveyard; such a one as we have in the village of — , in the shape of a burying-ground. It is in the center of the village, and on the elevated side of the street. The church is in the grave-yard. Private dwellings are situated on the lower or other side of the street. house has a well of water for family use. The water runs from the grave-yard into these wells. The old sexton of this church told me a number of times, that when graves were dug in certain parts of the yard, the wells would become soiled and muddled during the process of digging. The children of the Sunday school drink out of these wells; and the children of the public school in the place patronize them, as the school has no well of its own, and, if it had, the school house is situated at the lower end of the grave-yard. This graveyard is a confirmed nuisance. It is an old yard, and the community. still bury in it. The land is wet and soggy in the yard. There are a number of good locations, within a half mile of the village, for a cemetery; soil dry and pleasant. I urge strongly on the State Board of Health, that an act of the Legislature be passed preventing any more burials taking place in this grave-yard."

Another writer, from another county in New Jersey, remarks that burial-grounds are mostly connected with churches, and raises the question whether churches which are closely crowded upon by graves, and not occupied during the week, do not become receptacles of graveyard air and thus risk the health of the Sabbath worshipers, especially in those churches heated by furnaces, which cause a current of air from without laden with noxious gases. Again, in the report of the Board for 1882, the same complaint comes from a writer in the southern part of the State. He says: "In the principal village of this township the well water is exceptionally bad, and of offensive smell. As the grave-yard, now well filled with the dead, is near the center of the village, and on a rise of ground, and all the wells, with offensive odor and bad taste, are east of the grave-yard and near by, (my own is about twenty paces,) I have long ceased to use my well for drinking

purposes, believing it to be contaminated with the decomposition of the dead bodies. I have noticed that all the families living east of the grave-yard have more or less sickness, and a great deal more than those living west of it, as the streams all run east to the bay shore. This may account for it. I had one death in my own family, and several others sick with typhoid fever. This happened several years ago. Since then we have stopped using well water, and have been free from any diseases traceable to bad water."

In the report of the British Local Government Board, before noticed, upon the relations of a cemetery to sources of water-supply, we read: "It is evident that the drainage of a cemetery should not be allowed to enter a stream from which water is drawn for domestic purposes. The degree to which the purity of neighboring wells is endangered by a cemetery, and the distance to which contamination may extend, obviously depend in each particular ease upon the relative elevation of the respective sites, of cemetery and well, and upon the nature and dip of the intervening strata, so that it would seem impossible to lay down a general rule for all cases. Fissured rock might allow foul matters to traverse considerable distances, while the interposition of a bed of clay, or a water-tight vault, would shut them off, or the passage through an aerated stratum of finely divided earth would oxidize and destroy them on their way. A dangerous state of things is when the graves and wells are sunk together in a shallow, superficial water-bearing stratum of a loosely porous nature, resting on impervious clay."

CONTAMINATION BY AIR.

This may take place in several modes. The gases evolved from putrefying bodies may make their way to the surface through pores or fissures in the ground, or may pass into open graves dug in the neighborhood, or they may diffuse themselves laterally through the ground air, and be drawn up into the interior of houses or churches; or noxious emanations may be given off from putrid drainage water, whether bailed out of graves and thrown upon the surface, or draining into open channels or water-courses. Thus nuisance and danger to health may be occasioned not only to grave-diggers and persons attending funerals, but also to the inhabitants of houses in the neighborhood of the burying-ground. To obviate these risks it is necessary that the number of decomposing bodies in a given portion of ground should not at any time be so great that the gaseous products

cannot be oxidized into harmless substances in the interstices of the soil or taken up by vegetation, that a sufficient depth of earth intervene between corpses and the surface, and that the soil be of a suitable nature and properly drained, the drainage water being harmlessly disposed of. Furthermore, since the atmospheric contamination which has to be especially guarded against, is that of the air in the interior, and neighborhood of human habitations and frequented places such as churches, it is necessary that the place of burial should be in an open situation and at a sufficient distance from dwellings or churches, in order that any effluvia arising from it may be diluted by the winds so as not to find their way in an injurious state of concentration to places where they will be liable to be inhaled.

The geological structure of the earth, the character of the soil, its water-bearing strata, its slope, and its deep and effective drainage have much to do with its adaptability. Then, again, there is a great difference in the capacity of ground to get rid of the products of decay. Cases have been brought to our notice where school houses are located at or very near burial-grounds, or where basements of churches, located in and among graves, are used for school and meeting purposes, in many of which a furnace is located for heating purposes; the hot furnace acting as a great suction pump for the grave-yard air that may be laden with the products of decomposition. A hot furnace in such

do serious harm. The writer of this can give testimony in relation to a school house located in one corner of a country graveyard, in which, during the months of August and September, a number of bodies had been placed that had died from epidemic dysentery. Soon after burial a heavy rain storm followed. The soil was a heavy clay. Large cracks formed in the soil over the graves, and a sickening odor escaped, so much so that the windows on the side adjacent to the grave-yard had to be closed, and the teachers and children were both affected for a time. Mr. Hutchinson, Surgeon, of Farrington street, London, says he was called to attend a girl aged fourteen, who was suffering with typhus fever of a highly malignant character. The girl was the daughter of a pew-opener in one of the large city churches situated in the center of a small burying-ground which had been used for interment for centuries, the ground of which was raised much above its natural level, and was saturated with the remains of the bodies of the dead. There were vaults beneath the church, in which it was still the custom, as it had long been, to bury the dead. The girl in question had recently returned from the country, where

she had been at school. She assisted her mother in shaking and cleansing the matting of the aisles and pews of the church, a few days before being seen by Mr. Hutchinson. The mother stated that this work had usually been done once in six weeks; that the dust and effluvia which arose always had a peculiar fœtid and offensive odor, very unlike the dust which collects in private houses; that it invariably made her (the mother) ill for at least a day afterwards, and that it used to make the grandmother of the present patient so unwell that she was compelled to hire a person to perform the duty. On the afternoon of the same day on which this young girl, now ill, had been engaged in her employment, she was seized with shivering, severe pain in the head, back and limbs, and other symptoms of commencing fever. On the following day all these symptoms were aggravated, and in two days afterwards malignant fever was fully developed.

Among others who obviously suffer from this cause are the families of clergymen, when, as occasionally happens, the parsonage is situated very close to a full church-yard. Dr. Stephen Wickes, of Orange, N. J., in an excellent treatise on sepulture, (Transactions New Jersey Medical Society, 1883,) says: "One clergyman's family I know of, whose dwelling house is so close to an extremely full church-yard, was annoyed by a very disagreeable smell from the graves, always perceptible in some of the sitting and sleeping rooms. The mother of this family states that she has never had a day's health since she has resided there, and that her children are always ailing. Their ill health is attributed both by the family and their medical friends to the emanations of the church-yard."

It is stated by Sir James Macgregor that on one occasion, in Spain, soon after 20,000 men had been put into the ground within the space of two or three months, the troops that remained exposed to the emanations of the soil, and that drank the water from the wells sunk in the neighborhood of the spot, were attacked by malignant fevers and by dysentery, and that the fevers constantly put on the dysenteric

character.

The placing of a dead body in a grave, and covering it with a few feet of earth, does not prevent the gases generated by decomposition, together with the putrescent matters which they hold in suspension from permeating the surrounding soil, and escaping into the air above and the water beneath. "I have examined, says Dr. Lyon Playfair (1881), various church-yards and burial-grounds, for the of purpose ascertaining whether the layer of earth above the bodies is sufficient