uly when a few are imperilled
as when many are." ...

Not to attempt to tell all that has been ascertained, it will be
sufficiently convincing to quote from Sir Henry Thompson's utterance in
the _Nineteenth Century_ in 1880: "I state, as a fact of the highest
importance, that, by burial in earth, we effectively provide--whatever
sanitary precautions are taken by ventilation and drainage, whatever
disinfection is applied after contagion has occurred--that the
pestilential germs, which have destroyed the body in question, are thus
so treasured and protected as to propagate and multiply, ready to
reappear and work like ruin hereafter for others.... Beside anthrax or
splenic fever, spores from which are notoriously brought to the surface
from buried animals below, and become fatal to the herds feeding there,
it is now almost certain that malarial diseases, notably Roman fever and
even tetanus, are due to bacteria which flourish in the soil itself. The
poisons of scarlet fever, enteric fever (typhoid), small-pox, diphtheria
and malignant cholera are undoubtedly transmissible through earth from
the buried body." That the burial of a body that contains the seeds of
zymotic disease is simply storing them for future reproduction and
destruction is amply proved by the researches of Darwin and Pasteur, of
whom the former has shown that the mould, or fertile upper layer of
superficial soil, has largely acquired its character by its passage
through the digestive tract of earth-worms; and the latter that this
mould, when brought by this agency to the surface from subjacent soil
that has been used as a grave, contains the specific germ of the disease
that has destroyed its tenant.

It may now be asked: "Granting that these evils are inseparable from the
burial of the dead in the earth or in tombs, what is the remedy? What
else can be done?"

To this question not many answers can be given, because the modes of
disposing of the dead have always been and must always be few.

Plainly, no such novel mode as casting the dead into the sea will be
generally adopted. Plainly, also, the mode of the Parsees, grounded as
it is in ancient, if not original use--to give the dead to beasts and
birds--will not become universal. And, plainly also, cremation will not
be welcome to the many, free as it is from objection on the score of
public health, if a method equally sanitary, and at the same time
satisfactory to a reverent and tender sentiment, c