|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 13
These facts and figures regarding the Slater Memorial Museum are
valuable only so far as they go. They show that the first problem of a
museum--to interest the public at large--has there been solved
successfully. More than that is not to be looked for yet. The ultimate
good which the institution will accomplish can be but imperfectly
manifested in one generation. It is from the children now growing up,
from their children and their children's children, that the deeper
results are to be expected. As the beginning has been made, we can
afford to wait for the rest, which will come in good time. The lesson to
be learned from it now is, that such collections are needed, that they
are appreciated not by a few but by many, and that, so far as the cost
is concerned, they are within the reach of every well-settled
community.--_New York Evening Post._
* * * * *
SANITARY ENTOMBMENT: THE IDEAL DISPOSITION OF THE DEAD.[4]
[Illustration]
In this country, partly because there were few places of large
population, and partly because it was an early and general tendency to
use cemeteries rather than churches, and the grounds adjacent to them,
the evils of earth-burial did not manifest themselves so soon or in so
marked a manner as in the Old World. But there were instances enough to
convince the most incredulous that a radical change must be made. Dr.
Ackerly, writing in 1822, thus describes the condition of the
burial-ground connected with Trinity Church, New York, forty years
before: "During the Revolutionary War this ground emitted pestilential
vapors, the recollection of which is not obliterated from the memory of
a number of living witnesses." In the same year, the _Commercial
Advertiser_ published an article in reference to the present evils of
earth-burial at the same place, in which it was said: "It will be
remembered that the graveyard, being above the streets on the west, and
encompassed by a massive stone wall, and the east side being on a level
with Broadway, it results that this body of earth, the surface of which
has no declivity to carry off the rain, thus becomes a great reservoir
of contaminating fluids suspended above the adjacent streets. In proof
of this, it is stated that, in a house in Thames Street, springs of
water pouring in from that ground occasioned the removal of the tenants
on account of their exceeding fetidness." At a later date, Dr. Elisha
Harris brought this telling indictment against the same place of
interment: "Trinity churchyard has been the centre of a very fatal
prevalence of cholera whenever the disease has occurred as an endemic
near or within a quarter of a mile of it. Trinity Place, west of it,
Rector Street, on its border, the streets west of Rector and the
occupants of the neighboring offices and commercial houses have suffered
severely at each visitation of the pest from 1832 to 1854." It seems
hardly necessary to add that the foregoing statements are not intended
to make the impression that there was a worse condition at the
churchyard named than at any other....
It may now be said: "Yes, this is all true, but we have changed all
that! We no longer inter our dead in churchyards or burial-grounds
within the limits of cities. We have provided cemeteries at great
distances from our cities and large centres of population, and there the
dead can do no harm."
To this the reply is easy and convincing: "that, if the dead endanger
the living when the population is dense, they certainly also endanger
them when the population is sparse. The danger is only diluted. It still
exists, and it ought to alarm us just as truly 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.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|