Burning the dead, or, Urn sepulture : religiously, socially, and generally considered : with suggestions for a revival of the practice, as a sanitary measure / by a member of the Royal College of Surgeons.

Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Burning the dead, or, Urn sepulture : religiously, socially, and generally considered : with suggestions for a revival of the practice, as a sanitary measure / by a member of the Royal College of Surgeons. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    58/64 (page 54)
    Should Cremation and Urn Sepulture ever be- come a common or a general custom, more extensive machinery and arrangements would of course be required, and a shrine might contain several sepa- rate sarcophagi, if that plan were adopted. Still, the bodies of both rich and poor might be treated alike, and as speedily reduced to dust and ashes. We may, before long, see a Company established in London, for the carrying out of some such measures. That the substitution of Burning, for Burying the dead, especially in or near large cities, would be of in- calculable benefit to the general health of the community at large, is indisputable: that the former would be neither an unchristian, profane, or barbarous prac- tice, if viewed in a proper light, or cruel and repul- sive to the feelings, I have endeavoured to show in these pages. Let me conclude with one more quotation from worthy old Sir Thomas Brown : Tis all one where we lye, or what becomes of our bodies after we are dead, ready to be anything in the extasie of being every FINIS. Printed by J. Davy & Sons, 137, Long Acre.