Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 October 1882 — Murder by Burial. [ARTICLE]

Murder by Burial.

No scientific discoveries have been made in our generation of greater importance than those of M. Pasteur. As many of our readers are aw’are, they relate to the propagation of disease through living organisms, those known as bacilli and bacteria being most frequently connected with tlie morbid processes of disease. M. Pasteur finds that these microscopic forms of life exist especially in dead bodies; that'they work their way up through the soil to the surface, are taken into the intestines of grazing cattle or are distributed by the winds, and so, it would seem probable, propagate a whole school of diseases—such as small-pox, scarlatina, typhoid ■ and typhus fevers, diphtheria, tubercular consumption, pneumonia, erysipelas, etc., etc., and perhaps yellow fever. M. Pasteur mentions the splenic fever which prevails in France, and other countries of Europe, and which annually destroys thousands of cattle and sheep. In one such case he discovered that an epidemic of this disease was followed, after some years, by a fresh outbreak among cattle that had been grazing where, previously, victims of tlie same disease had been buried under the pastures. Tfie little bacteria liad worked their way from the buried carcasses to the surface, and were found in swarms in tlie intestines of earth-worms gatli-_ ered there. It ought to be tlie business of scientific people to show the relation of these facts—if they can be accepted as facts—to our present method of disposing of the dead. If the breezes that blow' from Greenwood, Mt. Auburn and Laurel Hill are laden with germs that propagate the diseases that have already slain our kindred, then- the most expensive feature of those cities of the dead is not their costly monuments. It is worthywfliile to ask ourselves whether the disciples of cremation have not a truth on their side, and whether some amendment is not needed in the modes of burial which, in this country especially, seem designed to resist the operations of nature as long as possible, and so to make a dead body a source of indefinite evil. Indeed, the w’hole matter of our burial customs is one which urgently needs revision. It is astonishing that, in connection with risks so many and various as are involved in our modes of burying our dead, there should have been, in modern times, so little care and forethought. The dwellers in proximity to graveyards who have been poisoned by tlieir drainage include a vast multitude whose number has never Veen reckoned. Magazine,