Oak-Hill Cemetery, or, A treatise on the fatal effects resulting from the location of cemeteries in the immediate vicinity of towns / by a physician.

  • Mackall, Louis, 1801-1876.
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Oak-Hill Cemetery, or, A treatise on the fatal effects resulting from the location of cemeteries in the immediate vicinity of towns / by a physician. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    7/28
    respect to the physical circumstances of interment, from which no adequate ground of exception has been established, that all jnler- menls in towns, where bodies decompose, contribute to the maps of atmospheric impurity, which is injurious to the public health. Based on the above reports, a law was subsequently passed, pro- hibiting the establishment of any cemetery within a considerable distance of any inhabited dwelling. In the United States, the State of New York and the Slate of Pennsylvania have passed laws of a similar character. The minutes of evidence taken before the committees of the British Parliament, contain the opinions on this subject of some of the most eminent medical men of the present day. A few of them are given : By James Copland, M. D., F. R. S. I believe the health of large towns is influenced by four or five particular circumstances ; the first, and perhaps the most important, is the burial of the dead in large towns. Sir Benjamin Brodie, when asked whether he considered the crowded state of the church-yards as one cause of fever or disease in the metropolis, answers; I have always considered that as one cause. My opinion is, that interments in the interior of this town, must be injurious to the health of the town. W. F. Chambers, M. D., in a letter to the chairman of one of the committees, states: I have no doubt that the fevers which are called typhus, even in this cleanly quarter of London, (Brooke Street,) owe their origin to the escape of putrid miasma. I should presume that over croxoded burying-grounds would supply such effluvia most abundantly. The opinion of i)r. Southwood Smith, given to the Poor Law Commissioners, on another occasion, has an especial bearing on the subject before us : It is matter of experience, says he, that during the decomposition of dead organic substances, whether vegetable or animal, aided by heat and moisture, and other pecu- liarities of climate, a poison is generated, which, when in a state of high concentration, is capable of producing instantaneous death) •by a single inspiration of the air in which it is diffused. Experience also shows that this poison, even when it is largely •diluted by admixture with atmospheric air, and when consequently it is unable to prove thus suddenly fatal, is still the fruitful source of sickness and mortality, partly in proportion to its intensity, and partly in proportion to the length of time and the constancy with which the body remains exposed to it. The exhalations which accumulate in close, ill-ventilated,and crowded apartments, in the confined situations of densely popu-