Interment and disinterment : a further exposition of the practices pursued in the metropolitan places of sepulture, and the results as affecting the health of the living : in a series of letters to the editor of the Morning Herald / by G.A. Walker.
- Date:
- 1843
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Interment and disinterment : a further exposition of the practices pursued in the metropolitan places of sepulture, and the results as affecting the health of the living : in a series of letters to the editor of the Morning Herald / by G.A. Walker. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![the shadows, generally dimly outlined in the distance, have stridden as the destroying angel over their own thresholds. In districts where the foci of malaria are most numerous—where the emanations from decomposing animal matter are most abundantly developed (whether such emanations arise from grave-yards, and other receptacles for the dead, or sewers, it matters little, the gases evolved in both cases being identical in chemical composition), will typhus fever, and other diseases evidencing depression ot the vital powers, be found to be almost constantly present, or lurking in a slumbering undeveloped form. The experience of Insurance Offices and Benefit Societies had long since shown that, cceteris paribus, in these localities the mean average duration of life is infinitely lower than in other situa- tions where such exciting causes of disease are not present. “ So certain am I [says Dr. Armstrong] of the truth of the doctrine of malaria, and a local taint or contamination of air, that I believe with the aid of the legislature I could go far to annihilate typhus fever in the British metropolis.” “ By proper care such epidemics as typhus, scarlet fever, are now scarcely known as affecting large groups in the army, and such an occurrence would denote to the chiefs of the Army Medical Board the existence of some great neglect into which it would be necessary to make inquiry.”—[Sanitary Report of Poor Law Commissioners to her Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Home Department, July, 1842, p. 222.] If the gases eliminated from the decomposition of the dead be respired in a con- centrated state, instantaneous death may be, and has been, the result; if (and this is of far more frequent occurrence) the poison be considerably diluted with atmospheric air, the injurious effects, though perhaps less clearly trace- able, must sooner or later follow. Various affections of the organs of digestion are slowly but surely induced, and disease of the assimilatory processes, we have every reason to believe, is a frequent cause of other serious and fatal disorders. The inhabitants of malarious districts, it may confidently be affirmed, are unable to resist the impression of such noxious agencies as a person in perfect health would have borne with impunity. Changes in the temperature and hygrometric condition of the atmosphere which might, and most probably would, excite in the latter merely a trivial catarrh, are in the former often followed by rapidly fatal con- sumption ; rickets, scrofula, urinary disorders, and all the varied forms of disease dependent on mal-assimilation of the alimentary principles, are unusually rife amongst them, and when any epidemic makes its appearance, the mortality in such localities is in general fearfully great. It is true that thousands annually brave the contagion of typhus fever, small pox, scarlet fever, &c., and remain uninjured ; but would any one venture to affirm that the invisible agencies producing these and other diseases are not in existence, because they are unaffected ? We hear the unreflecting very commonly make the observation, “Why; Mr. or Mrs. So-and-So, lived in such a locality [perhaps notoriously an unhealthy one] a great many years, and died the other day at a very advanced age.” Persons should recollect that if such examples of longevity do occasionally occur, they are the exceptions, not the rule. Thus the Rev. Evan James, curate of St. Dunstan’s, Stepney, stated in answer to question 2718, by Sir William Clay, “ Do circumstances occur to your recollection connected with burials in your churchyard, which you consider offensive on the ground of public health or decency ?—No [said the Rev. gentleman], certainly not ; it is not long since I buried a man at Stepney who had been upwards of 70 years the grave-digger; he died in the 103 rd year of his age.” How many younger grave- diggers have been cut down prematurely during the probationary period of the older one ? How much longer might not the man have lived had he followed a healthier occupation ? This case proves that there are individuals obnoxious even to such destructive agencies. As a collateral fact it may be well to state that in the year 1665, the period of “ the Great Plague,” in the parish of Stepney alone, 116 sextons, grave- diggers, and carters, employed in removing the dead bodies, were cut off in one year ! I am happy to be able to subjoin the opinion of so deservedly celebrated a phy- sician and chemist as Dr. Prout, in whose work on “ Stomach and Urinary Disor- ders,” (p. 21) I find the following—“ Another, and perhaps the most fertile exciting cause of mal-assimilation in general is malaria. I have no hesitation in expressing my belief, that almost every form of disease connected with the development by the secondary assimilating process of the various indefinable acid principles, are mot e frequently excited by malarious influence than by any other external cause. In Ins letter to W. A. Mackinnon, Esq., M.P., Chairman of the Select Committee appointed to inquire into the “ effects of interment of bodies,” the learned Doctor says, “ there](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21915441_0024.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
