into which, when lifeless, they should be drawn.

Thus the cemetery holds its place in our city, but in a form much
modified from the ordinary cemetery. The burial ground is artificially
made of a fine carboniferous earth. Vegetation of rapid growth is
cultivated over it. The dead are placed in the earth from the bier,
either in basket work or simply in the shroud; and the monumental
slab, instead of being set over or at the head or foot of a raised
grave, is placed in a spacious covered hall or temple, and records
simply the fact that the person commemorated was recommitted to earth
in those grounds. In a few months, indeed, no monument would
indicate the remains of any dead. In that rapidly-resolving soil the
transformation of dust into dust is too perfect to leave a trace of
residuum. The natural circle of transmutation is harmlessly completed,
and the economy of nature conserved.



RESULTS.


Omitting, necessarily, many minor but yet important details, I close
the description of the imaginary health city. I have yet to indicate
what are the results that might be fairly predicted in respect to the
disease and mortality presented under the conditions specified.

Two kinds of observation guide me in this essay: one derived from
statistical and sanitary work; the other from experience, extended now
over thirty years, of disease, its phenomena, its origins, its causes,
its terminations.