wife of one Martin Van Butchell, who, by her husband's desire, was
embalmed in the year 1775, by Dr. William Hunter and Mr. Carpenter,
and who may be seen in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons
in London. She was a beautiful woman, and all that skill and science
could do were done to preserve her in the appearance of life; but
the result is nothing short of shocking and awful. Taking it, then,
as admitted, that the body must return to the dust from whence it
was taken, the next question is, How? How shall dissolution take
place with due respect to the dead, and with least harm to the
health and the feelings of the living?

The two fashions which have been universally used are, burial and
burning. It has so happened that burial has been associated with
Christianity, and burning with heathenism; but I shall admit at once
that the association is not essential, though it would be hard,
without very weighty reason indeed, to deviate from the long-remembered
'earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.' But such weighty
reason the author of this treatise declares to exist. The system
of burial, he says, is productive of fearful and numberless evils
and dangers to the living. In the neighbourhood of any large
burying-place, the air which the living breathe, and the water
which they drink, are impregnated with poisons the most destructive
of health and life. Even where the damage done to air and water
is inappreciable by our senses, it is a predisposing cause of
headache, dysentery, sore throat, and low fever;' and it keeps all
the population around in a condition in which they are the ready prey
of all forms of disease. I shall not shock my readers by relating
a host of horrible facts, proved by indisputable evidence, which
are adduced by the surgeon to show the evils of burial: and all
these evils, he maintains, may be escaped by the revival of burning.