The Practice of Cremation.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 26 March 1910, Page 4

The Practice of Cremation.

Tlie practice of cremation as a method , of disposing of'the dead is said to he making great headway all over the civilised globe. Wo lenrii from Paris that it is nowpossible to be cremated, for hall'-a-crown, and the body ol' a fullgrown adult can, it is said, bo reduced to imponderable dust and ashes within half an hour. Tht> great argument in favour of tho practice is oik , advocated in the interests of the health of tho liviing, particularly in the congested cities of the Old World. As an alternative is advocated by .some reformers in sanitational science the process of desiccation. It would bo necessary to place the bodies in concrete chambers, into which dry air is forced from a furnace located in an annexe, and so leave them until the moisture and deleterious gases are .drawn out—a process which occupies about a couple of months. After it is finished, the sepulchre- is closed and hermetically sealed, so that no atmospheric air can find admission, and no cholera germs or bacilli of typhoid or any other zymotic disease can be disseminated by escape from the depository of the dessicated mortal remains. This method is not a. popular one. whereas cremation is. In the United States 2fj crematoria are in existence., and in San Francisco alone nearly a thousand bodies were incinerated in 1908—for the whole country the number was mo fewer than 2500. When, however, the last word has been said in favour of disposing of the dead by burning the fact remains that poor humanity regards it with a curious horror, notwithstanding the dictum that all people distinguished by the highest type,-; of civilisatHVndisposed of their dead by fire.