CEMENT V. CREMATION.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 289, 12 September 1874, Page 3

CEMENT V. CREMATION.

A certain Dr. Von Steinbei* has met the. advocates of cremation with a counter proposition. He plans, not to destroy the bodies of the departed, but to preserve them perpetually by embedding — Roman or Portland cement. Gradually.. both the corpse and its envelop'etare t»b£ hardened into a compact mass, nolhdistin-; guishable from solid stone. The process-; has the effect of combining in one substance body, coffin, grave, and monument, the surface of the material being fully-avail-able for the purpose of inscription and'-re-cord. Further, the project claims the ad-, vantage of respecting at once both the dead and the living. The remains-of the departed are subjected to m sort- of outrage or violence,: while the feelings and health of the survivors are at the-same-time effectually regarded. The illieffeetsuf decomposition will be absolutely prevented, and the escape of noxious gases rendered impossible. Already Dr; beis' proposal has encountred the charge usually levelled at all schemes-affecting tobe new. A correspondent cf- the-' Times * has denounced this " cementing " plan as deficient in novelty. It appears that the late Mr Ball; curator of the Dublin- Mu*. seum of Natural and a-naturalist and" taxidermist of Bome fame in his day,really encased the remains of his father,, previous to burial in Roman cement?. - Further, it seems that-certain experiment* touching the interment o£ kairian 'bodies " in a kind of concrete took place at Paris as far back as 188fj. • The result of these essays of a new method of sculpture has not been communicated to the public, and - it is quite probable that Dr. Von Steinbeis has arrived at his plan by an original pathway. How far a disposition may prevail, however, to encourage his scheme of interment remains, of course, to be seersTt is clear that provision must be made to secure proper, regard being paid to forefathers under their new "fossil** aspect. I Danger may arise from their portability, i Improvident heirs of the Charles Surface | pattern, who now dispose by public aucj tion of the effigies of their progenitors, might not hesitate to sell their ancestor*, themselves when "in block," as building materials, or for macadamising purposes. And certainly, under Dr. Ton Stein beis* .plan the-old expression, "a chip of the old; block,"' acquires a new and unexpected: significance From a literary point of view, this cementing proposition awakens recollections of a story Nathaniel Hawthorne -had once planned to write. A lover had by some chemical process so> condensed the remains of his deceased mistress that he carried them about with him, set like a jewel in a ring worn upon, his finger. The ring was supposed to prick or wound him in some way when his conduct conveyed a slight to his buried love. With blocks of stone containing the remains of human beings, surely Hawthorne might have constructed no inferior specimen of those weird' romances he-so loved to write : —' Graphic'