Cremation, the reduction of the dead human body to ashes by fire, was a very early and widespread usage of antiquity. The early Aryans—as opposed to the non-Aryan aborigines of India—the Greeks, Romans, Slavs, Celts, and Germans, burned their dead, so that cremation may be regarded as the universal custom of the Indo-European races. The graves of North Europe throughout the 'bronze age' contain only jars with ashes. It was Christianity that gradually suppressed the practice of cremation. In India it is still a usual method for disposing of corpses, and is also practised by numerous uncivilised peoples of Asia and America (see BURIAL). A return to the practice has been strongly insisted on by many in modern Europe. This is opposed mainly on grounds of kindly feeling for the dead, and for religious reasons connected with the belief in the resurrection of the dead. Advocates of cremation assert that these are prejudices founded on misapprehension, and allege that the question is solely a sanitary one. The damage to the health of such as live near churchyards and cemeteries, from the exhalations of noxious gases and the poisoning of water supplies, is an indisputable fact, and is in many cases quite inevitable. By burning, the body is reduced more swiftly to its constituent elements, without disrespect to the dead or hurt to the living. The ashes of the body of an adult after due incineration weigh from 5 to 7 lb. Others allege as the juridico-criminal difficulty that cremation might be made to destroy the evidence of murder (as by poisoning); but advocates of cremation answer that a properly organised system of medical inspection would obviate this objection. In Italy cremation has been legal since 1877, and is not unusual at Milan, Lodi, Cremona, Brescia, Padua, Varese, and Rome, and at these places crematory furnaces, on the Gorini system, have been erected. About 1000 cremations have taken place in these and other Italian towns. In Berlin, Dresden, and Leipzig there has been strong agitation in favour of cremation; and at Gotha there is a large mortuary and crematorium, where between 1878 and 1888 more than 550 bodies had been cremated and lodged in the Columbaria of the crematory temple. Societies for securing the legalisation of the process exist in nearly every country in Europe, and in some the rite of cremation is permissible. At present this is not so in Belgium, Russia, or Austria. Two crematory furnaces were erected in 1888 by the municipality of Paris at Père-la-Chaise. The movement found for long but little favour in the United
States; there were but 20 cremations in 1875-82, but in 1885-93, 1282 bodies were cremated. Interest in this movement was awakened in England in 1874 by Sir Henry Thompson: the council of the society established in that year purchased ground at Woking, and in 1885 erected a crematory, which by 1893 had cremated 458 bodies. The number of cremations in England is now 130 annually. There are crematories at Manchester, Glasgow, and elsewhere. For each cremation about seven shillings' worth of wood, fagots and coal are needed. The time occupied in the reduction of an adult varies from 1½ to 1¾ hours, and the ashes weigh, as before stated, from 5 to 7 lb. Cremation having been declared legal in England, it is expected that some of the large cities will very shortly possess these media for destruction of the body by fire. The human body consists of 60 per cent. of water and 40 per cent. of solid matter; and quickly to reduce this to ashes requires a strong furnace. A special form of Siemens' regenerator furnace is that which has found most favour in Germany, but elsewhere only the Gorini form of apparatus is used. The Gorini crematory furnace consists of a receiver, a furnace, and a chimney. The receiver is a flat-bottomed chamber open at each end, one of which communicates with the upper part of the furnace, and the other with the lower part of the chimney. The furnace, which discharges its heat into the receiver, is somewhat spacious, sufficiently so to produce the necessary heat by means of wood fuel only if found requisite. The chimney is also of sufficient sectional area to remove the products of combustion from the receiver as well as the furnace, and high enough to permit the draught to keep above the gases pervading the receiver, and prevent any dispersion of heat or smoke through the apertures around the receiver or cremation chamber. In order to perfectly overcome the idea as to any organic molecules escaping from the shaft, a grating is placed near the base of the chimney, and upon this a portion of coke is kept burning. The products of animal combustion which issue still highly heated from the receiver, are subjected to higher temperature in passing through the burning coke, and any organic matter which may have resisted or escaped the first combustion is destroyed by the second, and mixes harmlessly with the atmosphere. The literature of the subject began with Thompson's Treatment of the Body after Death (1874); Erichsen's Cremation of the Dead (1887); Ullersperger's Urne oder Grab (1874); and some works by Italian doctors. The Transactions (annual) of the Cremation Society of England contain a complete bibliography on the subject up to date. Since 1874 upwards of 3000 works and pamphlets have been published on this subject in various countries.
[While this volume was passing through the press, the author of the above article died, and his body was cremated at Woking.—ED.]