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17
CREMATION.
Cremation has undoubtedly caught the public imagination: whilst
thoughtful men and women have already decided upon this question
for themselves, many have been roused to make enquiry following
upon the announcement that, in future, Cremation must precede the
burial before interment in Westminster Abbey.
My reason for bringing this subject before you is that I am
convinced that until Cremation is widely adopted we shall continue
to run the risk of contracting disease. Now this is a somewhat startling
statement to make. I admit at once that it cannot be proved, but of
this, more anon.
The progress of the Cremation movement is slower than sanitarians,
economists and lovers of the aesthetic could wish for, and I am satisfied
that the main reason is that the subject is not brought before the mass
of the people as it should be.
I have searched into the literature on Cremation in order that I may
do justice to the subject, and it is with pleasure that I here acknowmy
indebtedness to Dr. Killick Millard, the well-known and esteemed
Medical Officer of Leicester, whose Chadwick Lecture on "The
Disposal of the Dead" will be treasured by those who have been
fortunate enough to secure a copy. I have made free use of his lecture
so far as the historical part is concerned.
With human beings as with the lower animals, death is repellant.
People do not like to think of it; they do not mind lifting up their
voices and singing hymns in church expressing a yearning to enter the
Golden Gates forthwith, but any reference, outside the church, to the
possibility of so doing is carefully avoided. The subject is practically
taboo with practically all of us; we refuse to face the only certain fact
there is, the fact of death. In the words of Claudio in" Measure for
Measure," " O Isabel, death is a fearful thing . . . . To die and
go we know not where ; to lie in cold obstruction and to rot; this
sensible warm motion to become a kneaded clod."
The question of the disposal of the dead has always been a problem.
Lower animals will drag a body out of the burrow or nest to get it
away, whilst the gorilla is said to cover up the body of a dead mate
with branches. In days that are far back in the world's history, cave
men took out their dead and covered them with branches or earth and
stones. As implements improved, the body was buried in a hollow in