CEMETERY DANGER

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 14 January 1928, Page 4

CEMETERY DANGER

SPREAD OF DISEASE GERMS When burials take place .on the eastern slopo of Rookwood Cemetery, Sydney "all the germs in the world," aldermen fear, will be washed down through Strathfield. ' • . Though laymen and doctors have long suspected cemeteries of breeding disease, surprisingly little evidence is available that they do^ In Burlington, lowa, U.S.A., however, during a cholefa epidemic, it was noticed that there were no deaths near the city cemetery until about 20 victims had been buried. Then cases began to occur, and always in the direction from the cemetery in which the wind blew. That was in 1850, and a dpctor making researches 25 years later, remarked on° the fewness of more modern exIn Britain, animals dead of anthrax are cremated or destroyed by corrosive' chemicals, because where such animals are buried, the ground swarms with anthrax germs. MAKING SURE 'A British Parliamentary committee in 1893 advocated compulsory cremation of human victims of * contagious diseaso, and civilised peoples now avoid having crowded cemeteries in the midst of To have a new "Rookwood" further awav would be the Strathfield aldermen's remedy. To stop all burials would be the crematiomsts'. "Disease germs." wrote a medical man lately, "breed freely in the earth, and every human body contains 'those Wins. Therefore every corpse buried; ir our midst constitutes a menace to public health." , , Even if the menace can t. bo measured, says cremationists, it's belter to be sure than sorry. And cremation'certainly leaves nothing to chance.