Intramural interments in populous cities, and their influence upon health and epidemics / by John H. Rauch.

  • Rauch, John H. (John Henry), 1828-1894.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Intramural interments in populous cities, and their influence upon health and epidemics / by John H. Rauch. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    already very large, and the sooner it is arrested the less violence will be done to the feelings and habits of our citizens. This report was approved and sent with a memorial to the legislature, and was instrumental in causing the passage of a law authorizing the corporation of New York to prohibit interments within the city. This law was afterward incorporated into the general statutes of the State of New York. It was not, however, until 1823, soon after the publication of Dr. Felix Pascales' and Dr. Samuel Ackerley's learned and valuable papers on this subject, that an ordinance was passed prohibiting interments within the city limits. This, however, re- mained inoperative for some time, the rapid growth of that metropolis having created a nitural yet lamentable indifference and inattention to a subject of such high sanitary importance. This inattention served to multi- ply and postpone the remedy of an evil which might easily, and by a little foresight, have been arrested and guarded against. More attention has been paid to sanitary science by Massachusetts than any other State in this country. The first Board of Health was established February 3, 1797. In 1810 this Board of Health was authorized to make rules and regulations for burial grounds, and for the interment of the dead. All graves for the inter- ment of the dead were required to be at least six feet deep, and lime to be deposited, from June to October, under churches where the dead were interred. In 1850, an ordinance was passed by the city of Boston, which placed the interment of the dead under the care of a regis- trar; it provided, also, that no grave should be less than three feet deep from the surface of the ground surround- ing the grave, to the top of the coffin, and no graves to be dug in any burying ground of the city, excepting at East Boston and South Boston, unless by permission.