Cashing out Corpses: the Value of (Human) Dead as Fertilizer, 1874

JF Ptak Science Books Post 303

"Nature's object remains unstated" for us humans, writes Sir Henry Thompson (1820-1904, polymathic professor of clinical surgery, University College, London)  in the March 1874 issue of Appleton's Popular Science Monthly, or at least so in life.   In his article "Disposal of the Dead", Sir Henry finds at least an answer in death for Nature's purpose for people:  fertilizer.  After birth, the process of decay is constant, until we all find ourselves broken down to our chemical and mineral elements in an nearly endless series of breakdown, failure and shortages until our cells decide to stop working.   (Folks who wish for an eternal life should be careful:  Tithonus, a mortal Trojan in love with Eros suffered from her wish to Zeus--the goddess of the dawn asked for Tithonius to be immortal just as she, but did not ask for him to stay the same age, which is very problematic.  Just like in the story of the Struldbruggs, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver found a people who were immortal but who also aged as time went by--they became more rickety and feeble and disabled and so on, right up to the point where they couldn't even read anymore because their fingers were too brittle for page-turning and their minds so weak that they forgot the beginning of a sentence before they came to its end, which means I guess they didn't need to turn pages anymore, because the same page was fresh to them, tirelessly and endlessly.  Gulliver says that "no tyrant could invent a death into which I would not run with pleasure from such a life". Amen. )

Full text via wikisource:  https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_4/March_1874/Disposal_of_the_Dead

We do not have the problems of Tithonius and the Strudbruggs. decaying daily in our sprint to the Finish line (preferable to the "End", as "Finish" implies that something has actually been done). 

Dr. Thompson works out his inexorable logic of the most effective way of disposing of the dead with some noirsh dead-pan humor.  He has a number of gems like "what is best to be done with the dead is then mainly a question for the living" sprinkled throughout this pretty mordant paper.  What it all boils down to for Thompson is some rock-solid reasoning: humans have something to give back to the earth once they die in the forms of chemicals and nutrients. But this gift  he says is needlessly strangled by our funerary practices  (or at least Western funeral practices):  embalming the dead  and offsetting their decomposition and then enclosing them in wood and metal six feet down in the ground defeats the whole sense of fulfillment in death.  Nothing could be worse (a "useless pollutant").  Not only that, the economic waste is a staggering fraud, Thompson computing that a million pounds are lost every year to the practice in London alone. 

There are ways of doing this better, he argues, the result of "this question of vital economy to the country" would be like burying a million pounds a year "into the bosom of Mother Earth, who could give it back in huge returns at compound interest for the deposit". He figures that it takes but a few hours of high heat in a furnace to reduce dead people into something "useful" that can be gathered in the furnace's cauldron and distributed where needed.   150 pounds of wood (or about a pound per deadweight) would do the job of gaining the fertilizer, which would be not only far cheaper than burial (costing less than a pound sterling) but would reduce the cost of importing fertilizer from other countries.

He writes:  "the necessary complement of this ceaseless waste of commodity most precious to organic life, and which must be replaced, or the population could not exist, is the purchase by this country of that =same material from other countries less populous than our own, and which can, therefore, at present spare it."  (I'm pretty sure he's talking about non-human fertilizer.  I think.)

Thompson continues his argument that cremation is actually much more agreeable process than the current attempts at salvaging dignity in the dead.  The principle complaint against cremation (in a practice of the veneration of the dead that was thousands of years old) was, he says, "sentiment".  But he says that this same sentiment has nothing to urge in seen kindnesses in the present practices, and says that he would take a look at what that "pleasant process" actually looked like.  "So far as I dare!  For could I paint, in its true colors, the ghastly picture of what happens to mortal remains of the dearest we have lost, the page would be too deeply stained for publication".  The beauty of death ("she lay beautiful in death") so squeezed of life by flower Victorian poets lasts, oh, not so long.  Thompson doesn't pursue in writing what he couldn't do with paint, only to say that the process and the result "of Nature so ruthlessly and rapidly blight(ing) her own handiwork in furtherance of her own grand purpose" was revolting, and if that part was acknowledged, the sentimental grievances against his own proposal should slip away.
This was all well and good, and an excellent argument, but it was hardly a topic for table talk in London at nearly the height of the Empire, nor is it today.  People simply weren't ready for burning up poor old Auntie Em  and sprinkling her in the garden, 10 inches down.  I do admire his argument and presentation, though.  His general arguments though were much toned down from this, and as the organizer and first president of the Cremation Society of Great Britain he sought the use of cremation for economy and hygiene more so than anything else.  It was still a hard go.

Note: 

A short outline of Western writing on cremation, from the History of the Cremation Society of Great Brtain website:

"The first re-emergence of interest in cremation in modern times was in 1658 in an essay Hydriotaphia: Urn Burial, by Sir Thomas Browne, a physician from Norwich, but it was in 1664 in a book entitled Philosophical Discourses of the Virtuosi of France that it was first advocated as an alternative to burial. During the next two centuries numerous other discussions on this question took place but the grand revival of the subject really occurred in 1869 when it was presented to the Medical International Congress of Florence by Professors Coletti and Castiglioni "in the name of public health and civilization". 1872 saw more papers advocating cremation, the most important being that of Dr. Polli, as it contained results of the first experimental researches. The following year Professor Gorini of Lodi and Professor Brunetti of Padua also published reports or practical work they had conducted. A model of Professor Brunetti's cremating apparatus, together with the resulting ashes, was exhibited at the Vienna Exposition in 1873 and attracted great attention, including that of Sir Henry Thompson, Bart., F.R.C.S., Surgeon to Queen Victoria, who returned home to become the first and chief promoter of cremation in England."

Comments

[Jeff]

Today's haiku pertains:

to die like a moth
so that people must reach out
and touch me to know

OK, it's a passive-aggressive haiku, but nonetheless.

[Karla]

I can't speak to the specific British situation, but as far as I know Thompson's interest in cremation simply came a bit prior to broader enthusiasm for it in the first few decades of the 20th century. I don't think, however, that it was widely popular to plant the ashes in the garden or to farm with them. The Czechs were enthusiastic about cremation but as far as I know they stuck the ashes in urns and, in fact, there is a large Prague cemetery devoted to cremations, although nothing about its appearance would suggest this. It looks about like any other cemetery, headstones and all.

[Jeff]

Somehow, it fits to hear that Prague has a cemetery devoted to cremations. It's hard not to imagine a cemetery full of headstones but which are really, really close together. I visited Prague ten years ago, and there was an aura of death around my visit ... not as a fearful or fascinating aspect but more as a matter of fact. There is the Jewish cemetery built up with layer upon layer of burials, then the synagogue with all the names of the Czech Jews killed in the death camps written in gold on the white walls, room after room after room. The Vysehrad cemetery was actually quite lovely, and interesting for the historical and noteworthy names. Then there was Tycho Brahe's tomb in the floor of the old Tyn cathedral on the old square, and the carved image of him showed the false nose he wore most of his life. Then, my friend's ten-year-old son and I went to a show of medieval torture history in the dungeon-like basement of a museum. We were quickly exhausted by it, no matter how remarkable was the testament to human ingenuity. There was the Bone Church outside of Prague that we didn't make it to, veering off for a nearby castle instead. A cremation cemetery would have been a perfect addition, and cremation might have stuck in my mind as a Czech pursuit as curious as defenestration.

[John Ptak]

Jef and KArla: thanks fo rbeing such thoughtful readers! And excellent commenters, too, of course. I didn't know about the cremation cemetery in Prague and it sounds terrifically interesting. I've not seen many specialist graveyards, though I do have some old images of unusual places of final repose, and not necessarily for humans, or animates, either. Somewhere here I have an image for dead songbirds and another for broken dolls, both in Japan. THe broken dolls one is particularly moving, every time I think of it. IT is a good idea, of course--the cemetery for dead dolls--these things filled with so much love and (generally) care; it seems as though something should be done with them besides just throwing them away. Truth be told, who on this planet *wouldn't* want to snuggle up with a favorite doll, even 75 years hence?

[John Ptak]

Oops! I should've been a more careful typer--sorry "Jeff".

[Jeff]

Indeed you should've been more careful. KArla got TWO capital letters, and I got only one. However, I'm sure she deserves it, and I have successfully lived my life without getting what I deserved.

[John Ptak]

Well. I also left off one "f"; but Emma got 4 ice cubes tonight and Tessie got three in their drinks, and I always am made aware of who is getting or didn't get, um, what. In the small world department I've found by chance a catalog for the Ferncliff (NY) Columbarium, a poshy place for the disposal of cremated remains. The catalog comes from 1925 and is very soothing. Cremations cost $35 for adults, $20 for children 5-10 years, and $15 for children under 5. That's actually a little expensive, and more costly than it is at today's (cpi-adjusted) rates. Ferncliff is still going strong: http://www.ferncliffcemetery.com/celeb_2.htm