JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1772

I found this rather, well, remarkable American patent by Albert Vanderlaan for 30 August 1927, which described the inventor’s idea for the utilization of human remains.  Vanderlaan found it distasteful to have cemeteries, which only served the function of keeping rotting bodies together until they were forgotten, and suggested that we put the dead to work.  That is, the dead should be cremated, the ashes mixed with a building material of some sort, and then the whole made into something and put to use. 

Vanderlaan’s prose is 19th century–perhaps he was instructed in school by an older person educated in 1840 for his own late 19th century education.  The sentence structure and vocabulary suggest this–or perhaps he was just a poor writer and found difficult words to stick together.  In any event, I thought that the prose sounded (and looked) better if made into a poem, or at least given the structure of a poem.  And so here it is.  The entire poetized patent is presented without interruption, and  all of what follows are the words of Albert Vanderlaan. 

Method Of Perpetuating Human Remains And Article Made Thereby.

    Prologus

This invention relates to the art of perpetuating human remains

and more particularly

relates to a method therefor and article made thereby.

The ugliest phase of civilized man’s career on earth

is not so much his inevitable physical expiration

as the manner in which it became the custom to dispose

of his mortal remains by burial in earth.