Note 1 — INTERMENTS IN TOWNS.

According to a memoir on this subject, read at the Royal Academy of Sciences, by M. Cadet de Vaux, in the year 1781, “Le méphetisme qui s’etoit dégagé d’une des fosses voisines du cimetière, avoit infecté toutes les caves: on comparait aux poisons les plus subtils, à ceux dont les sauvages imprégnant leur flèches meurtrières, la terrible activité de cette émanation. Les murs baignés de l’humidité dont elles les pénétroit, pouvoit communiquer, disoit on par le seul attouchement les accidens les plus redoutable.” See Mémoires de la Société Royale de Médecine, tom. viii. p. 242; also Annales de Chimie, tom. v. p. 158. As an instance of the state of the cellars around the grave-yard, it is stated, that a workman being engaged in one of them put his hand on the wet wall. He was warned that the moisture on the walls was poisonous, and was requested to wash the hand in vinegar. He merely dried his hand on his apron: at the end of three days the whole arm became numb, then the hand and lower arm swelled with great pain, blisters came out on the skin, and the epidermis came off.