THE privacy with which funerals are now conducted, affords considerable relief to the minds of the friends of the deceased. And surely every occasional and incidental means, that can be devised, to soften the throb of genuine distress, should be adopted with that view; and all aggravating causes as sedulously avoided and removed.      MAGISTRATES, and the more exalted of the Clergy, are those from whom we must look for a complete reform in the instance under our consideration: I doubt not its meeting with the general concurrence and recommendation of the Medical Faculty.      BURYING the dead in church-yards in the heart of large towns, has been universally disapproved by the most eminent and learned of the Medical Faculty; and has been justly supposed liable to occasion diseases, from the daily custom of opening graves too early and prematurely. Dr Dobson very properly and emphatically decried this practice. "Churchyards are another source of noxious "effluvia. These are generally formed in the midst of crowded towns; and the more crowded the "towns, the most constantly are they broke up. One generation is removed to make room for another; "and I have seen bodies, yet green in death, forced from the grave and exposed to the open day! "Health, humanity, decency, cry aloud against such barbarities." [A Medical Commentary on Fixed-air, p 18] For the reasons given in the note at page 32, it seems a doubt whether the effluvia from Church-yards will be regularly, constantly and immediately injurious to health: yet thus much may be concluded with tolerable certainty, viz. that if the remains of a person who had died of an infectious malignant disease be prematurely exposed, there is great probability that such disease might be again communicated and diffused.         THE daily habit of viewing the miserable remains of our fellow-creatures, may somewhat help to reconcile so unpleasing a spectacle: yet, whenever it is seriously reflected on, the mind must recoil at so disgustful an idea, and wish for a removal of the cause which excites it. The delicate lady, and fine gentleman, who, when living, would consider the bare touch of an inferior of their own species, as an indignity not to be endured, are, in an open public church-yard, hourly trampled on, and subjected to have their undistinguished remains bandied about (contemptuously perhaps) by a rude rabble for their pastime. - How humiliating to human vanity!      MANKIND, during a transient existence in this 'empire of vicissitudes', are unsettled; and seemingly by nature disposed to frequent change of situation: nay, they are but too much in a state of contention: each striving to supersede and supplant the other: and it might seem as if a spirit of rivalry and persecution extended to the narrow confines of their last cheerless retreat; and that, after the insurmountable struggles and toils of a short, unsettled, and painful existence, instead of remaining, as he might expect,      A tranquil tenant of th' unenvied grave, the wretched remains of the worn-out traveller are dragged forth to public view, exposed to the prying eye of wanton curiosity; and are denied a resting place!      NOTHING surely can be more inconsistent in every point of view, than burying in so public a place as the Old-church-yard in this town; a place of daily general resort and pastime for all orders of persons, and as public as the most public street; and where the ceremony of the burial of the dead, instead of that awful solemnity which should always attend it, and which becomes heightened by       "the church-yard's lonely mound, "Where melancholy with still silence reigns", appears, from the surrounding gaity and confused clamours with which it is interrupted and confounded, little better than mockery." [THE feelings of the Clergy on these occasions may be easily conceived.]      THE mansions of the dead are also in so close contact with some of those of the living, that they may be said to inhabit together, and can scarce be considered as separated; as, frequent are the instances where no earth intervenes. WILLIAM MOSS - A Familiar Medical Survey of Liverpool (1784)