Abstract
MRS. ALEC-TWEEDIE'S address on Cremation the World “Over at the Cremation Conference, which was held at Brighton on July 18-21, reinforced a strong appeal for the wider adoption of this method of disposal of the dead by reference to the distribution of the custom of burning the dead among peoples of antiquity and non-European races. She dwelt in particular on the practice of cremation among the Hindus, contrasting it in detail with the methods of burial among the Chinese, and pointing out how among the latter reverence for the last resting-places of the dead, where land enclosing burial mounds is under cultivation, hampers agriculture and is an increasing menace to food supply among a teeming population which already produces barely enough for its needs. The vastness of the population, it might be added, makes the practice increasingly detrimental from the point of view of hygiene. Although Mrs. Tweedie did not hesitate to make use of the appeal to the emotion which reflection on the conditions and consequences of inhumation never fails to arouse, a marked feature of her address was the emphasis with which she stressed the import of cremation as a factor in the world's population problem, linking it up with food supply and birth control in relation to over-population. As she put it in her closing words, Without birth control and world cremation, what will the end be?” Mrs. Alec-Tweedie was the first and only woman on the council of the Cremation Society of England for more than ten years. She is the daughter of the late Dr. George Harley, F.R.S., of Harley Street, and her brother was Dr. Vaughan Harley. Her brother-in-law is Dr. Francis Goodbody, who has done much work for the centenary meeting of the British Medical Association.
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Cremation and Population. Nature 130, 125 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130125c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130125c0