In 1658, when several collections of cinerary urns were discovered in Old Walsingham, Norfolk, England, Sir Thomas Browne, a learned physician, came forward with a brilliant dissertation on cremation, which still holds its rank among standard English literature. This essay, conspicuous for the erudition displayed, was a singularly powerful and idiomatic plea for incineration. The next to take up the righteous cause of cremation in Great Britain was no less a person than Sir James Y. Simpson, the eminent surgeon of Edinburgh, Scotland. He demonstrated how easy it would be for his fellow-townsmen to maintain a fire constantly on the hill of the Hunter’s Bog, near Edinburgh. But he, too, only had in view the ancient pyre; therefore it is not astonishing that his efforts were not crowned with success. It appears that about the year 1844, the sanction of the authorities of the city of London was obtained for the cremation, within the City of London Gas Works, of the dead of Bridewell Hospital; an arrangement was also concluded with the city authorities for the incineration of bodies of dead prisoners, and of the condemned meat and offal of the markets. The project, however, met with so much opposition from certain churchmen that it fell into abeyance. In modern times the gong of cineration was first struck by Sir Henry Thompson, who had become enamored with incineration at the Vienna Exposition, and who earnestly treated of cremation in a brilliant paper, “The Treatment of the Body after Death,” in _The Contemporary Review_ for January, 1874. This article, as might be expected, elicited great popular interest, much approval from all classes of the public, and some vigorous opposition. It was replied to, in the February issue of the same periodical, by Mr. Philip H. Holland, the Medical Inspector of Burials for England and Wales, whose statements and arguments, adroit though some of them were, were properly refuted in the succeeding number of the _Review_. Sir Henry fortified his arguments by citing some experiments with the bodies of lower animals, which he had burned, with little cost and no inconvenience, in a Siemens furnace. For many years prior to 1874, Dr. Lord, health officer for Hampstead, continued to urge the practical necessity for the introduction of incremation.