The Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 was accompanied by dysentery and typhus fever. After the battle of Gravelotte the German troops had to camp for weeks upon the graves of their comrades, subjected all the time to the most dangerous effluvia from the slain. The bodies of those that fell at Metz were in many instances dug up by the Germans and re-interred; since the hasty and superficial way in which they had been buried in the first place caused contamination of the watercourses near by, and pollution of the air. The evils of earth burial were especially apparent in besieged forts, for instance in Metz and Paris, 1870–71. The communists at Paris evaded the evils of inhumation by burning their dead in the casemates. On July 14, 1877, during the war between Turkey and Russia, General Tergankassoff informed his government at St. Petersburg, by despatch, that the air in and about Bayazid was so contaminated by the decomposition of the dead, that it would not only be unwise, but also dangerous, to prolong the stay of the troops there. On August 24 of the same year, the naval correspondent of the London _Times_ stated that thousands of soldiers who fell in the Shipka Pass were so superficially inhumed that relics of the dead, such as arms and knees, protruded from the earth-heaps. On the 14th of September following, the correspondent of the London _Daily Telegraph_ declared that the stenches of the villages around Hasankioe were unendurable; that the retreating invaders had cut off the water-supply by filling up the wells with corpses; and that in consequence the water had to be brought from a great distance. And on the seventeenth of the same month, the _Times_ correspondent reported that fever had broken out at Kezanlik; and that, within 600 yards of his tent, some hundreds of uninhumed dead could be seen, relics of the battle which took place some weeks previously. In order to lessen the danger, the couriers passing along the Yemi Saghra road had actually to ride with camphor in their mouths. This state of things is not only deplorable, but pre-eminently shameful. It is plain from the above that interment _en masse_, as it is practiced during war at the present time, is very unsatisfactory, and often leads to disastrous consequences. Unfortunately, burial in single graves is impossible, for several reasons. In the first place, it would take up too much time; secondly, too much room; and, thirdly, it would remove too many men from the ranks of the combatants. Nothing remains to us, therefore, but to look about us for some other mode of disposing of the dead. The list of methods from which we may select one is not very large. Various schemes have been proposed. One erratic genius actually proposed to blow up the victims of human strife with dynamite. Of all the ways of disposing of the slain, none is so good and advantageous as cremation. History records many instances in which cremation was made use of to destroy the dead after a battle.