Feux croisés

Abstract

Doctors from several countries promoted funeral cremation at the end of the 19th century in the name of public health. In Quebec, a number of hygienist doctors persuaded themselves of the benefits of cremation for public health. However, they did not take any means to help make cremation a funeral option accessible to all. The importance of the Catholic Clergy in Quebec society at the time may explain why these doctors only supported cremation in the case of certain deaths from contagious diseases, or for the disposal of urban waste. Publicly manifesting their support of cremation as a general mode of body disposal would have implied that these doctors challenge the Catholic clergy, which strongly opposed the cremation of the dead and owned most of the burial places in the territory. The reconstitution of these controversies over funeral cremation thus allows us to expose the conflicts that this practice has caused between hygienist medicine and Catholicism in 19th-century Quebec.

Keywords

• modern cremation
• quarantine
• public health
• sanitary policies
• funeral reforms