Old Age and Seminal Retention

I read with interest the following item from the BBC News of 15th March (2007):


"A man thought to be the oldest living person in the world is celebrating his 116th birthday. Hryhoriy Nestor was born in what is now Ukraine....It was only at the age of 100 that he retired from working as a farm labourer. He is now looked after by a relative. Hryhoriy, who still has a full head of hair, says that being single has kept him feeling young. He recommends a diet of milk, cheese and potatoes as well as the occasional shot of vodka."

I don't wish to detract from Mr Nestor's incredible feat of longevity but, incredible as it might sound, if Hindu sources are correct he is but a mere infant compared to the likes of the Devraha Baba.

The Devraha Baba shortly before his 1989 demise at the age of 250.

Nobody knew the Devraha Baba's exact age - there was no birth certificate. However, his devotees claim that he died in 1989 at the grand old age of 250 (although it was rumoured that the Baba claimed to be over 700 years old!). The first president of India Dr.Rajendra Prashad explained at the age of 73 how as a child his father had taken him to see Baba, known as the "Ageless Yogi" who was already a very old man and that his father had known baba for many years before that. Thus the former president, a reliable witness I think, claims that from his own experience he can attest to the fact that Devraha Baba was more than 150 years of age. So I wonder what can account for the Devraha Baba's amazing longevity? Mr Nestor, of course, mentions among other things that lifelong bachelorhood is an important factor. As a Hindu ascetic, the Devraha Baba had also lived a life of sexual abstinence. This line of though brought to mind another case I came across a month ago, this time from China:

25th February 2007 - "HONG KONG (Reuters) - A 107-year-old Hong Kong villager, who still enjoys an occasional smoke, has attributed his longevity in part to decades of sexual abstinence, a newspaper said on Sunday. "I don't know why I have lived this long," Chan Chi -- one of Hong Kong's oldest people -- was quoted as saying in the South China Morning Post during an annual feast for the city's elders.
"Maybe it has to do with the fact that I have lived a sex-less life for many years -- since I was 30," said Chan, a widower whose youthful bride perished during the Japanese invasion in World War Two."

There does seem to be a link then, at least anecdotally, between longevity and celibacy or, put another way, between sex and death. This could mean that an existence free of the stresses and strains of family life contributes to ripe old age. Or perhaps, as the Tantric traditions in Hinduism teach, longevity has something to do with the physiology of celibacy itself. In this system the seed is viewed as somehow embodying the 'ojas' or life energy and so the retention of this vital fluid is said to be the key to a long and healthy life, whereas its loss would seem to entail the opposite. Food for thought.

Bone Idle

The Cremation of Baron De Palm

The first legal 'modern' cremation in the United States of America, occuring on 6th December 1876, was that of a rather colourful character called Baron de Palm. He had originally emigrated from Bavaria and, from what I can gather, was an enthusiastic member of the Theosophical Society. This movement espoused a number of 'exotic' ideas and practices, especially those which found their provenance in eastern religions, including cremation. At the time of the Baron's death the cremation movement was burgeoning in the USA, just as it was here in Britain. In "Purified By Fire: A History of Cremation in America" 2001, Stephen Prothero gives a detailed analysis of the many social, scientific and religious arguments which were put forward concerning the disposal of the dead. It seems that the cremation debate was high on the agenda for many Americans of the "gilded age" and that the cremationists sought a practical demonstration of cremation, in order for there to be an informed judgement concerning its merits. This was to arrive in the form of the dessicated corpse of Baron De Palm. Believing in the value of cremation in improving public health and hygiene, a certain philanthropist named Dr Francis Julius Lemoyne designed and built a crematorium on his own land in Washington Pennsylvania and had been looking for a suitable opportunity to test it. Baron De Palm's body had been mummified over a year before and it was agreed by the custodians of his corpse in the Theosophical Society that it should undergo a modern cremation in America at some future point. Prothero describes the eventual scene of its incineration, which he has reconstructed from historical records. It was, by all accounts, a major news event, covered in all the major American newspapers. Crowds of reporters and curious onlookers, vying to observe the macabre spectacle which was unfolding before them, created what can only be described as a carnival atmosphere on that bleak winter's morning.

Dr Lemoyne and his retort

Prothero vividly describes the ensuing scene in "Purified By Fire" ps33-34:

"After Mr. Wolfe, the fireman who had started feeding the furnace with coke at two o'clock in the morning, declared the machinery ready, the guests took one last look at the body. Someone pulled the sheet down a bit, exposing a face with a horribly pained countenance. After this final, grotesque viewing, Olcott, LeMoyne, and two other men appointed to usher the body into the furnace took off their hats, as if to signal that whatever reverence might be mustered should be expended forthwith. Members of the impromptu congregation dutifully removed their bowlers. Then the body was lifted and "solemnly borne" across the threshold of the two-room crematory into the furnace room, and cremation's rite of passage to America was underway. Olcott, in his capacity as high priest, soaked the white sheet covering the corpse with water saturated in alum in an effort to prevent both the body's immediate blazing and any further public display of the baron's nakedness. In a nod to the Asian origins of cremation and the Theosophist's love of Mother India, someone placed a simple clay urn--"the present of a friend in the East"--atop the furnace. Olcott then sprinkled the body with spices, including cassia, cinnamon, cloves, frankincense, and myrrh. According to one confused reporter, the Theosophist was "following the Egyptian ceremonials, with a touch of the Indian, Greek and Roman customs." But he was also bequeathing to the occasion a vaguely Christian air--playing the Wise Man bringing spices from the East. Finally, Olcott placed on the corpse a collection of roses, smilax, primroses, and palms, as well as evergreens as a symbol, he announced, of the immortality of the soul. Recalling perhaps the Christian tradition of burying lay people with their heads to the west so they could look to the east for the Second Coming, Olcott and LeMoyne debated whether it was more auspicious to place the body into the furnace head-first or feet-first. The fireman and the crematory's builder then joined the procession, forming a coterie of six pallbearers, as in a traditional burial. At approximately 8:30 A.M. they slid the baron's body into the retort head-first.
There was a momentary sizzle and a bit of smoke. But soon the door was cemented shut and the furnace made airtight. The evergreens and the hair around the head caught on fire, and "the flames formed," according to the Times reporter, "a crown of glory for the dead man." At first witnesses were repelled by the smell of burning flesh, but soon the sweeter aromas of flowers and spices banished foul odors from the room. Witnesses who peered through a peephole in the side of the furnace noted that the flowers were almost miraculously reduced to ash without losing their "individual forms." About an hour into the proceedings a rose-colored mist enveloped the body. Later the mist turned to gold. Meanwhile, the corpse became red-hot and then transparent and luminous. All these effects lent to the retort "the appearance of a radient [sic] solar disk of a very warm. . . color." After some time yet another intimation of immortality pressed itself on the witnesses: "the palm boughs. . . stood up as naturally as though they were living portions of a tree." Then the left hand of the baron rose up and three of his fingers pointed skyward. The scientists present later attributed this incident to involuntary muscular contractions, but others saw in it something of a spiritual phenomenon. The main event concluded officially at 11:12 A.M., when Dr. Folsom, secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Health, formally pronounced the incineration complete. All that remained of the body had fallen lifelessly to the bottom of the retort, but the ashes of a few sprigs of evergreen remained, seemingly suspended in air above the iron cradle. Cremationists interpreted this too as a propitious sign."

Now that is what I call a story. I did say in a recent posting that I'd try to steer away from thanatological matters but then Prothero's book is an excellent one and this is a tale which, in my view, is of some historical significance and interest.

Bone Idle

Meat-Loving Calf Eats Chickens

A curious little story - I particularly like the reincarnated tiger theory for the calf's misdeeds!

When dozens of chickens went missing from a remote West Bengal village, everyone blamed the neighbourhood dogs.

But Ajit Ghosh, the owner of the missing chickens, eventually solved the problem when he found his cow – a sacred animal for the Hindu family – gobbling up several of them at night.

“We were shocked to see our calf eating chickens alive,” Ghosh told Reuters by phone from Chandpur village.

The family decided to stand guard at night on Monday at the cow shed which also served as a hen coop, after 48 chickens went missing in a month.

“instead of the dogs, we watched in horror as the calf, whom we had fondly named Lal, sneak up to the coop and grab the little ones with the precision of a jungle cat.” Gour Ghosh, his brother, said.

Local television pictures showed the cow grabbing and eating a chicken in seconds and a vet confirmed the case.

“We think lack of vital minerals in the body is causing this behaviour. We have taken a look and have asked doctors to look into the case immediately,” Mihir Satpathy, a district veterinary officer, said by phone.

“This strange behaviour is possible in some exceptional cases.” Satpathy said.

Hundreds of villagers flocked to Chandpur on Wednesday to catch a glimpse of Lal, enjoying his bundle of green grass for a change.

“The local vets said Lal was probably suffering from a disease but others said Lal was probably a tiger in his previous birth.” Ajit added.

(Reuters - Kolkata, India 7th March)

Bone Idle

The True Cost Of Traditional Burial

There has been something of a hiatus of late as far as my posting on The Bone Idol is concerned. Time has certainly been a limiting factor recently. However, there has been no shortage of ideas and there are plenty of topics which warrant some expatiation. It is a cliche I know, nevertheless the spirit is willing but the flesh is week. I am also conscious that, to a casual observer, The Bone Idol might appear a little preoccupied with sepulchral matters. This was not necessarily how I saw it developing when I started out and I would like to try to steer it away from them somewhat, but I’ll make no promises. Indeed, since I was thinking about the environmental impact of the funeral industry a week or so ago and was considering greener alternatives to traditional burials and cremations, I came across the following statistics which were compiled by a certain Mary Woodsen who is, apparently, the vice president of the Pre-Posthumous Society of Ithaca, New York and a science writer at Cornell University.

According to Woodsen, every year American corpses are prepared for the grave using 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid, which includes formaldehyde. This is enough to fill nearly four Olympic-sized swimming pools! Some 180,544,000 pounds of steel and 5,400,000 pounds of cooper and bronze are incorporated in their coffins. As far as the wood is concerned, 30 million board feet of hardwoods, including tropical woods are either buried or cremated and a staggering 3,272,000,000 pounds of reinforced concrete and 28,000,000 pounds of steel go into their vaults.

These statistics are mind-boggling in their enormity – they refer to materials which are used by the funeral industry during just one year and in the USA alone! I cannot imagine what these statistics would be if they were for the whole world.

Bone Idle

Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

There is a Sufi tale concerning the Prophet Isa (Jesus) which I rather like. It runs something like this:

Jesus and his disciples were travelling through a town in Palestine when they came upon a dead and decaying dog lying by the roadside. The disciples all began to exclaim, `What an ugly site! What a stench!' and so on. But all Jesus said was, `Ah but pearls cannot equal the whiteness of its teeth.'

Bone Idle

Sky Burial - The Greenest Solution

After I had written yesterday's post, it occured to me that even promession must entail some environmental damage. The processes involved in achieving those incredibly low temperatures must generate a certain amount of carbon. So I started to cogitate - what would be the ideal method for us to adopt, from a green point of view? Then it occured to me - Sky Burials! Just like the ancient Zoroastrians of Persia and of course, the Tibetans.

A Sky Burial site in Tibet - note the hammer for pulverising the bones.

In the highlands of Tibet wood is a precious commodity, so much so that it could not be wasted on fuelling pyres. For much of the year the ground is frozen solid making gravedigging practically impossible, so the Tibetan solution is to take the corpse to a high and desolate place, eviscerate it, pulverise the bones and then wait for an hour or two until the vultures have completely devoured everything. This might sound a little gruesome but it has the advantage of being entirely carbon-neutral and, in line with Tibetan Buddhist principles of generosity and compassion, it provides sustenance to the birds. The question is whether it would work here or not. True, we don't have a native population of vultures here but there might well be other species who could do the needful almost as effectively. And as for the siting of these sky cemeteries, as long as they are sufficiently far from centres of population they should not cause too much offence. Well anyway, food for thought I suppose (if not for the pigeons).

Bone Idle

The Green Funeral

A few days ago I visited an area of a local cemetery which has been developed for `woodland' burials. Having read about these I wanted to see this facility for myself. The advantage of woodland burial is that, unlike the majority of traditional inhumations, no embalming fluids which can leech into the soil are used, the coffin is made of bio-degradable materials and so everything decomposes much more rapidly and cleanly. I must confess though that I was rather disappointed with what I saw. I was expecting a quiet corner of a wood, replete with wild flowers, sweet birdsong and so forth. In reality I found an exposed and rather muddy field with a handful of newly planted trees, adjacent to the main cemetery, with very little to distinguish it other than the floral tributes which had been scattered here and there by the wind. Woodland burials are a step in the right direction, I'll grant you that, but I can't really see them catching on and making that much of a difference to the ecological problems we all face. Burial has probably had its day, at least in the modern west, anyway. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the pioneering cremationists saw cremation as a much more sanitary and ecologically viable alternative to earth burial and they were right to do so. Nevertheless, the process of cremation itself involves the emission of a multitude of noxious substances into our environment. It is a little known fact, for example, that 10% of the mercury in the atmosphere can be traced to the combustion of dental fillings during the process of cremation. Since environmental concerns should be high on everyone's agenda, I think it is time to reevaluate how we dispose of the dead, just as the cremationists did over a hundred years ago. We could start by reflecting on the sentiments expressed in the Cremation Society of England's founding declaration (1874). This acknowledges that cremation was the best available solution at the time but could certainly be improved upon in the future:

"We disapprove of the present custom of burying the dead, and desire to substitute some mode which shall rapidly resolve the body into its component elements by a process which cannot offend the living, and shall render the remains absolutely innocuous. Until some better method is devised, we desire to adopt that usually known as cremation."

So, has some better method been devised? Is it now time for a widescale reassessment of how we dispose of our dead? I believe that the answer to both of these questions is a definite yes. The Swedes have developed a method which is termed `Promession' and it seems to me to offer a brilliant solution to the environmental damage inherent in present methods of disposal. Basically promession involves freezing the corpse to -18 degrees celsius and then dipping it in a tank of liquid nitrogen at -196 degrees celsius.

The corpse then becomes very brittle, so much so that that if it is vibrated it collapses into a powder. At this point, mercury and other metals are separated using an induced magnetic field and what remains is approximately 27 kilograms of powder which can be buried and will become thoroughly composted, adding nutriments to the soil, in about six months time. This is clean, eco-friendly technology which, it seems to me, we really ought to adopt and the sooner we do so the better. It would certainly be of great benefit to the environment if the funeral industry put some energy into developing this method of disposal, advocating it and making it widely available. It is my hope that the prometorium will be to the twenty first century what the crematorium was to the twentieth.

Bone Idle