Omniana/Volume 1/Burial Grounds
163. Burial Grounds.
The town of Tarma in Peru, is said to have been subject to a pestilential fever which returned annually, and frequently left a pain in the side behind it, and proved eventually fatal. De Juan Maria de Galvez, the Governor of that town, and its district, conjectured that it proceeded from the vile custom of burying the dead in the church. He therefore, not without great opposition, succeeded in abolishing this practice, and set apart a large burying ground, or Campo Santo, as it is called, about three musket shots from the town. From that time the fever has ceased to appear... Tarma stands in a spot which is so surrounded with mountains as to be absolutely unventilated;.. its unhealthiness had always been imputed to its situation, and it had obtained the name of el pais de las tercianas,.. the country of tertians.
Mercurio Peruana, Enero 27,
1791, T. 1, f.57.
I do marvail, says good old Bishop Latimer, that London, being so rich a city, hath no burying place without, for no doubt it is an unwholsome thing to bury within the city, specially at such a time when there be great sicknesses, and many die together. I think verily that many a man taketh his death in Paul's Church-yard; and this I speak of experience; for I myself when I have been there in some mornings to hear the sermons, have felt such an ill-favoured unwholesome savour, that I was the worse for it a great while after. And I think no less but it is the occasion of much sickness and diseases.