flames. Of this custom, Tertullian says: “I on my side must deride the crowd, especially when it burns up its dead with harshest inhumanity only to pamper them immediately afterwards with gluttonous satiety.”5 Cremation, the act of quickly reducing the body to ashes, traditionally was done by burning on a funeral pyre; today it is done in special furnaces using extremely high heat. In our country cremation is increasingly being practiced. This increase is due in part