§ 211. On the advantages which inquiries for the registration of death would give, the concurrent opinions of several eminent medical men may be expressed in the terms used by Dr. Calvert Holland, of Sheffield, who observes that, “From an inquiry on the spot concerning the train of symptoms preceding death, the general examination of the body, or from conversation with the medical attendant, the cause of death, with few exceptions, would probably be assigned with as much accuracy as by any plan that can possibly be devised. We should hail such an appointment as one of great value. Even in those instances in which it is difficult, from the obscurity or undefined character of the symptoms, to say precisely what is the cause of death, the inquiry would tend to dissipate the doubts or obscurity in which it might be involved. The duties of the officer, if he possessed first-rate professional abilities, would give to him a power of analyzing symptoms, of tracing cause and effect, which few practitioners possess or can acquire in a long life of professional exertions. Were the causes of death analyzed and recorded by one having no other duties, and fitted by his accomplishments to undertake the task, the medical and statistical inquirer would possess a body of information on the influence of general local circumstances as well as on particular agents in connexion with manufactures, the just value of which it is not possible to appreciate.” § 212. For the promotion of the new science of prevention, and the knowledge of causes necessary to it, a primary requisite is to bring large classes of cases as may be duly observed, under the eye of one observer. It would be a practicable arrangement, on the receipt of the notices of deaths, to direct the visits of one officer chiefly to cases of the same class, for the purpose of collecting information as to the common causes or antecedents. The amount of remuneration included in the estimate hereafter given might be made the means of obtaining additional time and services for carrying the inspections of the officers of health still further into the circumstances of the living; as in cases of consumption or fever, where numbers came from the same place of work or occupation, to visit and ascertain whether there was any overcrowding or any latent cause of disease.