According to the law of the Jews, who appear to have been in constant dread of pestilential disease, the inhumation of the dead were most hasty. Yet in this instance many Rabbi maintain that the Talmud has been erroneously interpreted, for although it decreed that a night should not be allowed to pass before inhumation, it clearly meant that actual death must have been ascertained. While such fears are entertained of suspended animation being taken for dissolution, it is strange that in some savage tribes the aged are allowed to perish without any care being taken to prolong their lives. Such is the custom of some of the Esquimaux, where old and decrepit creatures are abandoned in their huts and left to their fate. An ancient tradition stated that the inhabitants of the Isle of Syria never died of any distemper, but dropped into their graves at a certain old age. It would be desirable that in cases where interment is speedily resorted to, a physician should attend, in order to ascertain that death had actually taken place. This is seldom practised, from the common saying "that it is uncivil on the part of a doctor to visit a dead patient." Various means are employed to ascertain death: the looking-glass applied to the mouth of the corpse, to find out whether breath had departed; the coldness of the extremities, the falling of the lower jaw, the rigidity of the limbs, and various other appearances, are universally known; but in the villages of Italy and Portugal, pins and needles are frequently driven under the nails, in what is vulgarly called _the quick_, to excite an excruciating pain if life should not have fled. The most certain evidence, when bodies are long kept, is most decidedly the commencement of decomposition; but, in other cases, the action of the voltaic pile on a bared muscle is an infallible test.