As will be seen below from a synopsis of the statutes relating to this matter, many of the States have enacted statutes defining and prescribing the duties of the coroner and other public officers in such cases. At an early period in England (see 2 and 3 Will. IV., chap. 75, sec. 7) it was enacted by the English Parliament that any executor or other person having lawful possession of the body of a deceased person, and not being an undertaker or other party entrusted with the body for the purpose only of interment, might lawfully permit the body of such deceased person to undergo an anatomical examination, unless to the knowledge of such executor or other party such person should have expressed his desire during his life in writing, or verbally in the presence of two or more witnesses during his illness whereof he died, that his body after death might not undergo such examination, or unless the surviving husband or wife or known relative of the deceased shall require the body to be interred without such examination. By another section of this statute (sec. 10), professors of anatomy and other persons duly licensed were declared not liable to punishment for having in their possession human bodies when having such possession according to the provisions of the act. Section 308 of the New York Penal Code, subdivision 3, as amended by chapter 500, Laws 1889, enacts that whenever and so far as the husband, wife, or next of kin of the deceased, being charged by law with the duty of burial, may authorize dissection for the purpose of ascertaining the cause of death and no further, the right exists to dissect the dead human body. The same statute also provides that whenever any district attorney of that State, in the discharge of his official duties, shall deem it necessary, he may exhume, take possession of, and remove the body of a deceased person, or any portion thereof, and submit the same to a proper physical or chemical examination or analysis, to ascertain the cause of death, which examination or analysis will be made on the order of a justice of the Supreme Court of the State, or the county judge of the county in which the dead bodies shall be, granted on the application of the district attorney, with or without notice to the relatives of the deceased person, or to any person or corporation having the legal charge of such body, as the court may direct. The district attorney shall also have power to direct the sheriff, constable, or other peace officer, and employ such person or persons as he may deem necessary to assist him, in exhuming, removing, obtaining possession of, and examining physically or chemically such dead body, or any portion thereof; the expense thereof to be a county charge paid by the county treasurer on the certificate of the district attorney.