_Coroner may Employ Professional Skill._—A thorough examination aided by professional skill is in general absolutely necessary to the proper administration of justice. It would no doubt be strange if a coroner had no authority to pledge the responsibility of the county for the compensation of all auxiliary services which are necessary to the proper execution of his office, and which he can by no other means command; for instance, when his duty requires him to disinter a body, he cannot be expected to do it with his own hands, or by hands paid for with his means. Indeed it has been said that, in this enlightened age, a coroner who would consign to the grave the body over which he had held an inquest, without availing himself of the lights which the medical science has placed within his reach, would in most cases fall short of what his official duty requires.[525] It is the generally accepted view of the law now that it is the duty of a coroner holding an inquest _super visum corporis_ to avail himself of professional skill and aid, and his contract will bind the county to the payment of a reasonable compensation for making a post-mortem examination.[526] POST-MORTEM EXAMINATION. Whether such examination should take place before the coroner has empanelled a jury seems to be an open question. We would venture the opinion that it should not, inasmuch as the jury ought to see and view the body in the same condition, as near as may be, as it was when found, and not after it has been mutilated, as it must need be by a post-mortem examination. It is, however, settled that the post mortem should not be in the presence of the jury, and that they are to be instructed by the testimony of the physicians who are designated by the coroner to make the examination.[527] The coroner’s right to dissect the dead body of a human being does not extend to all cases. Such a power could be wielded with the most injurious effects upon a community. His power to dissect is confined to those cases where he is authorized by law to hold an inquest upon the body. But a post-mortem examination, conducted by surgeons employed by a coroner holding an inquest, is not a part of the inquest in such a sense as that every citizen has a right freely to attend it. At common law it was essential to the validity of a coroner’s inquisition that the jury should view the body. And so is our law. But it was never required that the body should be dissected in any case. It is discretionary with the coroner to cause a dissection to be made, and to select the surgeons. He has also a discretion to determine whether any person, and what persons, may be present besides the surgeons. Not even the jurors have a right to witness the examination. They are to be informed of what it discloses by the testimony of the surgeons. Indeed, no person has a right to be present at the post-mortem examination upon the ground that he is suspected of having caused the death. He loses no legal right by