I am, seemingly, as well as ever I was; but I must not risk myself in town before the end of March, except for two nights on the meeting of parliament, in order to take my seat and enable me to leave a proxy. I have the honour to be, with very sincere regard, my dear Lord, most truly your Lordship's faithful servant, "SHEFFIELD." PARISH REGISTERS (1818). =Source.=--_The London Medical Repository_, Vol. X. p. 267. _George Man Burrows on Parish Registers._ But I must reiterate, that it will be a work of supererogation to offer either remarks or proposals for establishing improved registers of marriages, births, baptisms, burials, diseases, &c. or for attaining any of the other objects upon which I have dilated, unless all denominations of religion in the whole of the united kingdom be included. On recapitulation, it appears that the principal defects in the present system are: 1. Registers of marriages, births, baptisms, and burials, or bills of mortality are not kept in every place of religious worship; nor in hospitals and infirmaries having private burying-grounds. 2. Children who die unbaptized are not entered in any register or bill of mortality. 3. Registers of baptism do not set forth the place and date of birth. 4. Registers of burial do not specify where a person died, as well as where he lived, nor his condition, whether single, married, or widowed. 5. There is no certificate provided, showing in what parish a person died, with other necessary particulars, as to age, the disease, &c. 6. A corpse may be removed from a parish within the bills of mortality of London to one without, and the burial be omitted in the returns. 7. There is no medical authority for ascertaining and certifying the nature of the disease of which a person died, &c. 8. The names of diseases in the bills of mortality are either unintelligible, or so arranged as to confound diseases very distinct in their characters. 9. In respect to ages, the periods are injudiciously divided; so that many of the purposes to which the bills are applicable in medical and political science are defeated. 10. The law enforcing the keeping of Registers is defective; and does not adequately regard political, civil, or medical information. 11. All parishes and places of worship within that circle denominated the bills of mortality of London, are not included in the weekly or general annual returns; nor is there any existing authority to enforce their being made, and regularly entered. * * * * * Among some of the advantages in medical, political, and moral science, which would result, were proper parochial registers and bills of mortality established and kept throughout the united kingdom, the following present: I. MEDICALLY.--They point out: 1. The causes of many diseases, and their affinity to one another. 2. The rise, situation, increase, decrease, and cessation of epidemic and contagious diseases.