In several States legal authority is given to the Board of Health to order an autopsy whenever the health interests of the people demand such an investigation. Autopsies performed under such orders against the desire of the relatives should always be carried out with extreme care and in the presence of proper witnesses. State and charitable hospitals cannot be made liable for autopsy performed by Coroner or Board of Health, when the consent of the relatives is withheld. It is high time that all charitable institutions in this country should require an autopsy from all patients dying within their walls. The cards of admission should contain a clause to this effect, and such cards should be counter-signed by the nearest relatives. Inasmuch as some life-insurance policies contain clauses requiring the presence of a representative of the company at the autopsy or a forfeiture of the claims, it is best to ascertain if such policies exist in any given case, and to notify the company. The Supreme Court of Missouri has decided that an autopsy made in ignorance of such an insurance clause is no bar to recovery if the company be notified in time for a re-examination of the body. Supreme Court decisions also hold that consent for an autopsy implies removal of organs and tissues for microscopic study, when such is necessary to fulfill the object of the autopsy. One of the great needs of this country is a uniform autopsy law and the establishment of a proper medicolegal autopsy code, as in Germany. As conditions exist at the present, crimes may be easily concealed, the safety of the community endangered by failures in diagnosis of communicable affections, and our morbidity and mortality statistics become a shame and reproach to the nation. The majority of our medicolegal autopsies are made by ignorant and imperfectly trained coroners and coroners’ physicians, mostly political appointees of inferior material. We need in our medical schools a greater amount of attention paid to the teaching of autopsy-technique and gross pathology. The community must also be educated to a realization of the value of autopsies. It is the duty of every physician and layman to work diligently for the improvement of existing conditions. Had the ideas of a former Governor of the State of Michigan been realized there would have been compulsory autopsies upon the bodies of every person dying within the State, and far-reaching results would have been attained. The economic importance of tuberculosis and the venereal diseases would have been made clear, the profession and laity alike educated, and the progress of preventive medicine tremendously aided.