Many well-to-do people in civilised countries provide in their wills for the prevention of premature interment, by leaving instructions for surgical operations after their decease, _post-mortems_, embalmment, or cremation. It may happen, however, that wills are mislaid, lost, or withheld by the testators, or are not opened and read until after the funeral, when the instructions in this regard, however strictly enjoined, are rendered abortive. Legacies should be given conditionally on the observance of certain duties, and only payable on proofs to the executors that they have been carried out. A large majority of people do not, however, leave testamentary instructions, for the simple reason that they have nothing to bequeath. And the majority have an equal claim with the minority to be safeguarded by the State against such terrible misfortunes. Syncope, sometimes mistaken for death, is a condition to which both men and women, who are compelled by their poverty in all large cities to endure exhausting labours in ill-ventilated work-rooms, and their often ill-nourished children in board schools in England and in the public schools in America, are peculiarly liable. CHAPTER XII. SUDDEN DEATH. THE idea commonly entertained is that with animal bodies there are only two possible conditions--either life or death; that the presence of one of these conditions implies the absence of the other; that when the body has assumed the appearance of death, as during the sudden suspension of all the functional activities, it must be dead. This last is far from being true; for all the appearances of death are fallacious, especially those that accompany so-called sudden death. All such cases should be challenged as of doubtful character, and held so till recovery or putrefaction of the tissues proves the presence of life or of death. This subject is too often treated by medical writers with indifference. Technically, it is regarded as a failure of the brain, or lungs, or heart, to perform their functions; popularly, we say that “the thread of life is snapped asunder;” or it is “the going out of life,” like the sudden extinguishing of a candle. The author’s experience, however, at the sick bedside, and in the death-chamber, has taught him that life leaves the body in a gradual manner, and that death approaches, and takes the place of life, in one part or organ after another, thus creeping through the tissues, and sometimes defying all tests to prove its presence, leaving putrefaction to be its only sign. There can be no such thing as veritable sudden death, unless the body is crushed into a shapeless mass, like an insect under foot.