The late Dr. Farr, of the Registrar-General’s Department, London, says:--“No definition of the sense in which _sudden death_ is practically understood by coroners has been given.” Dr. Granville says: “The writers on medical jurisprudence do not state with any strictness what they mean by sudden death, whether it be death in ten minutes, ten hours, or ten days.”[9] And he asks in the same vein, “Does sudden death mean death in three minutes, three hours, or three days?”[10] Still further he remarks regarding the customary definitions, “They lead one to infer that a certain mysterious principle, called LIFE, has been instantaneously withdrawn from a healthy and well-constituted individual, who was at the very moment, as heretofore, exercising his proper animal functions with a regularity that promised to endure for a long continuance of years.... No such phenomena occur in Nature, unless through violence or from accident. Under Nature’s laws there is no such thing as sudden death.... In every case where death has abruptly cut short the thread of life, there has been a preparation, more or less antecedent to the occurrence, which must inevitably have led to it.... The victim may seem to have been struck down, as if by lightning. But in reality the event was only the natural termination of an inward state of things which insidiously and unexpectedly was preparing the blow.”[11] [DR. TIDY ON CAUSES OF DEATH.] Dr. Tidy, in “Legal Medicine,” p. 29, says:--“As a rule, the action required to bring about complete molecular death--_i.e._, the suspension of vital activity in every part--is progressive. In a given case, therefore, we are unable to state any definite time as the period of its occurrence. The popular idea of death is that the entire body dies at once. Somatic death is an impossibility.” Thus, it is clear that the process of death, or the departure of life, may require days or weeks for its completion; and it may even be delayed to a time when putrefaction has set in quite generally, as when the hair and nails grow after the body has been buried some weeks, as has been credibly reported. Writers upon so-called sudden death recite a number of diseases and conditions which quickly destroy the machinery that carries on the vital functions, thus rendering resuscitation quite impossible. Tidy[12] names some twelve of such causes: prominent among them are diseases of the heart, rupture of the heart, clots in the blood vessels, aneurisms, effusions of blood in the brain, bursting of visceral abscesses, ulcers of the stomach, extra-uterine pregnancy, rupture of the uterus or bladder, large draughts of cold water taken when the body is heated, cholera, alcoholic poisoning, mental emotions, etc. But he remarks upon these causes--“Because a person dies suddenly, there being no evidence of violence or poison, the action adopted by many coroners in not requiring a _post-mortem_ examination leaves