Professor Alexander Wilder, M.D., in “Perils of Premature Burial,” p. 16, says:--“In this country (America), however, the peril of interment before death has actually taken place is very great. For years past it has been a very common occurrence for persons in supposed good health to fall down suddenly, with every appearance of having died. We do not regard sudden death with terror, as it is so often painless, and exempts the individual from the anxiety and other unpleasant experiences which so often accompany a lingering dissolution. But there is a terrible liability of being prostrated by catalepsy, the counterpart of death, under such circumstances that those who have the body in charge will not hesitate about a prompt interment.” [PREVENTIVE LEGISLATION.] “The difficulty of distinguishing a person apparently dead from one who is _really_ so has, in all countries where bodies are interred precipitately, rendered it necessary for the law to assist humanity. Of several regulations made on this subject, a few of the most recent may suffice--such as those of Arras in 1772; of Mantua in 1774; of the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1775; of the Senechaussée of Sivrai in Poitou in 1777; and of the Parliament of Metz in the same year.... These edicts forbid the precipitate interment of persons who die suddenly. Magistrates of health are to be informed, that physicians may examine the body; that they may use every endeavour to recall life, if possible, or to discover the cause of death.”--_Encyclopædia Britannica, quoted by John Snart in Apparent Death, 1824, pp. 81-82._ CHAPTER XIII. SIGNS OF DEATH. THE absence of respiration is the most ordinary sign of death, but at the same time perhaps the one most likely to deceive. To ascertain whether breathing be entirely suspended, it is a practice to hold a looking-glass to the face. “Lend me a looking-glass; If that her breath will mist or stain the stone, Why, then, she lives.”--_King Lear_, Act v., Sc. 3. The common belief is that, if the operations of the heart or lungs be arrested for ever so brief a period, they will never be resumed, and upon a hasty diagnosis and perhaps a trifling experiment the person is declared dead. It would appear presumptuous to attempt to doubt or deny a theory so widely accepted by both the lay and medical world, but numerous well-attested facts show that the action of the vital organs, with life itself, may occasionally be actually suspended, as proved by the most rigorous tests known to science, and that various forms of suspended animation taking on the appearance of actual death are of not unfrequent occurrence. Scepticism, prejudice, and apathy on this subject have led to thousands of persons being consigned to the grave to return to consciousness in that hopeless and dreadful prison. [VARIOUS TESTS CONSIDERED.]