“A case has come lately under my observation in which the value of the diaphanous test of death has been illustrated at its just worth, and, as the matter is one of supreme practical moment, I think it may be considered deserving a brief notice in the pages of the _Lancet_. Readers of the _Lancet_ need scarcely be informed that the diaphanous test consists in taking a hand of a supposed dead person, placing it before a strong artificial light, with the fingers extended and just touching each other, and then looking through the narrow spaces between the fingers to see if there be there a scarlet line of light. The theory is that if there be such a line of scarlet colour there is some circulation still in progress, and therefore evidence of vital action, whilst if there be no illumination, then the circulation has ceased and death has occurred. The French Academy of Medicine was so impressed with the value of this test that it awarded, I believe, to the discoverer of it a considerable prize. The illustration I am about to give indicates, however, that this test must be received with the utmost caution. The facts run as follows:--I was called in January last to visit a lady seventy-three years of age, suffering from chronic bronchitis. She had often suffered at intervals from similar attacks during a period of twenty-five years. The present attack was very severe, and as she was obviously in a state of senile decrepitude her symptoms naturally gave rise to considerable anxiety. Nevertheless, she rallied and improved so much that after a few days my attendance was no longer required. I heard nothing more of this lady until February 6--a period of three weeks--when I was summoned early in the morning to see her immediately. The messenger told me that she had retired to bed in the usual way, and had apparently died in the night, but that she looked so life-like there was great doubt whether death had actually taken place. Within half an hour I was by her bedside; there was no sign of breathing, of pulse, or of heart-beat, and the hands, slightly flexed, were rather rigid, but the countenance looked like that of a living person, the eyes being open and life-like. I believed her to be dead, and that the rigidity of the upper limbs indicated commencing _rigor mortis_; but this curious fact was related to me by a near relative, that once before she had passed into a death-like state, with similar symptoms, even to the rigidity of the arms and hands, from which state she had recovered, and after which she had always experienced the direst apprehension of being buried alive. Her anxiety, it will be easily conceived, was readily communicated to her relatives, who urged me to leave nothing undone for determining whether life was or was not extinct. Under the circumstances I suggested that Dr. (now Sir) Benjamin Ward Richardson, who has made the proofs of death a special study, should be summoned. He soon arrived, and