2. That in each sanitary district a registered medical practitioner should be appointed as public medical certifier of the cause of death in cases in which a certificate from a medical practitioner in attendance was not forthcoming. 3. That a medical practitioner in attendance should be required, before giving a certificate of death, to personally inspect the body, but if, on the ground of distance, or for other sufficient reason, he is unable to make this inspection himself, he should obtain and attach to the certificate of the cause of death a certificate signed by two persons, neighbours, verifying the fact of death. 4. That medical practitioners be required to send certificates of death direct to the registrar instead of handing them to the relatives of the deceased. 5. That a form of certificate of death should be prescribed, and that medical practitioners should be required to use such form. From the _Times_, May 23, 1896:-- DEATH-CERTIFICATION. At the special meeting of the Metropolitan Counties Branch of the British Medical Association, held last night at the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street, the subject of an improvement in the present procedure in death-certification and registration came up for discussion. Sir W. Priestley, M.P., president, took the chair. Sir Henry Thompson moved the following resolution:--“Considering that a Select Committee of the House of Commons has in 1893 made an extended inquiry into the subject of death-certification and registration on the plan now followed in this country, and has reported that it manifestly fails to accomplish the purpose for which it was designed, this meeting is of opinion that Her Majesty’s Government should be respectfully memorialised to bring in a bill as soon as possible to give effect to an improved procedure in general accordance with the suggestions offered in the Committee’s report.” He said that, during the last twenty years or more, circumstances had not unfrequently occurred to attract public attention to the existence of grave defects in the system of death-certification adopted in this country, whether regarded as a safeguard against criminal attempts on life, or as a means of forming trustworthy records of disease for scientific purposes. From the Registrar-General’s report for England and Wales for the year 1892, it was shown that in fifteen thousand cases of death no inquiry had been made as to its cause, and that no certificate had been obtained from any source--a number amounting to nearly three per cent. on the total returned for the year. On the same authority it appeared that in twenty-five thousand more, or four and a half per cent., the cases “were so inadequately certified as not to be classifiable,” making together a class of seven and a half per cent. in which no evidence of any value as to the cause of death existed. After what had already been done in the matter, all that