Dr. Charles Cameron, M.P., in moving the introduction of the Disposal of the Dead (Regulation) Bill, in the House of Commons, on April 30, 1884, said:--“A very large number of our population die without any medical attendance at all, or at least without having ever received sufficient medical attention to enable a certificate of the cause of death to be given worth the paper on which it is written. In many of these cases some sort of worthless certificate is procured and presented to the registrar, but many thousands of persons are each year buried in the United Kingdom without even this formality.” The contrast between the laxity at home and the regulations laid down by authority in Würtemburg, Bavaria, and other Continental States, is remarkable, and should receive the attention of the Registrar-General without delay. From the _Lancet_, 1890, vol. i., p. 1440:-- “UNCERTIFIED CAUSES OF DEATH IN ENGLAND. “Considering the general progress that has been made in public health during the last twenty years, it is seriously to be regretted that this matter of unknown and uncertified causes of death has been practically left untouched, and its settlement is, therefore more urgently needed now than when so often pressed upon the public notice by the late Dr. William Farr during his connection with the Registrar-General’s department.” The Parliamentary Committee above referred to omitted an unexampled opportunity of inquiring into the facts of premature burial. They could have summoned pathologists, who had made trance and catalepsy a subject of close and searching investigation, as well as physicians, who, in their practice, have been called in to decide upon cases of apparent death, and of witnesses up and down the country who know of such cases, and others who have met with narrow escapes from these horrible mishaps. Instead of taking this reasonable course of procedure, the Committee contented themselves by examining two or three medical men, who had been summoned to give evidence upon the irregularities of death-certification only, and whose negative and apathetic replies showed either that the subject had never engaged their attention, or that they were unwilling to charge any member of the profession with a fault so ruinous to his professional reputation as to be unable to discriminate between the living and the dead. No questions were submitted to the witnesses as to the signs of death, the characteristics of catalepsy, trance, asphyxia, syncope, etc., or how to distinguish these from death, or as to the submission of tests in doubtful cases in order to ascertain the fact of death. Indeed, it may be observed that the investigation regarding a most vital point connected with death-certification appears to have entirely escaped the notice of this tribunal. As a specimen of the proceedings under this head are the following (“Report,” p. 116)--Mr. John Tatham, M.A., M.D., being under examination by the chairman, Si Walter Foster, M.D.