“The question whether premature burial occurs, and how to prevent it, is, notwithstanding the all-absorbing interest of the Panama question, attracting some attention here. The ‘Union Medicale’ devotes one of its feuilletons to it, in which two or three _nouvelles à sensation_ are reproduced, and easily proved to be untrue. Premature burial cannot occur, the writer says, when a death is duly verified. The 77th Article of the Code obliges the _officier de l’état civil_ to visit the death-bed and verify every death; but this Article is a dead letter. The officer in question has neither time nor knowledge sufficient to put it in practice. In small country places, rarely any precautions are taken to prevent premature burials. In more important villages and towns, the mayors delegate the doctors of the locality to verify deaths before burial. Throughout the whole of France, it appears that there are not fifty towns where the death-verifying service is well organised; and, on an average, there are from twenty thousand to thirty thousand burials without previous verification of death. The declaration of two witnesses is sufficient, who obtain their information from those around the deceased. In Paris, the two mortuaries already in existence--one at the Montmartre Cemetery, the other at Père La Chaise--are rarely used. The bodies of those who die in the streets, from accident or sudden death, are taken there when there is no domicile; also, those of foreigners who die in lodging-houses. In the course of eighteen months the mortuary of Montmartre received five dead bodies, and Père La Chaise one. In Germany the mortuaries are much used, and every arrangement made is in order that any who come back to life may be able to easily summon help. At Munich, a ring in connection with a bell-cord is put on one of the fingers of the hands of the dead. At Frankfort, similar precautions are taken.” [CONTINENTAL REGULATIONS.] Extracts from “Regulations for the Domiciliary Examination of the Dead in the City of Brussels Civil Government (Medical Service).” “ARTICLE 1.--The Medical Service of the Civil Government is distributed among the medical heads of divisions, the deputies and chiefs of the Department of Hygiene.” “ARTICLE 5.--No interment can take place except after the decease has been verified by the doctors of the Civil Government by means of a careful and complete examination of the corpse.” This verification, as well as the identity of the person deceased, shall be certified by a _procès-verbal_ [statement, or description, for which a blank is furnished “A”], which they shall leave at the house of the deceased. “ARTICLE 8.--They shall notify the officers of the Civil Government, and their superintendents of police, of any infractions of the regulation provisions which forbid proceeding with autopsy, moulding [making a cast?], embalmment, or putting in a coffin the corpse, before the death has been duly ascertained.”