“SECTION 5.--No interment or disinterment of the dead body of any human being, or disposition thereof in any tomb, vault, or cemetery, shall be made within the city without a permit therefor, granted as aforesaid, nor otherwise than in accordance with such permit. “No undertaker, superintendent of cemetery, or other person shall assist in, assent to, or allow any such interment, or disinterment, to be made, until such permit has been given as aforesaid.... “Any person violating any of the provisions of this chapter shall be fined not less than ten nor more than twenty dollars.” Mr. A. Braxton Hicks, Barrister-at-Law, and Coroner for London and Surrey, states that-- “The giving of certificates of death, and the registration of deaths, is regulated by 37 and 38 Vict. c. 88, called the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, its object being to provide a proper and accurate registration of births and deaths, with the causes of the latter. “In case of the death of any person who has been attended during his last illness by a registered medical practitioner, that practitioner shall sign and give to some person, required by this Act to give information concerning the death, a certificate stating, to the best of his knowledge and belief, the cause of death. “No certificate given by an unregistered medical man can be registered, and any person who covers an unregistered medical man by giving a certificate, or lending his name to the giving of a certificate by an unregistered medical man, is guilty of _unprofessional conduct_, as defined by the Medical Council.”--_Hints to Medical Men concerning the granting of Certificates of Death._ A DOCTOR FOR THE DEAD. Dr. J. Brindley James, in a communication to the _Medical Times_, May 23, 1896, pp. 355-356, calls attention to the insufficient safeguards against premature burial under the present system of death-certification, and observes--“The dread possibility of premature interment ever hangs like a gloomy sword of Damocles over all our heads, and fearful indeed is the authentic record of persons buried alive, who have recovered consciousness; too late, alas! to be rescued from their frightful dungeon. How often does our overworked--we do not say careless--practitioner sign the death-certificate of a patient whose death-bed he did not attend--whose corpse he has not visited? And even assuming him to have done so, and conscientiously too, in how many of the fearful cases above alluded to have not these formalities proved insufficient, clearly suggesting the advisability of a specialist, experienced in _post-mortem_ inspection, solely sanctioning interment in all cases.” And Dr. Frederick Graves, writing in the same journal of July 18, 1896, says:--