“These inspectors are highly qualified, State-appointed physicians, but, as if to show the uncertainty of all this care and experience, as we see by the researches of Dormodoff, Hufeland, Hartmann, and others, as well as by the reports of startling cases in the press, those medically and officially declared to be dead do occasionally come to life before burial. This is a state of things unworthy of the civilisation and humanity of which we are proud. “Medical examination, not being infallible when carried out at its best, must be very unreliable when performed in a careless manner. “A safer plan would be to send every supposed corpse to a mortuary, there to remain until decomposition manifests itself. As a German I should be afraid to die in England (excuse the paradox) for fear of being buried alive. “P. P. “Forest Hill, September 17.” CHAPTER XIX. SUGGESTIONS FOR PREVENTION. THE learned Dr. Vigné, of Rouen, who won the respect of his fellow-citizens during a long and honourable career, was for many years engaged in the study of this question, and published the result of his researches shortly before his death. Convinced that the resources of science were insufficient to distinguish real from apparent death, he left testamentary instructions to provide against his own premature burial. (“Des Inhumations Précipitées, p. 83,” by Lénormand.) Dr. Winslow, a French physician, who had on two different occasions very nearly fallen a victim to premature burial, having been laid out for dead, chose for the subject of his thesis before the Paris Faculty of Medicine, “Les moyens les plus propres à reconnaître la réalité de la mort.” Dr. Winslow may be said to have been the pioneer of a movement in France for exposing the danger of, and educating the public into the necessity of reforms in, the mode of treating the apparent dead; and, although his efforts and warnings were as of one crying in the wilderness or amongst an apathetic people, with a legislature apparently uninfluenced either by facts or by reason, they were never relaxed. Numerous writers have since confirmed the truth of Dr. Winslow’s contention by facts within their own experience, and it is believed that legislation in France cannot be much longer delayed.