“Sir,--Burial alive, though of exceedingly rare occurrence, sometimes does happen, and calls for increased attention to the means of detecting with certainty the presence of vitality, however feeble. The ordinary means of deciding the vital question are known to all persons. Auscultation may detect the enfeebled heart-beat, while the electric battery can elicit any existing muscular contractility. Conditions of trance are occasionally almost mystical in their profundity (Brahmin trance), and a simple and ready-to-hand test to decide whether death has occurred is of prime importance. We can ascertain whether or not life still lingers in uncertain cases by applying (say) to the back of the forearm a small stream of boiling water directly from the kettle. If life is present, the boiling water will soon and unfailingly raise a blister where applied, and the blister will contain fluid, the serum of the blood. The production of the serum blister being essentially a vital process, its production or non-production becomes an infallible test, and determines the question. This test, not generally known, should be widely proclaimed. “J. MILFORD BARNETT, M.D., Edin. “Belfast, January 11, 1896.” This test has frequently failed, and should not be relied upon. [AUSCULTATION.] AUSCULTATION. The stethoscope, which is regarded by many medical practitioners as an infallible means of preventing premature burial, has proved a broken reed in hundreds of cases, and can be of use only when applied with other tests. Dr. Roger S. Chew, of Calcutta, writes to me, February, 1896:-- “The _British Medical Journal_ (September 28, 1895) tells us that the careful use of the stethoscope will enable a medical man to distinguish a living from a dead body. Auscultation may give startling results, and the body yet be absolutely dead. I recollect an instance of death from cobra-bite, when, though decomposition had set in, the relatives refused to believe she was dead, because one of them declared that, though he did not see her chest rise and fall, he had distinctly heard her sigh. A medical man was called in, applied the stethoscope over her thorax, and declared he could hear sounds from her lungs, and a peculiar ‘_sough_,’ ‘_sough_’ towards the apex of the heart. So far he was right, but, as the girl had already been dead some fourteen hours, and the weather was warm, the sounds he heard were those of the escape of the putrefactive gases bubbling upward and unable to find exit, as her mouth was closed with a chin-bandage, and her nostrils plugged with mucus. To convince the parents that the girl was really dead, I offered to perform artificial respiration, to which end I untied the bandage, prized open her jaws, and pressed _heavily_ on her thorax, when some of the imprisoned gases escaped, emitting an abominable odour that brought conviction of the girl being beyond all hope.