The _British Medical Journal_, January 21, 1893, p. 145, reports, through its Paris correspondent, the first award. “The Académie des Sciences proposed as the subject for the Dusgate Prize for 1890, ‘The Signs of Death, and the Means of Preventing Premature Burial.’ The prize has been awarded to Dr. Maze, who considers that putrefaction is the only certain sign. He urges that the deaths should be certified by medical men on oath; also that in every cemetery there should be a mortuary where dead bodies can be deposited, and that burial should take place only when putrefactive changes set in. Cremation should be adopted.” CHAPTER XX. CREMATION AS A PREVENTIVE OF PREMATURE BURIAL. [SUGGESTIONS FOR PREVENTION.] [SIR HENRY THOMPSON’S OPINION.] AMONGST the numerous suggestions made by correspondents in the press with a view of preventing live sepulture, none has been more frequently put forward than that of cremation. Sir Henry Thompson, the president of the Cremation Society of England, in the second edition of his admirable volume, “Modern Cremation: Its History and Practice,” p. 41, observes:--“There is a source of very painful dread--as I have reason to know--little talked of, it is true, but keenly felt by many persons at some time or another, the horror of which to some is inexpressible. It is the dread of a premature burial--the fear lest some deep trance should be mistaken for death, and that the awakening should take place too late. Happily such occurrences must be exceedingly rare, especially in this country, where the interval between death and burial is considerable, and the fear is almost a groundless one. Still, the conviction that such a fate is possible--which cannot be altogether denied--will always be a source of severe trial to some. With cremation no such catastrophe could ever occur; and the completeness of a properly-conducted process would render death instantaneous and painless if by any unhappy chance an individual so circumstanced were submitted to it. But the guarantee against this danger would be doubled, since inspection of the entire body must of necessity immediately precede the act of cremation, no such inspection being possible under the present system.” While agreeing with this distinguished authority as to the advantages of cremation from the sanitary and æsthetic point of view, which he dwells upon in the treatise referred to, and admitting that a certain amount of protection against live burial is obtainable by means of the dual medical inspection, we cannot agree that this protection is absolute. Cases of trance are on record where some half a dozen doctors, after careful examinations, have pronounced a cataleptic patient to be dead, and the patient, in defiance of their united opinion, has recovered consciousness, and been restored to health. Dr. Franz Hartmann, in his “Premature Burial,” quotes the two following cases amongst many others:--