“The building should be large enough to provide means for resuscitation, and have room enough for the deposition of bodies when epidemics are prevalent. There should be hot baths, for these often are alone enough to recall the vital spark; and a kitchen to prepare nourishment for those who are recovered, and for the porter and other officers who would live on the building. The room for the deposit of the bodies should communicate with the porter’s room by means of a glass door, and every body should have a wire fixed to the feet and hands, in communication with a bell, which bell must ring in the porter’s room, in order to warn him should there be any motion in those thought to be dead. There should be men and women on the premises to use friction, a galvanic machine, and the implements necessary for transfusion and artificial respiration. As the usual and accepted signs of death are not signs to be relied on, so is decomposition a true sign, and none should be buried until this be present; but as the presence of decomposed animal matter would be injurious, not only to the inmates of houses, but to the surrounding inhabitants, and as it is inconvenient to the poor man who has but one room to keep a body in that room, where he and his family eat, drink, and sleep, asylums for the reception of those thought to be dead should be constructed, and are absolutely necessary. Nor is it enough to wait for decomposition, but we should endeavour to prevent this by endeavouring to restore vitality by means of hot baths, external heat, artificial respiration, galvanism, or transfusion; the first of these is oftentimes enough. Now, I think it probable that many persons would be recovered, thought to be dead, for, out of a number of those reputed dead, a certain number have recovered--some by the sticking of the pins into them which fixed the shrouds, some under the surgeon’s knife, some from delays in the burial, and others from the accidental overturning of the coffins, as we learn from a paper published on premature burials. Some time since a woman was kept above ground for a considerable time, as medical men could not decide if she were dead or no. And at Constantinople a sailor the other day was attacked with apoplexy, and a vein was opened in his arm; no blood came, and the man was thought to be dead, but on the road to the grave blood began to flow, and the supposed dead man recovered. There is now living in Brussels a man who escaped from the grave; and another built a house at Cologne to commemorate his escape. These cases will be enough to show that we have no certain sign of death but decomposition; and, if this be true, we must have asylums for the reception of bodies previous to decomposition, and for the application of means which can do no harm, and may do much good, such as those before indicated. Medical men think that the absence of respiration and want of heart’s