Whether the risks of being buried alive are as great as those declared by some of the authorities quoted in this volume, must be left to the reader to determine for himself; but that they are considerable there appears little room for doubt by those who have taken the trouble to inquire into the facts. How often is the reader shocked by reading narratives in his daily or weekly newspaper of persons either buried alive, or of those in a state of suspended animation, but diagnosed and duly certificated by the attending doctor as dead, who have returned to consciousness during the funeral rites or at the grave itself. The _Lancet_ has borne frequent testimony to these disasters, some of which are quoted in this volume; and, just as we are writing the closing chapter, the leading medical journal, in its issue of September 12, 1896, p. 785, records the following from its Cork correspondent as having occurred at Little Island, Ireland, which, the writer says, is thoroughly vouched for:-- “A child of four years of age contracted (typhoid) fever, and to all ordinary appearances died. The time of the funeral was appointed, and friends were actually on their way to attend it. When the supposed corpse was about to be removed from the bed to the coffin, signs of animation were exhibited. The services of the medical man were again requisitioned, and the child, opportunely rescued from such a terrible death, is now progressing satisfactorily.” Amongst the headings of paragraphs taken from recent papers lying before me are the following:--“Buried Alive,” “A Gruesome Narrative,” “Restored to Life in a Mortuary,” “Premature Burial,” “The Dead Alive,” “Buried Alive,” “Sounds from Another Coffin,” “Mistaken for Dead,” “A Lady Nearly Buried Alive,” “Revivification After Burial,” “A Woman’s Awful Experience,” “Bolt Upright in His Coffin,” “Almost Buried while Alive,” “A Woman Buried Alive,” “The Corpse Sat Up,” “Alive in Her Coffin,” “Seemed to Rise from Death,” “Escaped Burial Alive,” “Revival at a Wake,” “Snatched from Death at the Graveside,” “Laid Out, but not Dead,” “Alive in His Grave,” “Interment before Death,” “Came to Life in the Coffin,” “Corpse Seems to Live,” “The Corpse Moved,” etc. According to the “London Manual and Municipal Year Book,” 1896-97, there are over four hundred public authorities at work in governing London, who spend over twelve million pounds a year, and from other sources it is said that seven millions a year are collected in the Metropolis for charitable purposes, and yet there are no officials, associations, or insurance companies to safeguard the people either in this wealthy Metropolis or in any part of the United Kingdom against one of the most terrible physical calamities that can overtake any member of the human family. [EXPECTATIONS OF LIFE.]