In Jewish circles in Germany towards the end of last century there was much controversy as to the inexpediency of the practice of early burial. In the “Berlinische Monatschrift” for April, 1787, p. 329, (cited by Marcus Herz, “Ueber die frühe Beerdigung der Juden,” Berlin, 1788, p. 6,) there is printed a letter from Moses Mendelssohn to the Jews of Mecklenburg, in which he advises them to keep their dead unburied for three days. “I know well,” he adds, “that you will not follow my advice; for the might of custom is great. Nay, I shall perhaps appear to you as a heretic on account of my counsel. All the same, I have freed my conscience from guilt.” The above-cited essay by Dr. Marcus Herz, of Berlin, arguing against the Jewish practice, called forth a reply by Dr. Marx, of Hanover, who was of opinion that the burial might safely proceed after the body had been left on the bed for three hours, and had then been pronounced lifeless by the medical attendant, according to the practice in that part of the country. To that Dr. Herz rejoined, in a second edition, that the medical attendant was no better judge than an ordinary man, inasmuch as all experimental tests were fallacious, and decomposition the only sure sign. He cites the following statement by an experienced Jewish physician, Dr. Hirschberg, of Königsberg (from the Jewish periodical, “Sammler,” vol. ii., p. 153):--“I have practised medicine for forty years, and have always grieved over the practice amongst us of too hasty burial of the dead--on the day of decease. It happened once in my practice that a woman lay for dead three days and then awoke and revived. At first I would not allow the body to be moved from the bed, but the undertaker’s men violently resisted me, taking up the body and laying it on the ground. According to their custom, they would have buried it the same day, had I not earnestly called out to them: ‘Beware lest you do lay her in the ground this day! She is still alive, and the blame will be on you.’ I had her covered with warm, woollen clothes; on the following morning some signs of life were manifest; she lay still, and gradually awoke out of her death-slumber.” Herz declared, as Wunderbar did subsequently, that the passages in the Talmud on which the Jewish custom was based had been misinterpreted; and he specially accused the rabbis Jacob Emden, of Altona, and Ezechel, of Prague, of rabbinical subtilty on the one hand, and of a fallacious dependence upon scientific signs of death on the other. * * * * * At the World’s Medical Congress (Division of Eclectic Medicine), held in Chicago, June 3, 1893, the following resolution was proposed by Dr. John V. Stevens, and adopted:-- “Whereas we believe that many persons in the past, in the condition simulating death from various causes, have been buried alive; therefore,