As regards the second point adverted to--the establishment of special reception-houses for the dead, I do not hesitate to say that, if they could be brought into general use, their institution would confer great advantages on the poor. But against this event, at least as an immediate one, I grieve to see strong probabilities. A first proposal made to some mourning household, that they should trust to strangers’ hands the custody of their unburied dead, would in most instances greatly and suddenly clash with their customs, and prejudices, and affections. Whatever success you might have in conquering this difficulty would of necessity be slow: and my practical familiarity with the poorer classes makes me so little hopeful of their immediate acquiescence in the plan, that I should hardly feel justified in urging you to incur any very large expense, or to embarrass yourselves at starting with any elaborate machinery, for the sake of so scanty an expectation. The reception-houses of Germany, as you probably know, are founded with a double intention; partly for the purpose which I am here chiefly considering--that the dead may be removed from an injurious contiguity to the living; partly also, that the bodies may be vigilantly observed, in case of suspended animation. With the latter view, many of them are specially furnished and specially officered. In that at Frankfort, for instance, each body is placed in a separate, warmed and ventilated cell; cords are attached to the fingers in such manner that the slightest movement occasions the ringing of an alarum; night and day watch is kept in a central apartment which looks into each cell, and has the several alarum-bells hung round it; adjacent is a room designed for acts of resuscitation, with bath, galvanic apparatus and the like, always in readiness for instant use; and, so long as any corpse lies within the reception-house, the medical superintendent of the establishment never goes beyond its walls. Dr. Sutherland, whose report to the General Board of Health is full of interesting information on the burial-institutions of the Continent, praises the completeness and ingenuity of these contrivances; adding, however, that ‘after careful inquiry at all the cities where he found them to exist, he could not learn that any case of resuscitation had as yet occurred.’ I may add, too, as regards my own personal experience in this country, that, with extensive opportunities, it has never happened to me, either to see any case of suspended animation where doubts of death and question of interment could arise, nor to hear in professional circles of any such occurrence, I therefore think it quite unnecessary to recommend any arrangement of reception-houses, with reference to the resuscitation of persons apparently dead.