Let us for a moment turn to our dear American commonwealths. Do our burial laws aid in the detection of crime? In the majority of states a death certificate, signed by a physician, must be filed with the health officer, who issues a burial permit. This is all which is required. Generally it makes no difference whether the physician or surgeon who affixes his name to the document is reputable or not. The burial permit is looked upon as a mere formality, an unnecessary institution, that owes its origin to some whimsical lawmaker. How often do even the most zealous of health officers investigate the causes of the deaths that are reported to them? The doctor’s certificate is put upon record; that is satisfactory, and no more is asked for. The rest is silence—like that which reigns under the turf, where the undetected victims of the poisoner lie. Now, if our faulty burial laws, if the indifference of our officers of health, are not a direct incentive to the foulest and most insidious forms of crime, I do not know what is. Were I a secret assassin, I certainly would wish for no more encouragement. As matters now stand, any evil-doer, with the help of some unscrupulous medical man, may commit murder daily without fear of detection. I propose to show that if incineration were established, the careful scrutiny of corpses and official examinations in suspected cases, which would precede the reduction of the body to ashes, would rather assist in the detection of murder than hinder it. Mr. W. Eassie, in a lecture delivered at the International Health Exhibition last year, expressed himself anent this question as follows: “With regard to doubtful deaths it would be necessary to make sure that the body exhibited no traces of poison, or that certain small portions of the body should be removed therefrom and kept for a few years. For instance, a small portion of the stomach and intestines and their contents in case of vegetable poisoning, and a small portion of the liver, should mineral poisoning be suspected. There is no difficulty in dealing with this matter in other countries where cremation has become permissive; and it is upon record that the examination of the body of a child in Italy, which had been made in the ordinary way demanded by the authorities previous to the cremation, proved that the child had been poisoned apparently by sweetmeats, and this would not have been revealed had an ordinary burial in the earth taken place.” I must here repeat what I have already said regarding Sir H. Thompson’s intimation that part of the bodies about to be cremated might be conserved for future examination: The strong dislike of the public would never allow of such a measure.