In England the custom of burying the dead in churches was first sanctioned by Cuthbert, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 758, it having been previously forbidden by Augustine, who had decreed that no corpse either of prince or prelate should be buried within the walls of a city. In France, Maret in 1773, and Vicq d'Azyr in 1778, pointed out the danger of this practice in such glaring colours, that government by an edict, only allowed church interment to certain dignitaries; but in 1804, by a wise law that should be enforced in every civilized country, inhumation in cities was entirely abolished. Amongst the numerous well authenticated evil results of burying in churches that led to this wise prohibition, the following were the most striking and circumstantial: In 1773, in Saulieu, Burgundy, an epidemic disease arising from the inhumation of a corpse in the church of St. Saturnin created considerable alarm. The body of a corpulent person had been interred on the 3d of March, and a woman was buried near it on the 20th of April following: both had died of a reigning fever. During the last burial a fetid effluvia arose from the vault, which pervaded the whole church; and, out of one hundred and seventy persons who were present, one hundred and forty-nine were attacked with the prevailing malady, although its progress had been arrested amongst the other inhabitants of the town. In 1774, a similar accident occurred in a village near Nantes, where several coffins were removed in a vault, to make room for the lord of the manor: fifteen of the bystanders died from the emanation. In 1744, one-third of the inhabitants of Lectouse perished from a fever of a malignant character that manifested itself after some works that required the removal of a burial-ground. Two destructive epidemics swept away large proportions of the population of Riom and Ambert, two towns in Auvergne.