b. To offer a respectable place for the reception of the dead, in order to remove the corpse from the confined dwellings of the survivors.
(2.) The use of the reception-house is quite voluntary, yet, in case the physician may consider it necessary for the safety of the survivors that the dead be removed, a notification to this effect must be forwarded to the Younger Burgermeister to obtain the necessary order.
(3.) Even in case the house of reception is not used the dead cannot be interred, until after the lapse of three nights, without the proper certificate of the physician that the signs of decomposition have commenced. In order to prevent the indecency which has formerly occurred, of preparing too early the certificate of the death, the physician shall in future sign a preliminary announcement of the occurrence of death, for the sake of the previous arrangements necessary for an interment, but the certificate of death is only to be prepared when the corpse shows unequivocal signs of decomposition having commenced. For the dead which it is wished to place in the house of reception, the physician prepares a certificate of removal. This certificate of removal can only be given after the lapse of the different periods, of six hours; in sudden death, of twelve hours; and in other cases, twenty-four hours.
§ 97. A German merchant, now resident in London, who took great interest in the institution, informs me that he visited it in company with his friend, one of the inspecting physicians of this house of reception. His attention was there attracted by the corpse of a beautiful child:—that child turned out not to be dead, and he himself saw it alive and recovered. No such event is known to have occurred at Munich.
This gentleman, and Mr. Koch, our consul at Franckfort, who obtained for this Report the plans of the house of reception and the regulations for interment in that city, both attest from extensive knowledge of its population, that the effect of this institution, of which all classes avail themselves, is, on the part of the poorest and most susceptible classes, to allay all feelings of reluctance to part with the remains, and to create, on the contrary, a general desire for their removal from the private house early after death, that they may be placed under the care of skilful and responsible officers. The aggravation and extension of disease to the living is thus prevented; the protraction of the pain of the weaker and more susceptible of the survivors, arising from the undue retention of the remains, and the demoralizing effect of familiarity with them on the parts of the younger, and those of the least susceptible of the survivors, are equally avoided.
The following is an extract from an official report made for this inquiry through the English Ambassador, on the operation of similar regulations at Munich:—
“The arrangements made for the speedy removal of the body after death are considered highly beneficial in a sanative point of view, as tending to check the spread of contagious and unclean disorders, more particularly in the crowded parts of the town.
“At the same time the great care and attention paid to the bodies in the place where they are deposited, the precautions taken in cases of re-animation, and the ascertaining beyond a doubt the actual occurrence of death, are sufficiently satisfactory to the surviving relations.
“The examinations also which take place immediately after death have been found equally useful in detecting the employment of violent or improper means in causing death, as well as in discovering the existence of any contagious disease against which it is of importance to guard.
“There is only one burial ground for the whole city of Munich, on a scale sufficiently large for the population, and open to Protestants as well as Catholics, without distinction.”