PARK AND CEMETERY. 
51 
MORTUARY CHAMBER OF THE CEMETERY OF THE NORTH, MUNICH. 
relatives of the deceased, who have also the right 
to show the body to a priest or to any other person. 
Adjoining the exposure halls, and often used as 
a connection between the two halls, is found the 
watchman’s room, a narrow, cell-like chamber, with 
windows upon the mortuaries, and containing the 
alarm apparatus enclosed in a casing, resembling a 
ship’s chronometer. Here the guard, who has a 
life appointment, spends half his lifetime. He is 
bound to make frequent rounds of the mortuaries, 
and can not leave them without providing a sub- 
stitute to watch in his absence, no matter how short 
it may be. 
The official documents discloses the fact that 
since 1818 there has been no case of suspended 
animation authenticated in the mortuaries of Mu- 
nich. Once, some ten years ago, the guard had 
his doubts as to the cause of a pronounced alarm. 
The officials were at once summoned, for observa- 
tion, but at the end of four hours the scientific 
men declared that there was not the slightest doubt 
of the person’s being dead. The average annual 
number of deaths being 10,000, the observation 
ot the establishment for 80 years has covered 
about 800,000 bodies. This fact is highly credit- 
able to the skill of Bavarian physicians in their 
diagnoses, and seems to prove more especially that 
contrary to a strong popular impression, it never 
happens, at least in the great cities, that a person 
is buried alive. 
At Munich, the authorities, desiring to make 
all these matters still more perfect, have very re- 
cently finished at the Cemetery of the West, a great 
building, which will be the most perfect of its 
kind in Germany, and will serve as a model for the 
one which it is proposed to erect at Berlin. One 
of our views, (that o f the New Mortuary), shows 
this great monument. Under the central dome are 
a series of chapels, set apart for the different re- 
ligious sects. On each side is an immense hall on 
the ground floor, enclosed by glass, where the 
bodies are ranged in a single row. This hall is 
flanked on either side by corridors, one of which is 
given to the public and the other to funerals. The 
alarms are actuated by electricity. Finally, by a 
perfect system of heating and cooling, there will 
be maintained in these exposure halls a constant 
temperature of 7 0 C. (44.. 6° F. ), which, according 
to German scientists, is the temperature most favor- 
able for the preservation of the body. 
