[ 25 1 ] 
Report on the Registration of Deaths. By the Edinburgh 
Sub-committee. 
Dr. Alison reported from the Edinburgh Sub-committee ap¬ 
pointed in 1834 to consider the subject of registration of 
deaths , with a view to a legislative measure as to registration, 
(see Proceedings of the Edinburgh Meeting, p. 39,) that they 
had drawn up a paper of suggestions on this subject, which 
they had proposed to the London Sub-committee as proper 
to be submitted to the consideration of those Members of Par¬ 
liament who might interest themselves particularly in the Re¬ 
gistration Bills for England and Scotland about to be intro¬ 
duced;—that the London Committee had expressed some 
doubt as to the application of these suggestions to the case of 
the English Bill, but after some explanations had acquiesced in 
the propriety of their being transmitted simpliciter to the gen¬ 
tleman who had given notice of his intention to bring into Par¬ 
liament the Registration Bill for Scotland. 
The Section of Anatomy and Medicine having heard their 
paper read, directed that it should be communicated to the Sta¬ 
tistical Section, with a request that they would give their atten¬ 
tion to the subject; and if they concurred in the opinion of its 
importance, that they would take such steps as they might think 
expedient to bring those suggestions (with such modifications 
as they might judge proper,) under the view of those Members 
of Parliament who might be likely to take a share in the prepa¬ 
ration of legislative measures on this subject. 
Suggestions by the Edinburgh Sub-committee. 
There are many questions regarding the external causes of 
diseases, and the means of preventing them, susceptible of more 
direct application to the good of the public, than most discus¬ 
sions on their nature, on which it is hardly possible for indivi¬ 
duals, within the sphere of their own experience, to acquire 
satisfactory information ; and which have on that account been 
hitherto very imperfectly investigated. Every individual case 
of disease, or of death from disease, is probably determined by 
several external causes, the respective influence of which is very 
easily misapprehended; and it is only by multiplying very 
