To the Editor: —A physician may not reveal the nature of his patient's illness during the patient's life without danger of legal penalty. But when the patient dies, the physician is required to give the cause of death in a certificate, which at once becomes a public document. Many newspapers, as a custom, publish these certificates daily in a special column. The obligation of secrecy during life, and the legal necessity which results in publicity after death, are strange contradictions. One of the evil results is that in many instances the actual cause of death is not given. What family will submit without protest to a certificate which gives syphilis, morphinism or alcoholism as the cause of death of one of its members, when it is known that that cause will be made public for the gratification of the morbidly curious and to the distress and shame of the family?