The relentless decline in the hospital based autopsy has been documented else where in detail and has been generally deplored as a loss of an important method of "quality control" at a time when the practise of Medicine is closely scrutinised. This is not the place to revisit these well-rehearsed arguments but the change itself provides a powerful justification for the production of this book. The decrease in clinically requested autopsies in hospitals leaves a large and increasing number of Coronial autopsies to be done; many of these in circum stances of discontent with some aspect of the medical or other management of the events which ultimately lead to death. The pathologists now performing these autopsies will not have had the amount of experience that was commonplace among their predecessors; an experience of carrying out procedures which, although devised for different purposes, can provide a more complete examina tion of the whole body than often appears necessary in straightforward deaths in the community. In my first two years in Pathology I performed 200 autopsies; most of my contemporaries will have had a similar grounding - it would not be possi ble to provide this experience for staff in training now, except in some parts of the European mainland. So there is a need to provide a written but practical account of the autopsy which will help those who may find themselves in unfamiliar territory.
