garyh@iddic.UUCP (Gary Hanson) (01/13/86)
<Warning: this line is spontaneously combustible; watch out.>
The following is excerpted from 'Anomalies and Curiousities of Medicine',
by George M. Gould MD and Walter Pyle MD, originally published in 1896; the
book is simultaneously gross, bizarre, and fascinating, and contains all
sorts of strange things.
There is no reliable evidence to support the belief in spontaneous
combustion of the body, but there many apochryphal cases. Lord Bacon
mentions spontaneous combustion, and Marcellus Donatus says that at the
time of Godefroy of Bouillion there were people of a certain locality who
supposed themselves to be have been burning of an invisible fire in their
entrails, and he adds that some cut off a hand or foot when the burning
began, that it should go no further. [Sounds like ergotism to me --GH.]
Ruysch, a Dutch physician, remarks that he introduced a hollow tube into
a woman's stomach that he had just opened, and he observed a vapor issuing
from the mouth of the tube which ignited on contact with the atmosphere.
There is an account (in 1842) of a man of 43, who upon going to bed one
night, extinguished the light and was surprised to find himself enveloped
in a phosphorescent halo; this continued for several days.
There are numerous cases of spontaneous human combustion reported long
ago. Bartholinus mentions an instance after the person had drunk too much
wine. Fouquet mentions a person ignited by lightning. Schrader speaks of a
person from whose mouth and fauces after a debauch issued fire. [Another
hazard of casual sex, I guess.] Schurig tells of flames issuing from the
vulva, and Moscati records the same occurrence in partuition. Sinibaldus
(1642), Borellus (1676), and Bierling (1694) have also written on the
subject, and the Ephemerides contains a number of instances. In 1763,
Bianchini of Verona published an account of Countess Cornelia Bandi of Cesena,
who in her sixty-second year was consumed by a fire kindled in her body.
Bianchini said that the fire was caused in the entrails by the inflamed
effluvia of the blood, by the juices and fermentation of the stomach, and
lastly by fiery evaporations which exhaled by the spirits of wine, brandy,
etc. [?!] The Gentleman's Magazine in 1763 records an account of three
noblemen, who, in emulation, drank great quantities of strong liquor, and two
of them died scorched and suffocated by a flame forcing itself from the
stomach. There is an account of a poor woman in Paris who lived on little
besides spirits for three years; her body became so combustible that one night
while lying on a straw couch she was spontaneously burned to ashes and smoke.
[The writer mentions that the cause here is obvious.] The Lancet, 1845, reports
two cases where shortly before death, luminous breath was seen to issue from
the mouth.
There is a reported instance of a professor of mathematics, who, feeling
a pain in his left leg, discovered a pale flame about the size of a ten cent
piece issuing from the leg. In 1870 there was a thirty-seven year old
alcoholic woman who was found in her room with her viscera and part of her
limbs comsumed by fire, with her hair and clothes intact.
From an examination of 28 cases of spontaneous human combustion, Jacobs
(1841) makes the following summary:
1) It has always occurred in the living human body.
2) The subjects were generally old persons.
3) It was noticed more frequently in women than men.
4) All the persons were alone at the time of the occurrence.
5) They all led an idle life.
6) There were all corpulent or intemperate.
7) Most frequently at the time of the occurrence there was a light and some
ignitable substances in the room.
8) The combustion was rapid and finished in from one to seven hours.
9) The room where the combustion took place was generally filled with a thick
vapor, and the walls covered with a thick, carbonaceous substance.
10) The trunk was usually the part most frequently destroyed; some part of the
head and extremities remained.
11) With but two exceptions, the combustion occurred in winter and in the
northern regions.
Gary Hanson {most backbones}!tektronix!iddic!garyhmauney@ncsu.UUCP (01/17/86)
Don't forget the late drummers for the rock group Spinal Tap, who spontaneously combusted on stage during performances. I have this on video cassette, so don't try to convince me it didn't happen. -- Jon Mauney, mcnc!ncsu!mauney North Carolina State University