The singular fact of persons, more especially individuals who were in the
habit of indulging in the use of spirituous liquors, having taken fire and
been consumed, is authenticated beyond the slightest doubt. Little
confidence, it is true, can be placed in the reports on this subject which
occasionally appear in the newspapers of different countries; but many
celebrated practitioners have witnessed and recorded the event, and
physiologists have endeavoured to account for its causes. The celebrated
Le Cat mentions a woman of Rheims, of the name of Millet, who was found
consumed at the distance of two feet from her chimney; the room exhibited
no appearance of fire, but of the unfortunate sufferer nothing was found
except her skull, the bones of the lower extremities, and some vertebrae. A
servant-girl was accused of the murder, and condemned to death; but on
her appeal, and a subsequent investigation, her innocence was fully
ascertained.
Joseph Battaglia, a surgeon of Ponte Bosio, relates the following
case:--Don G. Maria Bertholi, a priest of Mount Valerius, went to the fair
of Filetto, and afterwards visited a relation in Fenilo, where he intended
to pass the night. Before retiring to rest, he was left reading his
breviary; when, shortly afterwards, the family were alarmed by his loud
cries and a strange noise in his chamber. On opening the door, he was
lying prostrate on the floor, and surrounded by flickering flames.
Battaglia was immediately sent for, and on his arrival the unfortunate man
was found in a most deplorable state. The integuments of the arms and the
back were either consumed or detached in hanging flaps. The sufferer was
sufficiently sensible to give an account of himself. He said that he felt
all of a sudden as if his arm had received a violent blow from a club, and
at the same time he saw scintillations of fire rising from his
shirt-sleeves, which were consumed without having burned the wrists; a
handkerchief, which he had tied round his shoulders, between the shirt and
the skin, was intact. His drawers were also sound; but, strange to say,
his silk skull-cap was burnt, while his hair bore no marks of combustion.
The unfortunate man only survived the event four days, when mortification
of the burnt parts was most extensive, and the body emitted intolerable
putrid effluvia. The circumstances which attended this case would seem to
warrant the conclusion that the electric fluid was the chief agent in the
combustion.
Bianchini relates the death of the Countess of Cornelia Bandi, of Cesena,
who was in the habit of using frictions of camphorated spirits. She was
found consumed close to her bedside. No traces of fire could be observed
in the room--the very lights had been burnt down to their sockets; but the
furniture, closets, and linen were covered with a grayish soot, damp and
clammy.
The Annual Register mentions two facts of a similar nature which occurred
in England, one at Southampton, the other at Coventry. In the transactions
of the Royal Society of London, an extraordinary instance of combustion is
also recorded. The fact is thus related. Grace Pitt, the wife of a
fishmonger of Ipswich, aged about sixty, had contracted a habit, which she
continued for several years, of coming down every night from her bedroom,
half dressed, to smoke a pipe. On the night of the 9th of April, 1744,
she got up from her bed as usual; her daughter who slept with her, did not
perceive she was absent till next morning when she awoke; soon after which
she put on her clothes, and going down into the kitchen, found her mother
stretched out on her right side, with her head near the grate; the body
extended on the hearth, with the legs on the floor, which were of deal,
having the appearance of a log of wood consumed by a fire without any
apparent flames. On beholding this spectacle, the girl run in great haste
and poured over her mother's body some water contained in two large
vessels, in order to extinguish the fire, while the fetid odour and smoke
that exhaled from the body almost suffocated some of the neighbours who
had hastened to the girl's assistance.
The trunk was in some measure incinerated, and resembled a heap of wood
covered with white ashes. The head, the arms, the legs, and the thighs,
had also participated in the burning. This woman, it is said, had drank a
large quantity of spirituous liquor, in consequence of being overjoyed at
hearing of the return of one of her daughters from Gibraltar. There was no
fire in the grate, and the candle had burnt down to the socket of the
candlestick, which was close to her. Besides, there were found close to
the consumed body, the clothes of a child and a paper screen, which had
sustained no injury from the fire. The dress of the woman consisted of a
cotton gown.
It is possible that this accident may be attributed to the escape of
hydrogen gas; the presence of this inflammable body in animals is evident,
and it is also proved that it is liable to ignite. Morton saw flames
coming from the body of a pig. Bonami and Ruysh, with a lighted candle,
set fire to the vapour arising from the stomach of a woman whom they were
opening. In the Memoirs of the Academy of Science of Paris, of 1751, we
find the case of a butcher, who, on opening the body of an ox that had
died after a malady which had swollen him considerably, was severely burnt
by an explosion and a flame which rose to the height of about five feet.
Sturm, Bartholini, and Gaubius record fiery eructations in which, no
doubt, phosphurated hydrogen had been generated in the stomach, from some
combination of alcohol and animal substances, and inflamed upon coming
into contact with atmospheric air; the fetid odour which invariably
accompanies these combustions appears to warrant the conclusion. Fodere
remarks that hydrogen gas is developed in certain cases of disease even
in the living body, and he agrees with Mere in attributing spontaneous
combustion to the united action of hydrogen and electricity. The case of a
Bohemian peasant is narrated, who lost his life in consequence of ignited
inflammable air issuing from his mouth which could not be extinguished. It
seems evident that this accident only occurs under certain conditions of
the body; generally in aged persons upwards of sixty years old; more
frequently in women than in men, and chiefly when of indolent habits, a
debilitated frame, and intemperate in their mode of living. That the body
has been usually consumed long before the head and the extremities is
evident, since these parts have been more commonly found than the trunk.
It also has been ascertained by observation that this strange accident
seldom occurs in summer, but principally during severe cold and frosty
weather. It appears that some experiments have been recently made in the
United States, when the blood flowing from the arm of a man addicted to
spirituous liquors actually took fire, being placed in contact with a
lighted taper!
Medical observers differ in opinion on this singular yet
well-authenticated phenomenon. Lair, Vicy d'Argou, and Dupuytren maintain
that to produce it, the contact of fire is necessary. Le Cat and Kopp, on
the contrary, affirm that this combustion may be spontaneous without the
intervention of any external agent, and resulting from some peculiar
predisposition. According to Le Cat animals contain inflammable substances
which ignite of themselves. De Castro relates the cases of several
individuals from whom friction could draw sparks. Daniel Horstius mentions
a gouty patient, from whose limbs, on being rubbed, vivid sparks arose.
These physicians consider that these electric sparks are sufficient to
ignite the spirituous liquor which may have saturated any organic tissue
of the body, the combustion being afterwards fed by animal oil.
This theory is, however, subject to many objections. It is difficult to
imagine that any substance introduced into the organ of digestion should
retain its former principles of inflammability. Although Cuvier and
Dumeril relate, that in opening the body of a man who died from excess of
drinking, the effluvia of the liquor arose from every cavity.
On this subject, fraught with much interest, nothing positive has been
ascertained, despite the late progress of chemical investigation. This
combustion indeed differs widely from all other burning; sometimes a
flickering and bluish flame arises; at other times a smothered heat or
fire, without visible flames, is the consuming agent. Water increases the
combustion instead of allaying it. It is moreover a well-known fact, that
a considerable quantity of fuel is required to consume a dead body,
whereas in this combustion, incineration is most rapid. The human body,
indeed, is not easily consumed; a case is related of a baker-boy, named
Renaud, who was sentenced to be burnt at Caen; two large cart-loads of
fagots were required to consume the body, and at the end of more than ten
hours, some remains were still visible.
The extreme incombustibility of the body was singularly exemplified in the
case of Mrs. King, whose murderer was engaged for several weeks in
endeavouring to burn her remains without effecting his purpose.
It has also been affirmed by various medical observers, that the human
body will occasionally secrete an inflammable matter emitted by
perspiration. Thus, it is stated, that the perspiration of the wife of a
physician of the Archbishop of Toledo was of such a combustible nature,
that a ribbon which she had worn, being exposed to the air, took fire.
Borelli relates the case of a peasant, whose linen would ignite in a
similar manner, whether it was laid up in a chest or hung up to dry.
Amongst the many curious stories of the kind, we quote De Castro, who
affirms that he knew a physician, from whose back-bone fire issued so
vividly as to dazzle the eyes of the beholders. Krautius informs us, that
certain people of the territory of Nivers (?) were burning with an
invisible fire, and that some of them lopped off a foot or a hand to cut
off the conflagration!