458 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 184. 



SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION. 



(Vol. vii., p. 286.) 



Leaving the philosophy of this question for the 

 savans, I beg to add the following to the alleged 

 cases already referred to. Dr. Lindsley has com- 

 piled a table of nineteen instances, from the Dic- 



tionnaire de Medecine, — not, however, o^ spontaneous 

 combustion exactly, but of something akin to it ; 

 namely, the rapid ignition of the human body 

 (which ^)er se is not combustible) by contact with, 

 flame, as a consequence of the saturation of its 

 tissues by alcohol : 



The following case is related, on the authority of 

 Dr. Schofield, Upper Canada, in the Journal of the 

 American Temperance Union for March, 1 837 : — 

 A young man, aged twenty-five, had been an 

 habitual drunkard for many years. One evening 

 at about eleven o'clock he went to a blacksmith's 

 shop : he was then full of liquor, though not 

 thoroughly drunk. The blacksmith, who had just 

 crossed the road, was suddenly alarmed by the 

 breaking forth of a brilliant conflagration in his 

 shop. He rushed across, and threw open the 

 door, and there stood the man, erect, in the midst 

 of a widely- extended silver-coloured flame, bear- 

 ing, as he described it, exactly the appearance of 

 the wick of a burning candle in the midst of its 

 own flame. He seized him, by the shoulder, and 



jerked him to the door, and the flame was instantly 

 extinguished. There was no fire in the shop, and 

 no articles likely to cause combustion within reach 

 of the individual. In the course of a short time a 

 general sloughing came on, and the flesh was almost 

 wholly removed in the dressing, leaving the bones 

 and a few of the large blood-vessels standing. The 

 blood nevertheless rallied round the heart, and life 

 continued to the thirteenth day, when he died, 

 a loathsome, ill-featured, and disgusting object. 

 His shrieks and cries were described as truly 

 horrible. 



Some information will be found in Nos. 44. and 

 5Q. of an old magazine called The Hive, — a book 

 which may be found in the British Museum. Two 

 cases have occurred recently, one in 1851 at Paris, 



