VOL. XLIII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 139 



gluish moisture, that it could not be taken ofi'; and the stench spread more and 

 more through the other chambers. 



Remarhs. — It is impossible that, by any accident, tlie lamp should have caused 

 such a conflagration. There is no room to suppose any supernatural cause. The 

 likeliest cause then is a flash of lightning; which, according to the most common' 

 opinon, being but a sulphureous and nitrous exhalation from the earth, having 

 been kindled in the air, penetrated either through the chinmey, or through the 

 chinks of the windows, and produced that effect. All the abovementioned 

 effects prove the assertion; for those remaining foul particles are the grossest 

 parts of the fiilmen, either burnt to ashes, or thickened into a viscous bitumi- 

 nous matter. 



In the Acta Medica et Philosophica Hafniensia, published by Thomas Bar- 

 tholin, 1673, is such another accident related in these words. " A poor woman 

 at Paris used to drink spirit of wine plentifully for the space of 3 years, so as to 

 take nothing else. Her body contracted such a combustible disposition, that one 

 night she, lying down on a straw couch, was all burned to ashes and smoke, ex- 

 cept the skull and the extremities of her fingers." 



John Henry Cohausen relates this fact in a book printed at Amsterdam 1717, 

 intitled. Lumen novum Phosphoris accensum , and in the first part p. 92, relates 

 also, " That a Polish gentleman, in the time of the queen Bona Sforza, having 

 drank 2 dishes of a liquor called brandy wine, vomited flames, and was burnt by 

 them." 



Remarks. — Such an effect was not produced by the light of the oil-lamp, or 

 of any candles; because common fire, even in a pile, does not consume a body 

 to such a degree; and would have besides spread itself to the goods of the 

 chamber, more combustible than a human body. It seems also, that it was not 

 what is commonly taken for a fulmen; for there was not left in the place any 

 sulphureous and nitrous smell ; there did not appear any blackish tracks on the 

 walls, all signs of the fialmina, as they have been remarked by the exactest ob- 

 server of phenomena, the celebrated Mr. Boyle. But if it was not a real fulmen, 

 it was certainly of such a nature. 



The author's opinion is, that the fire was caused in the entrails of the body by 

 inflamed efliluvia of her bloixl, by juices and fermentations in the stomach, by 

 the many combustible matters which are abundant in living bodies for the uses of 

 life; and, finally, by the fiery evaporations which exhale from the settlings of 

 spirit of wine, brandies, and other hot liquors, in the tunica villosa of the sto- 

 mach, and other adipose or fat membranes, within which, as chemists observe, 

 those spirits engender a kind of camphor; which, in the night-time, in sleep, by 

 a full breathing and respiration, are put in a stronger motion, and consequently 

 more apt to be set on fire. 



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