150 
the proper vitcil flciiTic, so is torrostricil lie^t ? rs <ire cilso volcsnoes ciiicl curth - 
quakes to be considered by the philosopher as arising from a like source. 
In like manner the countess Cornelia Bandi, near Cesena in Romagna, in 1731 , in the sixty-second 
year of her age, was found in the middle of her bedchamber reduced to ashes. These ashes were light, 
and left in the hand a greasy and sticking moisture. The floor was smeared with a gross unpleasant 
moisture, and the walls and furniture were covered with a moist soot. 
An instance of the same kind occurred at Christ-Church in Hampshire, June 26, l 6 l 3 ; one John 
Hitchell, a carpenter of that parish, a great drunkard, having ended his day s work, came home and 
went to bed. His wife found him dead before morning at her side. He felt so extremely hot, that it 
was impossible to touch him. He lay burning for three days', nor was there any appearance of flame 
outwardly, but only a smoke or mist ascending from his carcase till it was consumed. 
On the night of the l6th of March 1802, in one of the towns of the State of Massachusetts, the 
bodv of an elderly woman evaporated and disappeared from some internal and unknown cause, in the 
duration of about one hour and an half. Part of the family had gone to bed, and the rest were abroad. 
The old woman remained awake to take care of the house. By and by one of the grand-children came 
home, and discovered something near the hearth to be on fire. An alarm was made, a light brought, 
and means taken to extinguish it. While these things were doing, some singular appearances were 
observed on the hearth and the contiguous floor. There was a sort of greasy soot and ashes, with remains 
of a human body, and an unusual smell in the room. All the clothes were consumed; and the grand¬ 
mother was missing. It was at first supposed she had, in attempting to light her pipe of tobacco, 
fallen into the fire, and been burned to death. But on considering how small the fire was, and that 
so total a consumption could scarcely have happened if there had been ten times as much, there is more 
reason to conclude that this is another case of that spontaneous decomposition of the human body, of 
which there are several instances on record. 
These curious instances of quick combustion carried on in the body, if I may be allowed to continue 
the expression, are adduced only as exceptions to Dr. Thornton’s general rule,, which he was the first 
to establish, “ that within the body there is always carried on a gentle combustion, productive of the 
vital flame .” Extracted from the Philosophy of Medicine, vol. ii. p. 21. 
Pevers in like manner arise from a new combination of elementary matter, liberating heat, and 
thus destroying life. In this way several poisons produce their almost instantaneous effects, and hence 
to render meat tender, animals in the West Indies are killed by stabbing them with a needle infected 
with poison. A sufficient putrefaction, or tendering the meat, is thus instantaneously incurred, and 
the poison by entering into a new combination wholly loses its life-destroying power, and is therefore 
rendered innoxious. Vide the Philosophy of Medicine, Yol. IY. from page 11 7 to page 152. 
To vindicate God as to the introduction of evil into this nether world, various have been the attempts 
of prying philosophers. That evils were designed to exist here is undoubted, although some make 
them only accidental. Considering this earth as a temporary abode for transient beings, whose life 
compared with eternity is as a grain of sand to the whole mass of this globe, or all the myriads of 
globes revolving round theij respective suns, nothing can be said to be an evil, and as each respective 
world is probably only a scene of the drama of the universe for the contemplation of us, and of other 
superior beings; and as ours exhibits both the contrasts of tragedy and of comedy blended together, 
let us not, however, even utter a faint murmur at our seven ages, considering this only as a prepa¬ 
ration in a subordinary, towards a higher part, which we shall have to act next as angels, or as 
demons, in a higher or lower world, comfortable or inhospitable, as best appointed for created 
beings progressive by their free-will in virtues or in vices, and so rightly stationed on solid or unsound 
earth, that is, eithei foe reward or punishment, or, using the true interpretation of the scripture 
phrase, chastisement or correction. 
