Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine [256]
days and recurred after further indiscretions in diet. It is well known that there are insects and other creatures of the lower animal kingdom which possess the peculiar quality of phosphorescence.
There are numerous cases of spontaneous combustion of the human body reported by the older writers. 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. Schurig tells of flames issuing from the vulva, and Moscati records the same occurrence in parturition, Sinibaldust, Borellus, and Bierling have also written on this subject, and the Ephemerides contains a number of instances.
In 1763 Bianchini, Prebendary of Verona, published an account of the death of Countess Cornelia Bandi of Cesena, who in her sixty-second year was consumed by a fire kindled in her own body. In explanation Bianchini said that the fire was caused in the entrails by the inflamed effluvia of the blood, by the juices and fermentation in the stomach, and, lastly, by fiery evaporations which exhaled from the spirits of wine, brandy, etc. In the Gentleman's Magazine, 1763, there is recorded 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 in the last century who drank plentifully of spirits, for three years taking virtually nothing else. Her body became so combustible that one night while lying on a straw couch she was spontaneously burned to ashes and smoke. The evident cause of this combustion is too plain to be commented on. In the Lancet, 1845, there are two cases reported in which shortly before death luminous breath has been seen to issue from the mouth.
There is an instance reported of a professor of mathematics of thirty-five years of age and temperate, who, feeling a pain in his left leg, discovered a pale flame about the size of a ten-cent piece issuing therefrom. As recent as March, 1850, in a Court of Assizes in Darmstadt during the trial of John Stauff, accused of the murder of the Countess Goerlitz, the counsel for the defense advanced the theory of spontaneous human combustion, and such eminent doctors as von Siebold, Graff, von Liebig, and other prominent members of the Hessian medical fraternity were called to comment on its possibility; principally on their testimony a conviction and life-imprisonment was secured. In 1870 there was a woman of thirty-seven, addicted to alcoholic liquors, who was found in her room with her viscera and part of her limbs consumed by fire, but the hair and clothes intact. According to Walford, in the Scientific American for 1870, there was a case reported by Flowers of Louisiana of a man a hard drinker, who was sitting by a fire surrounded by his Christmas guests, when suddenly flames of a bluish tint burst from his mouth and nostrils and he was soon a corpse. Flowers states that the body remained extremely warm for a much longer period than usual.
Statistics.--From an examination of 28 cases of spontaneous combustion, Jacobs makes the following summary:--
(1) It has always occurred in the human living body.
(2) The subjects were generally old persons.
(3) It was noticed more frequently in women than in men.
(4) All the persons were alone at the time of occurrence.
(5) They all led an idle life.
(6) They were all corpulent or intemperate.
(7) Most frequently at the time of occurrence there was a light and some ignitible substance in the room.
(8) The combustion was rapid and was 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
There are numerous cases of spontaneous combustion of the human body reported by the older writers. 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. Schurig tells of flames issuing from the vulva, and Moscati records the same occurrence in parturition, Sinibaldust, Borellus, and Bierling have also written on this subject, and the Ephemerides contains a number of instances.
In 1763 Bianchini, Prebendary of Verona, published an account of the death of Countess Cornelia Bandi of Cesena, who in her sixty-second year was consumed by a fire kindled in her own body. In explanation Bianchini said that the fire was caused in the entrails by the inflamed effluvia of the blood, by the juices and fermentation in the stomach, and, lastly, by fiery evaporations which exhaled from the spirits of wine, brandy, etc. In the Gentleman's Magazine, 1763, there is recorded 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 in the last century who drank plentifully of spirits, for three years taking virtually nothing else. Her body became so combustible that one night while lying on a straw couch she was spontaneously burned to ashes and smoke. The evident cause of this combustion is too plain to be commented on. In the Lancet, 1845, there are two cases reported in which shortly before death luminous breath has been seen to issue from the mouth.
There is an instance reported of a professor of mathematics of thirty-five years of age and temperate, who, feeling a pain in his left leg, discovered a pale flame about the size of a ten-cent piece issuing therefrom. As recent as March, 1850, in a Court of Assizes in Darmstadt during the trial of John Stauff, accused of the murder of the Countess Goerlitz, the counsel for the defense advanced the theory of spontaneous human combustion, and such eminent doctors as von Siebold, Graff, von Liebig, and other prominent members of the Hessian medical fraternity were called to comment on its possibility; principally on their testimony a conviction and life-imprisonment was secured. In 1870 there was a woman of thirty-seven, addicted to alcoholic liquors, who was found in her room with her viscera and part of her limbs consumed by fire, but the hair and clothes intact. According to Walford, in the Scientific American for 1870, there was a case reported by Flowers of Louisiana of a man a hard drinker, who was sitting by a fire surrounded by his Christmas guests, when suddenly flames of a bluish tint burst from his mouth and nostrils and he was soon a corpse. Flowers states that the body remained extremely warm for a much longer period than usual.
Statistics.--From an examination of 28 cases of spontaneous combustion, Jacobs makes the following summary:--
(1) It has always occurred in the human living body.
(2) The subjects were generally old persons.
(3) It was noticed more frequently in women than in men.
(4) All the persons were alone at the time of occurrence.
(5) They all led an idle life.
(6) They were all corpulent or intemperate.
(7) Most frequently at the time of occurrence there was a light and some ignitible substance in the room.
(8) The combustion was rapid and was 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