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Chap. VII

CURIOSITIES RESPECTING MAN. - (Continued.) Combustion of the Human Body, produced by the long immo derate Use of Spirituous Liquors. From the Journal de Physique, Pluviose, Year 8: written by Pierre Aime Lair. In natural as well as civil history, there are facts presented to the meditation of the observer, which, though confirmed by the most convincing testimony, seem, on the first view, to be destitute of probability. Of this kind is that of people consumed without coming into contact with common fire, and of bodies being thus reduced to ashes. How can we conceive that fire, in certain circumstances, can exercise so powerful an action on the human body as to produce this effect? One might be induced to give less faith to these instances of combustion, as they seem to be rare. I confess, that at first they appeared to me worthy of very little credit; but they are presented to the public as true, by men who veracity seems unquestionable. Bianchini, Mossei, Rom, Le Cat, Vicq. d'Azyr, and several men distinguished by thei learning, have given certain testimony of the facts. Besides, is it more surprising to experience such incineration than to void saccharine urine, or to see the bones softened, or of the diabetes mellitus. This marbific disposition, therefore, would be one more scourge to afflict humanity; but in physics, facts being always preferable to reasoning, I shall here collect those which appear to me to bear the impression of truth; and, lest I should alter the sense, I shall quote them just as they are given in the works from which I have extracted them.

We read in the transactions of Copenhagen, that in 1692, a woman of the lower class, who for three years had used spirituous liquors to such excess that she would take no other nourishment, having sat down one evening on a straw chair to sleep, was consumed in the night-time, so that next morning no part of her was found, but the skull, and the extreme joints of the fingers; all the rest of her body, says Jacobeus, was reduced to ashes.