(which consists mainly of single-line references with a few paragraphs devoted to the cases of Countess Cornelia Zangari and Grace Pett)
A species of combustion without flame, and analogous to that which has been described, is exhibited in the extraordinary phenomenon of the spontaneous combustion of living bodies. That animal bodies are liable to internal combustion is a fact which was well known to the ancients. Many cases which have been adduced as examples of spontaneous combustion are merely cases of individuals who were highly susceptible of strong electrical excitation. In one of these cases, however, Peter Bovisteau asserts, that the sparks of fire thus produced reduced to ashes the hair of a young man ; and John De Viana informs us, that the wife of Dr Freilas, physician to the Cardinal de Royas, Archbishop of Toledo, emitted by perspiration an inflammable matter of such a nature, that when the ribbon which she wore over her shift was taken from her, and exposed to the cold air, it instantly took fire, and shot forth like grains of gunpowder. Peter Borelli has recorded a fact of the very same kind respecting a peasant whose linen took fire, whether it was laid up in a box when wet, or hung up in the open air. The same author speaks of a woman who, when at the point of death, vomited flames ; and Thomas Bartholin mentions this phenomenon as having often happened to persons who were
322
great drinkers of wine or brandy. Ezekiel de Castro mentions the singular case of Alexandrinus Megetius, a physician, from one of whose vertebrae there issued a fire which scorched the eyes of the beholders ; and Krantzius relates, that during the wars of Godfrey of Boulogne, certain people of the territory of Nivers were burning with invisible fire, and that some of them cut off a foot or a hand where the burning began, in order to arrest the calamity. Nor have these effects been confined to man. In the time of the Roman consuls Gracchus and Juventius, a flame is said to have issued from the mouth of a bull without doing any injury to the animal.
The reader will judge of the degree of credit which may belong to these narrations when he examines the effects of a similar kind which have taken place in less fabulous ages, and nearer our own times. John Henry Cohausen informs us, that a Polish gentleman in the time of the Queen Bona Sforza, having drunk two dishes of a liquor called brandy-wine, vomited flames, and was burned by them, and Thomas Bartholin * thus describes a similar accident : “A poor woman at Paris used to drink spirit of wine plentifully for the space of three years, so as to take nothing else. Her body contracted such a combustible disposition, that one night, when she lay down on a straw couch, she was all burned to ashes except her skull and the extremities of her fingers.” John Christ. Sturmius informs us in the German Ephemerides, that in the northern countries of Europe flames often evaporate from the stomachs of those who are addict-
* Acta Medica et Philosophica Hafniensia, 1673.
323
ed to the drinking of strong liquors ; and he adds, “that seventeen years before, three noblemen of Courland drank by emulation strong liquors, and two of them died scorched and suffocated by a flame which issued from their stomach.”
One of the most remarkable cases of spontaneous combustion is that of the Countess Cornelia Zangari and Bandi of Cesena, which has been minutely described by the Reverend Joseph Bianchini, a prebend in the city of Verona. This lady, who was in the sixty-second year of her age, retired to bed in her usual health. Here she spent above three hours in familiar conversation with her maid and in saying her prayers ; and having at last fallen asleep, the door of her chamber was shut. As her maid was not summoned at the usual hour, she went into the bed-room to wake her mistress ; but receiving no answer she opened the window, and saw her corpse on the floor in the most dreadful condition. At the distance of four feet from the bed there was a heap of ashes. Her legs, with the stockings on, remained untouched, and the head, half-burned, lay between them. Nearly all the rest of the body was reduced to ashes. The air in the room was charged with floating soot. A small oil lamp on the floor was covered with ashes but had no oil in it ; and in two candlesticks, which stood upright upon a table, the cotton wick of both the candles was left, and the tallow of both had disappeared. The bed was not injured, and the blankets and sheets were raised on one side as if a person had risen up from it. From an examination of all the circumstances of this case, it has been generally supposed that an internal combustion had
324
taken place ; that the lady had risen from her bed to cool herself, and that, in her way to open the window, the combustion had overpowered her, and consumed her body by a process in which no flame was produced which could set fire to the furniture or the floor. The Marquis Scipio Maffei was informed by an Italian nobleman who passed through Cesena a few days after this event, that he heard it stated in that town, that the Countess Zangari was in the habit, when she felt herself indisposed, of washing all her body with camphorated spirit of wine.
So recently as 1744 a similar example of spontaneous combustion occurred in our own country at Ipswich. A fisherman’s wife of the name of Grace Pett, of the parish of St Clements, had been in the habit for several years of going down stairs every night after she was half-undressed to smoke a pipe. She did this on the evening of the 9th of April 1744. Her daughter, who lay in the same bed with her, had fallen asleep, and did not miss her mother till she awaked early in the morning. Upon dressing herself, and going down stairs, she found her mother’s body lying on the right side with her head against the grate, and extended over the hearth with her legs on the deal floor, and appearing like a block of wood burning with a glowing fire without flame. Upon quenching the fire with two bowls of water, the neighbours, whom the cries of the daughter had brought in, were almost stifled with the smell. The trunk of the unfortunate woman was almost burned to ashes, and appeared like a heap of charcoal covered with white ashes. The head, arms, legs, and thighs, were also much
325
burned. There was no fire whatever in the grate, and the candle was burned out in the socket of the candlestick, which stood by her. The clothes of a child on one side of her, and a paper screen on the other, were untouched ; and the deal floor was neither singed nor discoloured. It was said that the woman had drunk plentifully of gin overnight in welcoming a daughter who had recently returned from Gibraltar.