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SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION Two Letters to Chables Dickens . No . I . My Deae Dickens , —Wliat you write is read wh erever the English language id read . This magnificent popularity carries with it a serious responsibility . A vulgar error countenanced by you becomes , thereby , formidable . Therefore am I , in common with many of your admirers , grieved to see that an error exploded from science , but one peculiarly adapted to the avid credulity of unscientific minds , has been seriously taken up by you , and sent all over the world with your imprimatur—an act which will tend to perpetuate the error in spite of the labours of a thousand philosophers . jSTo journal but the Leader has taken up this matter ; but I would fain hope that if the case can be clearly stated , and the error shown , on all sides , to be an error , the press of England will lend its aid towards the disabusing of the public mind , and that you yourself will make some qualifying statement in your Preface .
My object in these two letters will be to show , that the highest scientific authorities of the day distinctly disavow the notion of Spontaneous Combustion ; that the evidence in favour of the notion is worthless ; that the theories in explanation are absurd ; and that , according to all known , chemical and physiological laws , Spontaneous Combustion is an impossibility . In continuing this discussion , I withdraw the slight veil of the anonymous " , " and address you openly , in order that criticism may be deprived of even the appearance of asperity . # Let me commence with an apology . " When this subject was first briefly
noticed in the Leader ' , I very much underrated its seriousness . Believing that it was an error long banished to the region of vulgar errors , and that you hadpicked it up among the curiosities of your reading , without thinking of verifying it , I fancied a few plain statements of a physiological nature would be sufficient to convince you and others . Herein lay my mistake . I have since become aware of a serious fact , —viz ., that the belief is very current among medical men , and has grave authorities to support it . This , while it excuses your adoption of the theory , renders that adoption still more dangerous , for the readers of Bleak Souse , startled at the incident of Krook ' s death , will turn to their medical adviser for
confirmation or disproof . Nor is there anything wonderful in this assent of medical men ; for , —not to mention the text-books where they would see it gravely set forth as an established fact , —they are , ex qfficio , rather men of art than men of science . I allude to this distinction between art and science ( more clearly seen , perhaps , in the distinction between navigation and astronomy , ) to make way for subsequent exposition of the ignorance—or forgetfulness , equivalent to ignorance—shown by the adherents to the * theory of Spontaneous Combustion—forgetfulness which may , without presumption , bo pointed out by one who never wrote a prescription , and p , annot set a dislocated limb . ,
It is duo to you that I should declare a large majority on your side . Works on medical jurisprudence , Dictionaries , and Encyclopedias , lend the theory their authority . Medical men frequently adopt it . So that you , not specially engaged in any subjects of this nature , may well be excused for having adopted it . On the other hand , it is necessary I should declare that these authorities are insignificant , beside the authorities ranged against them . What arc medical dictionaries and works on jurisprudence compared with authorities of such commanding eminence aaLiBBio , Bihohoff , Regnaui / t , Guaham , Hofmann , and Owen P I only name those whom I know to havo
pronounced unequivocally on this point , but I believe you will find no ono eminent organic chemist of our day who credits Spontaneous Combustion . When I mentioned tho Bubjoct to Professor Chaiiam , tho other evening , ho replied , " There is no more completely exploded , error in chemistry . It has been carefully examinotl , and found to have no vestigo of probability . " Dr . Hofmann said the same , adding that , two years ago , on the occasion of tho Gorlitz murder , tho subject was thoroughly investigated by Liebio and BiBciroFF , who proved , irt court , that all tho alleged cases woro no more crodiblo than woro tho alleged canes of wilhcraft . In tho lust edition of his Letters on Chemistry , Lrnnio devotes a chapter to this subject , from which I will borrow largely in the courHO of my argument .
Meanwhile , read these passages : — " Wo cannot ; wonder that , filly or a hundred years ago , there were diHlinffuwhod phy sician * , who believed and defended tho spontaneous combustion of tho human hody , at a time when tho essence and nature of coinbiwtion , generally , was hardly known ; hut tlio modern authors who'defend this opinion , are , for the most part , men , whoso qnnliflcutions for judging , or whorto powers of observation , and whoso possession of tho necessary knowledge , aro not proved by other gonuino scientific labours or investigations in their department of neiciiiee , nnd whose names are only known because they have appeared iih dofondei-8 of the opinion in question .
" Tho distinct , and unhesitating way in which , in many works on medical jurisprudence the known canw aro related and tho different theories of HpouUneous combustion aro explained , has had tho bad ettbet of inducing many well-informed
practical physicians , contrary to their better conviction , to aUow spontaneous combustion to pass for established truth , and not to contradict the statements and opinions of the supporters of that theory , in order to avoid being regarded as heretics in medicine . _ _ * • • * * " The conclusions to which tho theory of spontaneous combustion leads are in such decided - contradiction Vith all experience , that the explanation offered by the adherents of that theory has not met with the smallest acceptation on the part of one distinguished physician , in any degree acquainted with the natural sciences . Thus , as a question of authority , it is decisively against you . Perhapi you refuse to accept authority in such a matter ; you may say , men of scienceeven the best of them , often err , and they may be "wrong here
, Nevertheless , when you consider the excessive complexity of this subject , the superficial acquaintance with organic chemistry so general among medical writers , and the ' eminence of the men I have just named , you must acknowledge that none of the authorities on your side can be allowed to have equivalent value . Your reply to my remarks was this : — ' « Out of the court , and a long way out of it , there is considerable excitement too ; for men of science and philosophy come to look , and carriages feet down doctors at the corner who arrive with the same intent , and there is more learned talk about inflammable gases and phospttiretted hydrogen than the court has ever wisesthold with indignation
imagined . Some of these authorities ( of course the ) that the deceased had no business to die in the alleged manner ; and . being reminded by other authorities of a certain inquiry into the evidence for such deaths , reprinted in the sixth volume of tho Philosophical Transactions ; and also of a book not quite unknown , on English Medical Jurisprudence ; and likewise of the Italian case of the Countess Cornelia Baudi as set forth in detail by one Bianclum , prebendarv of Verona , who wrote a scholarly work or so , and was occasionally heard of m his time as having gleams of reason in him ; and also of the testimony of Messrs . Fodere and Mere , two pestilent Frenchmen who would investigate the subject ; and further , of the corroborative testimony of Monsieur Le Cat , a rather celebrated French surgeon once upon a time , who had the impoliteness to live ma house where such a case occurred , and even to write an account of it;—still they regard the late Mr . Krook ' s obstinacy , in going out of tho world by any such byeway , as
wholly unjustifiable and pe rsonally offensive . " . Humorous , but not convincing ! The authority of the Philosophical Transactions of 1750 can be brought into no chemical court of 1853 ; Beck ' s MedicalJurisprudence , though an excellent work , is only a work ot erudition , not of scientific authority ; the same of Fodere's MMccinc Ltgale ; the prebendary of Verona may have been a first-rate scholar , but you will not ask any one to accept his authority in chemistry—a man may be a giant among verbs "in M c" yet a child among oxides and anhydrous acids . Then , as to Le Cat , the fact of his " having lived in the house where such a case occurred" is evidence only to the fact ot combustion , not at all to the fact of the combustion having been spontaneous . In the house where he lived a hody was found burned . His
residence in no way alters the value of his evidence . The persons who were in the chateau where the last Prince de Conde was found hanging were witnesses to tho fact that he was found hanging , but could not testify on the point at issue—whether the Prince hanged himself or was murdered . Had you referred me to Professor Apjohn ' s article , Spontaneous Combustion , in the Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine , or to Dr . Marc ' s article in tho Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicales , it would have been more to the purpose ; but I repeat , if authority is to be brought into court it must bo decisively against you . You will refer mo to the historical evidence . Knowing how much
fiction is habitually mixed up with the sinceresfc evidence , and knowing also the difficulty of getting anything like satisfactory eviueneo on scientific or complex questions , tew thinking men are in the habit of attaching much importance to " reported cases . " With these misgivings I havo attentively read about forty cases of alleged Spontaneous Combustion , and I declare to you that there is not one which carries with it tho evidence necessary to shake a sceptic . It is miserable stuff for tho most part , to be thrown into tho lumber room with witchcraft evidence . Whenever it has any appearance of being reliable it goes to prove—that a man or woman was found burned ! How they were burned is not obvious . Hut ignorance of tlio caiwo if * no argument m favour of that cause being " spontaneous combustion ; " there is not a tittle of
evidence to prove spontaneity . Liebig SJiys : — " It is admitted that no one has ever been present during the combustion . Nono of tho physician * who collected the cuhcs , and attempted to explain them has ever observed the process , or ascertained what preceded the combustion , It ha * also been invariably nnaHcertnined how much of combustible matter w « w on tho Hpot . And , it is also unknown how much time had elapsed from the commencement of tlio ^ . > « i . ^ . i . __ . 1 . „ . „ 4-iw .. / i . niMiiitww ] luirlv WJlSt lOlimicombustion to the momentwhen the eon-nnned bodwas found
; . y " The descriptions of cases of death from spontaneous combustion , which belong to tho last century , aro not , certified by highly cultivated ,, 1 , vh . ci . « . h ; they ^ commonly proceed from ignorant persons , unpractised in observat . on , am bear m them-Belven the ntamp of nntru » tvvorthinesH . In these accounts , i . » usually Bt » lcd that tho body entirely disappears , down to a gm . sy HL ., i » on the floor ami Hjmio remainof bones Every one knows that this in hnposs . l . le lho « n , illent bit of hone , in tho fire , become * white , and 1 » hoh somewhat of its bulk , but of it _ weight there remains from 00 to ( H per cent , of earthy matter , commonly retaining tho form of the original bone . „ ° . u . Jit # * * *
-JP " ^ "A clown- examination of llm moat important of these three cases will sbow wbat is to be thought of it . II . is told by Unttiitflio . a Hur ^ eon in INmte llosio , ( a Hurgeon in Italy in tho year J 7 « 7 may be couriered hh equal to a buthor or rubber . )
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Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—they interpret and try to enforce them . — Edinburgh Itevitw .
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I ^ ebbuary 5 , 1853 . ] T S fi LEA D B ft . isy
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 5, 1853, page 137, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1972/page/17/
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