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locomotive ; and if he be ready at his post , the engine is in no danger . But , if he be sleeping or drunk , and cannot attend to his duties , the fire first becomes low , ( and that is fatigue , ) or it goes out ( and that is deaths ) and , after this , oxygen , still demanding fuel , attacks the combustible grate itself ( and that is decay . ) You remember that terrible story of the woman pursued by wolves , and forced to sacrifice her children one by one , to stay the ravenous enemy , and save the rest ? That is an image of our life ! We fling portions of our substance to the ravenous atmosphere , and when we have no more children to thrust between us and destruction , we succumb to it . Life is an incessant Decomposition and decomposition ; death is the cessation of Becomposition .
Having said so muck , it will be clear to the reader that if Alcohol destroys the power of Assimilation , it gives up the body to that destructive process of Decomposition , which is only held in check by fresh fuel " When Assimilation is destroyed , and when nearly all the fat in the body has rendered up its carbon as fuel , then the oxygen of the atmosphere attacks the tissues more vigorously , enters the breach no longer reparable , oxidizes particles of the brain , and ushers in Delirium Tremens in all his terrors ! The other authorities on your side talk very confidently of two possible sources of Spontaneous Combustion , a " saturation of the tissues with alcohol , " and a " generation of phosphuretted hydrogen gas . " I shall
show , — 1 st . That you cannot saturate the tissues with alcohol;—2 nd . That , if you could , it would not make the body one iota more combustible , and is , therefore , not admissible as a cause . 3 rd . That phosphuretted hydrogen is a gas not present , not possible , in the living body . 4 th . And that its presence , if proved , would not make the body combustible , would not render Spontaneous Combustion a whit more probable . Professor Apfohn tells us , " that the bodies of drunkards may become , observation
as it were , soaked with alcohol , seems fully established by . I regret to be forced to give a flat contradiction to a gentleman of Professor Apjohn's position , but observation cannot have established anything of the sort . Only a preconceived theory could have allowed him to keep out of view certain physiological laws , which make the proposition absurd . Saturate the tissues with alcohol , indeed ! Why , this is to suppose that the alcohol taken into the stomach actually remains as alcohol , and , as such , replaces , let us say , the water . Nothing of the kind ! Alcohol cannot remain . It is burned in the body , there and then . It is consumed in the lungs . Oxygen hungers for it , prefers it to the other food offered by the body , burns it before it thinks of burning the other
food ; and , when burnt , the alcohol is not alcohol , but carbonic acid and water . Precisely because the oxygen , which enters in every act of respi . ration , has a greater affinity for alcohol than for other food , the effect of spirituous liquors is injurious to the system , tending to impede the oxidation of the excrcmentitious matters which the blood contains , and which demand to be carried away . Alcohol , then , is not a thing which remains in the system ; although , to hear people talk as they do , of the tissues being soaked in it , one would fancy a hard-drinker became a sort of animated brandv-cask , containing , among the fluids of his body , tho
accumulations of a twelvemonth ' s indulgence . You will perceive , then , that no faith is to be placed in those statements , respecting the alcohol found , on dissection , in the tissues of drunkards . If there is any truth in these statements , we must suppose that the man died too soon , after drinking , for the alcohol to have been thoroughly consumed—a few more hours of respiration would have effaced every trace . Anatomists have never succeeded in detecting its presence , except in the brain , and there only an extremely minuto trace of it . Lot us hear no more about
saturating tho tissues with alcohol . Let us hear no more about it , not only because tho thing is absurd , but because if it were a fact , the fact would in nowise assist tho theory of Spontaneous Combustion . Make the man a brandy cask , lot tho ninety pounds of water necessary to his existence , bo turned into ninety pounds of brandy-and-water , saturate him with alcohol , let him soak in it , — his body still remains as incombustible as it was before ! Ignite the alcohol : there will be a blazo ; but it is the alcohol will burn , and not the body ! As I said belbro , we see the fact in snapdragon : raisins are steeped in alcohol ; the nleohol burns , the raisins do not . Nothing is simpler than this law : you cannot make an almost incombustible substance combustible by the presence of ono which burns readily . To make any substance combustible , you must remove from it those conditions which interfere with combustion : to burn flesh , you must roraovo the
water : Liebig says : — " Thin notion depends on an erroneous conception of combustibility , or on ignorance of the conditions of combustion . " We cannot render a substance which burns with difficulty easily
they were by themselves . The brandy burns away , and then the paper perhaps takes fire , but never till all the brandy has been burned off , and then not better than if it had not been steeped in brandy . The sponge , under these circumstances , does not burn . " In like manner , when a piece of flesh is thrown into boiling fat , and the fat is kindled , the , fat burns , but not the flesh . It is not fcindled , and does not continue to burn , even when the fat is all burned . Flesh is not rendered easily combustible by the presence of fat . " ' The mention of fat reminds me that it is the most combustible part of our flesh , yet fat will not ignite , except at a temperature of about 800 degrees F . To heat up the fat of a body to 800 degrees requires an intense heat applied for some time ; the mere transitory flame of a candle , or of a gas , will not do ; as you may easily satisfy yourself by trying to ignite the
tallow of a candle . I hope what has been said will be enough to convince you that the tissues cannot be sat urated with alcohol , and that if they could the body would not thereby he rendered more combustible . Let us now turn to phosphuretted hydrogen and those other unnamed but devoutly credited " inflammable gases" which are said to cause Spontaneous Combustion . " Many of the adherents of the theory of spontaneous combustion admit that in the healthy state a living body cannot take fire of itself and burn ; they assume that there exists a morbid state , in which , as products of diseased action , compounds are formed of much greater inflammability than is usually possessed by
animal matters . This is a mere fancy , without even the shadow of observation to support it . All nitrogenous bodies require for combustion a higher temperature than carbon or hydrogen . It is a peculiarity of these bodies , that by containing hydrogen they lose in a great measure their inflammability . On this account , nitrogenised compounds are not reckoned among combustibles . Ammonia , a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen , is no longer combustible ; it cannot be kindled by a red-hot body , and does not burn . Even phosphorus , in the phosphuret of nitrogen , loses its inflammability . We cannot imagine a nitrogenised body , which , by transformation , should yield compounds more inflammable than hydrogen , which requires a red heat to kindle it in the air . "
Not only is this notion without any facts to support it , but it is rebutted by all the facts we know , and these facts declare that phosphuretted hydrogen cannot be formed in the living body . Liebig says , that " phosphorus exists in the body in such a state as to yield by any process during life or after death phosphuretted hydrogen gas ; " by which I understand him to mean , that the phosphorus in the body ( with the trifling exception of what occurs in the nervous tissue , about one per cent , of the whole amount of phosphorus ) is in the shape of phosphoric acid and
cannot therefore form phosphuretted hydrogen . Moreover , this gas is not soluble , and could only exist in the intestines , if it existed anywhere , and it is so virulent a poison that it could only enter the blood to destroy life . I will not enter more minutely into this matter ; it is enough for any one who knows the structure of the human , body to picture it to his mind ' s eye , and he will then perceive how wide of any possibility is this notion of Spontaneous Combustion occurring from the formation of phosphuretted hydrogen . With one extract from Liebig I quit this
point : — " A butcher in Neuburg , ninety-nine years ago , had an ox which was sick and much swollen . When opened , there flowed out of the belly an inflammable air , which was kindled , and then burned with a flame five feet high . The same thing was observed by Morton in a dead pig , by Ruysch and Bailly in dead human bodies , which had been swollen in an extraordinary manner by the disengagement of gases . " Resting on these faicta , the adherents of the theory of spontaneous combustion assume that disease may produce a state of body in which a combustible gas is disengaged , which accumulates in the cellular tissue , and , when kindled by an external cause , by a flame , or b y tlie electric spark , affects tho combustion of the body . Wo may easily perceive that the c onclusion has no connexion with the facts on which it is grounded .
" 1 . The accumulation of gas in the cellular tissue has only been observed in dead bodies , and indeed in such as were far gone in putrefaction and enormously swollen . Besides , tho gas did not , in these cases , escape through the skin , till a cut was made through bkin and cellular tissue . Lastly , the gas indeed burned , when kindled , but the body was not thereby kindled : it had not becomo spontaneously combustible , or indeed combustible at all , and was not burned . " 2 . In such as are supposed to have died from spontaneous combustion , a swollen stato , sucU as is caused by accumulation of gaa , lias never been observed . " What has already been said of alcohol may be said of phosphuretted hydrogen ; by proving its existence you do not aid your theory . The
body , remains an obstinate fact—it is not readily combustible . The flame of the gas is no doubt higher than 800 degrees R , and ia ; i splendid means of kindling a substance really combustible—but that tho body is not . Tho question is not one of temperature only . The living body happens to be remarkably well protected , by the evaporation which takes place , from the momentary action of a very intense heat ; and if you hud seen Uoutigny toss about molten lead , after ho had moistened his hands , you would vividly realize this fact to your mind's eye ; . JJut siucc tho body is only to be burned by the continued application of intense heat , your phosphurotted hydrogen ( supposed to bo exhaled from tho lungs ) might ignite on contact with the air without doing more than singeing
the body . As my purpose in these letters is not to gain an idle victory , 1 ml . | , o meet on all sides what I boliove to bo an error , I will not omit here to mention a fact which may easily be misconceived and turned against me —• the fact that tho breath of spirit drinkers has somotinioBpreBonlod aluminous
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162 T H E LEADER . [ Saturday ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 12, 1853, page 162, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1973/page/18/
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