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From: cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Re: Spontaneous Combustion and people!
Message-ID: <473@kontron.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 20-Jan-86 20:21:14 EST
Article-I.D.: kontron.473
Posted: Mon Jan 20 20:21:14 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 23-Jan-86 08:30:13 EST
References: <434@well.UUCP> <18400017@convexs> <4733@hlexa.UUCP>
Organization: Kontron Electronics, Irvine, CA
Lines: 22

> > 
> > >	I have been hearing recently about a suppossed phenomenom where
> > > certain people have suppossedly spontaneously combusted. Usually their
> > > charred remains are found. I would appreciate any information that people
> > > might have regarding this suppossed phenomenom.
> 
> I have to believe this discussion was originally motivated by the
> current presentation on PBS of Dickens' "Bleak House." Dickens has
> one of the characters die by spontaneous combustion.  I couldn't figure
> out what was supposed to have happened to him, until the host,
> Alister Cook, introducing the next episode, explained that the author
> had made use of this folk belief.
> 
> -- Henry Friedman

See the book _Fire_From_Heaven_: _A_Study_of_Spontaneous_Human_Combustion_.
I don't remember the author's name, but he's a respectable historian of
Victorian times.  Cases cited in the book including a number of thoroughly
studied cases in the United States in the 1950s.  The author is quite
ready to admit that it just isn't possible.  He just can't figure out
what to do with the cases, some of them witnessed in this century by
credible witnesses.