On spontaneous combustion / by Alexander Ogston.

  • Ogston, Alexander, 1844-1929.
Date:
[1870]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On spontaneous combustion / by Alexander Ogston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    1/18
    Reprinted from the ‘ British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review,^ Jan.y 1870. STION. BY ALEXANDER OGSTON, M.D. Aberdeen ; ASSISTANT-PEOFESSOR OF MEDICAL JUEISPEDDENCE IN THE HNIVEESITY OF ABEEDEEN, AND OPHTHALMIC SHEQ-EON TO THE ABEEDEEN EOYAL INFIEMAEY, ETC. Eamiliar as we are with the minutest details of the structures forming the human body, we have still much to learn regarding their physical and chemical properties. In some important points, our knowledge of these properties amounts to almost nothing, so that many questions have to be left unanswered, and, indeed, will not be capable of being answered, until we shall have learnt more of them. To take one or two of such still unanswered questions, in which observation has abundant space to assist the judgment, and in which exqieriment could not fail to solve the problem, we have still before us the unanswered inquiry as to whether the entrance and exit wounds of projectiles from small arms really show the marked dif¬ ferences so long described by every writer on surgery. On this subject observations have been numerous, but have also been con¬ tradictory; but, on the other hand, a few experiments, where the observer was in a position to modify the circumstances and eliminate sources of error, could not fail to determine whether the physical properties of the tissues, or the different forms and velocities of the projectiles, were the causes of the differences of opinions prevailing on this point. Another point about which we are still in the dark is whether, apart from muscular action, dead bones are more difficult to frac¬ ture than those in a living subject? It has been stoutly main¬ tained by some (Caspar) that a pistol bullet, capable of penetrating the skull of a living person, will, if projected with the same force and velocity, and under the same circumstances, barely indent the cranium of a dead body. In this, too, we obviously stand in need of increased knowledge of the physical pro})erties of our tissues. Nor are we on a better footing as regards the chemical properties of our frame. We are still ignorant of the extent to which fire is