On spontaneous combustion / by Alexander Ogston.

  • Alexander Ogston
Date:
[1870]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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    action in different states of the system. To onr want of knowledge in this respect, we owe it that the subject of spontaneous combus¬ tion and of increased combustibility of the human body, has excited so much discussion, and given rise to so many differences of opinion. In many of the older writers, whose remarks were penned in the infancy of several of the sciences to wliich we now owe the great clearness and definiteness of our views of diseases and morbid states in general, there occur passages and details of cases leading to the question as to wdiether or not it is possible for the human body spontaneously to inflame, or, being once inflamed, spontaneously to continue to burn until the tissues are reduced to ashes. As facts and observations accumulated, the subject began, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, to be worked into some shape by many continental writers, and their investigations were still fur¬ ther rendered prominent by the subject being repeatedly, and in cases of extraordinary interest, brought before the public and the profession in the law courts. Among these writers may be men¬ tioned Lair, Yigne, Marc, Kopp, Lecat, and some twenty or thirty others, to whose researches w’e ovre it, that numerous and minutely detailed reports of occurrences bearing on this question have been collected and rendered accessible. During this period, a general interest, not confined to the medical profession, wns brought to bear on the subject, and the various periodicals, scientific and otherwise, teemed wnth cases, papers, and discussions, on so interesting a sub¬ ject. This interest and these investigations wnre continued into the earlier years of the nineteenth century, at which time we find medical jurists and medical men of the greatest eminence engaged in working out the problem, and contributing to a better under¬ standing of it. At this time, the belief in the possibility of such an occurrence w’as universal, w'ith the exception of an unexpressed scepticism in the minds of the profession in England, with whom the notion of such a possibility has been at no time general or popular. And in the nineteenth century, the same belief in the facts advanced, and concurrence in the conclusions drawm, w^re the result of the scrutiny wTich the subject underwent in the hands of such men as Eodere, Orfila, Gordon Smith, Earis, Briand, Breschet, Devergie, Henke, Apjohn, and a host of others. Dupuytren, who also gave his attention to it, was, however, inclined to believe that tliere existed merely an increased combustibility of the tissues in certain cases, and not, as had been assumed, a capacity for occasional spon¬ taneous i£s:nition. The new school of legal medicine, originated in Germany by Caspar, refused any belief to either of these views, and his opinions were confirmed by Liebig, wdio in 1850 published a pamphlet on the subject, setting forth, as had previously been mentioned by
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