Men Burn Spontaneously

When Dickens used so effectively the spontaneous combustión of the kuinan body as a climax for a novel, he had back of him a great deal of evidence that such a ruiracle had aetually taken place. In au article on "The Pathology of Man, " in the old French "Encyclopedie Methodique, " D'Azyr gives the case of a woinan 50 years of age who had niade a practice of going to bed drunk every day for niany years. Her bones were finally found in the bed with the flesh charred from theni, as scientists supposed, by spontaneous combustión. The somewhat similar case of Grace Pitt is given in the transactions of the English Royal society. She was the wife of a ñshmonger who lived at Ipswich, and she was found stretched on the kitchen floor by her daughter, burning, the girl said, "without flames. " Her body and legs resembled smoldering coals and when water was thrown on her gave forth the odor of scorched flesh, accompanied by a suffocating snioke. The girl ran from the house and called in the neighbors, who found nothing but bones and charred flesh left of the woman. She, too, had been a hard drinker. A third case, given in a French essay, is that of Mme. de Boiseon, 80 years old, who lived near Dol. It is said she was very lean and that for several years she had drank nothing but spirits. Herwaiting maid found her burning in her room, the fire in her case, as in the others, seeming to originate in the flesh itself and not in the xlothing. "Water thrown on her f ailed to check the fire, and she burned until nothing but her skeleton remained in the chair. The chair itself was onlv slightly