A Temperance Tract

Borne years ago a story, supposed to ■ be one of those convenient, niade-up j ríes whieh help to fill out the bottom of a ne.wspaper column, went the rounds of j the press, and died away at last ir the extreme rural districts, about the j taneous burning up of an old Teuneaseo toper. It was said that he put a coal of fire upon his pipe to light it, and whilo in the act of blowing the coal to ignite the tobáceo his breath took fire, a kind qf blue flame and dense smoke curled p, and in a minute or two the smoke leared away, and all that was left of oper, pipe, breath and all was a heap of shes. Nobody seriously believed the story of ' he Tennessee toper, and yet when one omes to look into the matter he will fiud that in different parts of the civilzed world cases of sponteneous combusion of the living human body are on ecord which nre as well authenticated as the battle of Bunker Hill. Medical men have been acquainted with such facts f or years. Moreover, cases in which j sons have thus anticipated purgatory, and at the same time disposed of their bodies by involuntary selfcremation, are by no means so uncommon as one might suppose. Various medical books mention numbers and numbers of them, about which there can be no shadow of doubt. The cause of suchan extraordinary phenomenon as the spontaneous burning up nf , live human beina: was at first an enetrable mystery. Juries summoned n these cases readily arrived at the j -!8t and eaiest way out of the difiiculty, T md decided tliat it carne by a " , ion of God;" and even now, when , ations of God are not supposed to be so ] frequent as they used to be, the rnystery of spontaneous combustión is not yet j wholly sclved by seience. This ïnueh is , certain, however: it occurs in eldeily , persons of intemperate habits. Both very lean and very fat drunkards are liable to be burnt up. Thirdly, women partieularly are apt to be taken out of the world in this awful mannerDeath from spontaneous combustión, or, as it used to be called, ' ' preternatural combustión by visitation of God," is almost instantaneous. One moment the unfortunate individual is a live human being; the next moment he is a heap of ashes and a bad smell, with perhaps an ifem or two of a half-consumed head or foot left to teil what had been. There is but one well-established instance in which the spontaneously consumed person lived long enough to nárrate how he ■was attacked. That individual was a Roman Oatholic priest, Father Bertholi. Father Bertholi retired to bed one evening m the house of a relative. A few moments af ter, "a strange noise, mingled with cries, was heard from the room." The people of the house mshed in, and beheld Father Bertholi standing on' the íloor, surrounded by a strange, flickering flame, which receded as they carne near, like a will-o'-the-wisp. A surgeon was called, who found the skin of the nsht arm and of the back ened and hanging down. The patiënt lived f onr days, and died in a most horrible manner.too horrible to describe. The only account he could give of the attack was that he had j denly feit a blow upon the right arm, as if he had suddenly been strack with a club. On looking at his arm he saw a spaik of tire hanging to his sleeve, which instantly was burnt off his arm. His cap was also burnt off, while his hair wasnot even scorched. In this case there was no ñre or light in the room. One case of "preternatural combusion." wl ich occurred something over sixty years ago, served an excellent purpose to our good friendsthe Methodists, who printed it far and wide and made a truly awful example of it. The medical man who records this caso is at pains to state in the beginning that he does not Jepend solely for his facts upon the Methodist Magazine, or even upon tho Wesleyan minister who first told the story, but that it was confirmed from other sources. The story of this truly awful example is about thus : Near 2 o'clock one night the keeper of an alms-house in Linierick was awakened by one of the iiimates in great alarm. There was something f earful going on in bis room, the person said. The keeper, Mr. O'Neil, hastened to the spot, and found lying in the middle of the Hoor a burning human body, which was all over of the color of a red-hot eoal. In the ceiling just above was a large hole, on tire around the edges, through which it appeared that the flery red-hot body had burned its way and dropped down iuto the room of the inmate below. The person occupying the room above was an old woman named Mrs. Peacocko, who was notonly a hardened sinner, but an invetérate drunkard besides. Mr. O'Neil rushed up-stairs and burst open this hardened old sinner's door. In this room he found ta his consternation no Mrs. Peacocke, but only a hole in the floor through which Mrs. Peacocke liad burned her way to the nether regions. What only ad(ed to this horror was that in Mrs. Peacocke's room there was fouud no sigu of candle, niiidlestick or tire, except a few coals which had been raked tog.ther and covered with ashes, i to keep in through the night, and which remained undisturbed and uncovered in the grate. It was clear as dayliglit tlmt the öre could not have been communicated from these coals. Wliat was it Uien ? There -was bnt one explanation. In the rnoming the Mayor of the city, several ministers and other honorablestanding and veracious gentlemen visited the sceno and decided to the complete satisfaction of all parties that since there was no sign of her having caught fire froin anything in her room, and "the extraordinary circumstance of no part of the room being burned except the ter of it, through which she had fallen, added to the well authenticated circumstance of her recent diabolical imprecations and lies, obliged evevy observer to resolve so awful an event into the visitatiou of God's jndgmcnt in the punishment of a daring and persevering simier." When any fíame is observed about these spontaneouriy burning human bodies, it appears like the flame of alcohol, blue, flickering, very difflcult to extinguish by water, and not readily communicated to other bodies, even when they are innaminable. Often, indeed, extraordinary to relate, the person's clothing has been found wholly uninjured, wliile the person inside the clothing was burnt to a einder. The body itself is usually entirely consumed, wliile the head and portions of the limbs are sometimes left untouched. The maid of Cornelia Bandi, an elderly Italian Countess, went into her mistress' room to wake her up, one morning. She found no mistress, but upon the floor, a little distance from the i bed, lay a heap of ashes, and in this dreadful heap of ashes some little parts of the head, eyes and arms of the unhappy Countess. This lady had been constantly in the habit of bathing her i body with camphorated spirit of wine. All over the room and furniture where ] the Countess had been consumed, there i was a greaay, sooty deposit. This moist, ! disagreeable deposit of soot, ad an offensive odor of btirnt ïneat, always attend and result froin the spontaneous combustión of a human body. An examination of the blood of these unf ortunates that is, where there is any blood left to examine - shows that a considerable quantity is mingledwith the watery part of the blood. Eev. Mr. Ferguson, oi Dublin, relates that in the family of one of his parishioners, resided an o'ld woman who, with her daughter, was in the habit of goiiig to bed in a state of iutoxicationeverynight, The two slept in the same bed. The old woman, for some days, had been drinking more ardent spirits than usual, when one morning the family were awakened by a smelling smoke. They hastened to the apartment of the two j men, and founcl the body of the old I man black as a einder, and smoking all over. She was quite dead when they j reached her, and almost entirely consumed, while neither her daughter, who was beside her, nor any of the bed clothing was injured in the slightest degi-ee. One poor lady was awfully overtaken iu the midst of a matrimonial squabble. One night her husband carne home late from a party, and the two quarreled j lently, both being in ft state of iutoxication. The wife insisted upon aitting up, the husband upon going to bed. She persisted in her determination, whereupou her husband vowed that if she wouLl sit up, she should sit up in the dark, and so took her candle away and left her. Next morning Üie maid-servant, opening the windows of the back parlor, pe.-ceived something in her mistress' arm chair. She thought at first it had been put there by her mistress' son, as a soare-crow to frighten her. Going nearer, however, she was suddenly horror-struck to flnd that this awf ui " something " was the remains of her hapless mistress. The trunk of her body was PTitirplv oonsumed. while her upper and lower èxtremities were not injured. The trunkless head, witli the hair in curl papers, was still leaning upon the right hand and against the wall. The face was slightly scorched; but neither the liair nor the curl-papers were burnt in the least. The room was full of the offtnsive burnt odor bef ore mentioned. It was only with the greatest difficulty that the medical profession were able to reach the facts of this case, smce the family of the dead woman used every means in their power to lmsh the affair up. No wonder ! When a human being takes flre inside and bums up of himself, how doeshe do it? The world, especially the medical part of it, having outgrown the theory of the visitetion of God on this subject, it became necessary to account for spontaneous combustión on ratioaal principies. This theory and that have been held by different persons, but the most plausible one seeirs to be that thé combustión is caused by the explosión of inflammable gases generated in a diseased and depraved organization. The body i of a patiënt who died in a hospital in France was examined, and when perforations were made in various parts of it, a gas issued therefrom which took flre I from the flames of a candle. The body of a living human being sometimes becomes so diseased that its natural secretions are depraved and perverted. In this state it is supposed that certain innam mable gases are generated, which, mingling with air and oxygen, form explosive mixtures inside the hu' man body. The generation of these is attended with heat, and off your drunkard goes, pop ! and nothing is left 1 of him but a greasy smoke and a heap of