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Spontaneous Human Combustion
Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Spontaneous Human Combustion is a belief that the human body can sometimes burn without any external source of ignition. There are numerous controversies regarding Spontaneous Human Combustion, as it is an unproven natural phenomenon. However, over the past 300 years, there have been more than 200 reports of persons burning to a crisp for no evident cause.

Many people think that Spontaneous Human Combustion was first credentialed in such early texts as the Bible, but, scientifically, these accounts are too old and used to be seen as dependable evidence.

The first authentic historical evidence of Spontaneous Human Combustion seems to be from the year 1673, when Frenchman Jonas Dupont printed a collection of Spontaneous Human Combustion cases and studies titled De Incendiis Corporis Humani Spontaneis. Dupont was inspired to publish this book after finding records of the Nicole Millet case, in which a man was cleared of the murder of his wife when the court was confident that she had been killed by spontaneous combustion. Millet, an alcoholic Parisian was found reduced to ashes in his straw bed, leaving just his skull and finger bones. The straw mat was only gently damaged. Dupont's book on this unusual subject brought it out of the land of folkloric hearsay and into the popular public imagination.

The physical possibilities of Spontaneous Human Combustion are very small. Not only is the body largely water, but apart from fat tissue and methane gas, there isn't much that combusts promptly in a human body. To burn a human body it needs a temperature of 1600 degrees Fahrenheit for about two hours. To get a chemical response in a human body that would extend to inflammation would necessitate some doing. If the dead person had lately consumed a tremendous amount of hay that was infested with bacteria, enough heat might be generated to fire up the hay, but not much besides the gut and intestines would probably burn. Alternatively, if the deceased had been consuming the newspaper and drunk some oil, and was left to decompose for a couple of weeks in a room, his bowel might catch fire. In each of these absurd premises, additional oxygen would have to be introduced. These possibilities are so implausible that I have no cause to consider they, or anything like them, has ever happened.

Related Links:

• CSICOP article on spontaneous human combustion
• "Spontaneous Human Combustion" - from the Skeptic's Dictionary
• A BBC article describing the experiment
• Article on causes of spontaneous human combustion including history.
• Spontaneous Human Combustion an Anomalies Study.
• Spontaneous Human Combustion or SHC from SpookyFiles.
• Matthew Alice's Straight from the Hip column on spontaneous human combustion
• Article on causes of spontaneous human combustion including history
• Pardon Me, While I Burst Into Flames

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Posted byParvez Ahmed at 1:36 AM    

Labels: offbeat, others

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