BURNING, the action of fire on some pabulum or fuel, by which the minute parts thereof are put into a violent motion, and some of them assuming the nature of fire themselves, fly off in orbem, while the rest are dissipated in form of vapour, or reduced to ashes.
Extraordinary Cases of BURNING. We have instances of persons burnt by fire kindled within their own bodies. A woman at Paris, who used to drink brandy to excess, was one night reduced to ashes by a fire from within, all but her head and the ends of her fingers. Signora Corn. Zangari, or, as others call her, Corn. Bandi, an aged lady, of an unblemished life, near Cesena in Romagna, underwent the same fate in March 1731. She had retired in the evening into her chamber somewhat indisposed; and in the morning was found in the middle of the room reduced to ashes, all except her face, legs, skull, and three fingers. The stockings and shoes she had on were not burnt in the least. The ashes were light; and, on pressing between the fingers, vanished,
Burning. vanished, leaving behind a gross stinking moisture, with which the floor was smeared; the walls and furniture of the room being covered with a moist cineritious foot, which had not only stained the linen in the chests, but had penetrated into the closet, as well as into the room overhead, the walls of which were moistened with the same viscous humour.—We have various other relations of persons burnt to death in this unaccountable manner.
Sig. Mondini, Bianchini, and Maffei, have written treatises expressly to account for the cause of so extraordinary an event: common fire it could not be, since this would likewise have burnt the bed and the room; besides that it would have required many hours, and a vast quantity of fuel, to reduce a human body to ashes; and, after all, a considerable part of the bones would have remained entire, as they were anciently found after the fiercest funeral fires. Some attribute the effect to a mine of sulphur under the house; others, to a miracle; while others suspect that art or villainy had a hand in it. A philosopher of Verona maintains, that such a conflagration might have arisen from the inflammable matters where-with the human body naturally abounds. Sig. Bianchini accounts for the conflagration of the lady above mentioned, from her using a bath or lotion of camphorated spirit of wine when she found herself out of order. Maffei supposes it owing to lightning, but to lightning generated in her own body, agreeable to his doctrine, which is, That lightning does not proceed from the clouds, but is always produced in the place where it is seen and its effects perceived. We have had a late attempt to establish the opinion, that these destroying internal fires are caused in the entrails of the body by inflamed effluvia of the blood; by juices and fermentations in the stomach; by the many combustible matters which abound in living bodies for the purposes of life; and, finally, by the fiery evaporations which exhale from the settlements of spirit of wine, brandies, and other hot liquors, in the tunica villosa of the stomach and other adipose or fat membranes; within which those spirits engender a kind of camphor, which in the night-time, in sleep, by a full respiration, are put in a stronger motion, and are more apt to be set on fire. Others ascribe the cause of such persons being set on fire to lightning; and their burning so entirely, to the greater quantity of phosphorus and other combustible matter they contained.—For our own part, we can by no means pretend to explain the cause of such a phenomenon: but for the interests of humanity we wish it could be derived from something external to the human body; for if, to the calamities of human life already known, we superadd a suspicion that we may unexpectedly and without the least warning be consumed by an internal fire, the thought is too dreadful to be borne.