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As recent as March, 1850, in a Court of Assizes in Darmstadt during the trial of John Stauff, accused of the murder of the Countess Goerlitz, the counsel for the defense advanced the theory of spontaneous human combustion, and such eminent doctors as von Siebold, Graff, von Liebig, and other prominent members of the Hessian medical fraternity were called to comment on its possibility; principally on their testimony a conviction and life-imprisonment was secured.
The coal, on falling upon a mass in a state of ignition, distills and becomes transformed into coke, which gradually slides down over a grate to produce afterward, through its own combustion, a distillation of the coal following it. But as these are features found in all generators we will not dwell upon them.
"Chemistry," he began, "has shown us that man's breathing is a real process of combustion, and the intensity of its action varies according to the abundance or scarcity of the phlogistic element stored up by the organism of each individual.
It is important to remember that this hydrogen is the only thing in nature which furnishes water as the sole product of combustion. And now we must endeavour to find some additional proof of the general character and composition of water; and for this purpose I will keep you a little longer, so that at our next meeting we may be better prepared for the subject.
The farm-house makes no pretensions, but it has a good warm kitchen, at any rate, and one can be comfortable there with the rest of the family, without fear and without reproach. These lesser country-houses of genteel aspirations are much given to patent subterfuges of one kind and another to get heat without combustion.
We have seen that the old Aryans perhaps kindled the solstitial and other ceremonial fires in part as sun-charms, that is, with the intention of supplying the sun with fresh fire; and as these fires were usually made by the friction or combustion of oak-wood, it may have appeared to the ancient Aryan that the sun was periodically recruited from the fire which resided in the sacred oak.
So then, in the year 400 we find the world in this condition: western Europe going "With hideous ruin and combustion down To bottomless perdition;" The next step is China; to which now after all these centuries we return.
At the foot of the steep bank on which Lambert and his captors stood the crust had caved, giving the fire air to hasten its ravages. The mass of slow-moving fire glowed red and intense, covered in places by its own ashes, now sending up sudden clouds of smoke as an indraft of air livened the combustion, now smoldering in sullen dullness, throwing off a heat that made the horses draw back.
Q. What other plans have been contrived for obviating the nuisance of smoke? A. They are too various for enumeration, but most of them either operate upon the principle of admitting air into the flues to accomplish the combustion of the uninflammable parts of the smoke, or seek to attain the same object by passing the smoke over or through the fire or other incandescent material.
Some were of opinion that coal-dust and air alone were of an explosive nature, whilst others thought that alone they were not, but that the addition of a small quantity of fire-damp rendered the mixture explosive. An important conclusion was come to, that, with the combustion of coal-dust alone, there was little or no concussion, and that the flame was not of an explosive character.
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