Human Combustion Explanation
By tony leather, 26th Aug 2012 | Follow this author
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Posted in WikinutNewsScience
The amazing thing is that, in a typical example, legs will remain untouched, as will surrounding objects, and this is the real mystery of this phenomenon.
Human Combustion Explanation
Cambridge professor Brian J Ford - research biologist and author of more than 30 books - has addressed the issue of spontaneous human combustion by using belly pork as an experimental medium
Most his works are involved with cell biology and microscopy but he has turned his attention to the mechanisms behind why people explode, one minute relaxing in a chair, the next erupting in fireballs - an exaggeration perhaps - though jets of blue fire do shoot from the bodies, which within a short time are reduced to piles of ash.
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The amazing thing is that, in a typical example, legs will remain untouched, as will surrounding objects, and this is the real mystery of this phenomenon, dating back to 1641 - Danish doctor and mathematician Thomas Bartholin at that time describing the strange death of Polonus Vorstius.
He was apparently drinking wine at his Milan home in Italy, one evening in 1470, before being consumed by flames. That was the first of many recorded incidences, the latest having been that of 76-year-old Michael Faherty - who died on December 22, 2010, his demise recorded officially as spontaneous human combustion by West Galway coroner Ciaran McLoughlin.
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Professor Ford was not convinced that alcohol was always to blame, but also wanted to test the so-called wick effect suggested in 1961 by London coroner Gavin Thurston - describing how human fat normally burns at about 250 degrees Celsius, but if melted will combust on a wick at room temperatures, rather like a candle.
To test these points Ford marinated pork abdominal tissue in ethanol for a week, but found that even when cloaked in alcohol soaked gauze it would not burn - alcohol not normally present in human tissue, though the human body does create the highly flammable acetone within the tissues, under certain health conditions which induce ketosis.
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Indeed, when the same kind of belly pork tissue was marinated in acetone, rather than ethanol, then used to make scale models of humans, which the professor clothed and then set alight, he found that they burned to ash within half an hour, suggesting strongly that spontaneous human combustion is a natural occurrence if certain conditions all align at the same time, especially with regard to health. Definite food for thought, I believe.
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