Abstract
DR. JOHN KNOTT has published in the New York Medical Journal (April 17 and 24) an article on spontaneous combustion, with the object of showing that the cases of death reported as occurring from that cause are mere fancy legends which were partly the result of ignorance and mainly of imagination. Many years ago Liebig, and later Casper, wrote treatises with the same object; but Dr. Knott's contribution is not devoid of interest, if only for the exhibition of gentle sarcasm with which he attacks the writings and statements of past Fellows of the Royal Society and others of equal standing who lent the sanction of their names to these idle fables. He does not include among his cases the one which is probably best known to English readers, namely, the celebrated case of Mr. Krook recorded by Dickens in “Bleak House.” The evidence in favour of spontaneous-combustion as the cause of Mr. Krook's death is just about as convincing (or the reverse) as in the majority of the others.
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Spontaneous Combustion . Nature 81, 268 (1909). https://doi.org/10.1038/081268b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/081268b0