Essay Sample on Spontaneous Human Combustion

Introduction

Spontaneous human combustion is a strange condition that involves rare cases of reported combustion of living human body in the absence of any external source of ignition. Examples of these cases or phenomenon appear in literature, and in many occurrences, the observed incidences shared common characteristics. Various authors have explained spontaneous human combustion in different approaches. This paper uses specific aspects both scientific and non-scientific to discuss spontaneous human combustion.

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In the mysterious case of drinking and spontaneous human combustion, a woman who found solace in alcohol after the demise of her husband is found dead in her flat. An observer report the woman muscles, skin, and viscera were burnt completely, and the bones of skull, spine, and breast were covered with ashes, and only one leg remained intact. The preliminary investigation on her death showed suspected perpetrator as spontaneous human combustion (Curtis, 2016). More cases continued to occur; by 1847 about fifty instances had been recorded. As an interesting victims were found to be intemperate drinkers. There had been persistent and consistent belief in the 18th and 19th century that beverage alcohol could change to highly flammable gas through mysterious transmutation within the human body.

When all cases of spontaneous human combustion were reviewed, there were many similarities; most of the victims were elderly over sixty years, overweight and alcoholics. The burning is found to be extremely fast but does not damage or burn the surroundings (Naughton, 2011). Most of the alcoholic drinks related to human combustion included rum, whiskey, brandy, and gin. However, most of the cases reported were scientific bent and could not be fully supported notion. Even though people profess that SHC could occur, it is was difficult to determine the science behind. However, this idea of an individual could turn to fireball at any given time persisted up to 1928 but changed to preternatural combustibility. However, fake news and misinformation do not just appear when there exists a pool of ignorance but rather become an invariant part of an ecosystem of complex motives. An individual cannot make a rational decision on whether to drink or not based on misinformed conception. Naughton, (2011), says the correlation of human combustion to drinkers and age is a big lie, and misconception, as there was no scientific research, had been done on it.

One fundamental question to be answered is whether fire ignites on their own. Evidently, does not because, even when investigators search for the cause of forest fire, they do not presume flame started on its own. The conception is that careless campers or lightning strike could have caused it. However, there are many things which can burn on their own even without exposure to flames under compelling circumstances like piles of composed oily used rags, or even coal (Radford, 2018).

However, the idea that a person can burst into flames for no apparent reason under-look those circumstances. The mystery of human combustion lies in the situation in which the victim's burn. Under these strange circumstances, there is no source of fire; there is no open fire that could set victim in flames, but people burn into ashes.

Most of these claims are wrong since according to fire forensic, many fires are self-limiting in that they extinguish themselves naturally due to running out of fuels. Similarly, as Radford (2018) provides, it is difficult to believe that fire could choose to burn certain things and leaves the others in the same vicinity.

For instance, fire burn upwards and not outward, one would ask whether is it possible to find the victim in single room burned to death whereas the rest of the room has little to no smoke? And what is the source of ignition? What could make people ignite into flames? There is an old myth that relates this strange occurrence to God's wrath and intemperance. Most cases of those burst to flames are claimed to be drunkards and could have saturated their cells with alcohol. Some people still argue that a gas producing intestinal bacteria, the build-up of body's like vibrational energy or cosmic storms and could ignite the human body (Radford, 2018). However, all the given explanations are pseudoscientific as there exists no evidence of any claim. The human body is formed by 70 to 80 percent of non-flammable water, and the fact is that there exists no physical or biological mechanism in which an individual could self-combust.

The historical events of human combustion in the 17th and the 18th century were tainted with mystics and religious perspectives that explained SHC was a punishment from God due to the lousy vice of drinking alcohol. However, there exists a more current scientific explanation of the spontaneous human combustion known as wick effect theory. Stephanie & Mark (2005) assert that the theory relates human body and clothing to a candle where clothing acts as a wick to burn human fat.

Conclusion

Human fat is the most flammable element of the human body, though bone, bone marrow, and soft tissue could too burn when dehydrated and exposed to fire. However, the mentioned components are unevenly distributed in the human body and midsection contains the highest amount of fat or rather fat content. Most of the fat content is accumulated around thighs, buttocks, and abdomen. Further investigations show that those are the main areas consumed by spontaneous combustion. Specific experiments were done in the laboratory to support the wick effect theory. This experiment shows that once ignited, body fat wrapped in layers of skin and light clothing could burn slowly with no visible flame, however, the theory has its weakness, since living human beings do not spontaneously burst into flames.

References

Curtis, W. (2016,). The mysterious case of drinking & spontaneous human combustion: How celebrities, dubious science, and teetotallers fostered fake news to advance the temperance movement. The Daily Beast

NAUGHTON, G. (2011,). Spontaneous human combustion a 'myth'. Irish Times

Radford, B. (2018). Spontaneous Human Combustion: Facts & Theories. Retrieved from https://www.livescience.com/42080-spontaneous-human-combustion.html

Stephanie, W. & Mark, M. "How Spontaneous Human Combustion Works" 2 March 2005. Retrieved from https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/unexplained-phenomena/shc.htm 28 October 2018