A species of combustion without flame, and analogous to that which has been described, is exhibited in the extraordinary phenomenon of the spontaneous combustion of living bodies. That animal bodies are liable to internal combustion, is a fact which was well known to the ancients. Many cases which have been adduced as examples of spontaneous combustion are merely cases of individuals who were highly susceptible of strong electrical excitation. In one of these cases, however, Peter Bovisteau asserts, that the sparks of fire thus produced, reduced to ashes the hair of a young man; and John de Viana informs us, that the wife of Dr. Freilas, physician to the Cardinal de Royas, Archbishop of Toledo, emitted by perspiration an inflammable matter of such a nature, that when the ribbon which she wore over her shift was taken from her, and exposed to the cold air, it instantly took fire, and shot forth like grains of gunpowder. Peter Borelli has recorded a fact of the very same kind respecting a peasant whose linen took fire, whether it was laid up in a box when wet, or hung up in the open air. The same author speaks of a woman who, when at the point of death, vomited flames; and Thomas Bartholin mentions this phenomenon as having often happened to persons who were great drinkers of wine or brandy. Ezekiel de Castro mentions the singular case of Alexandrinus Megetius, a physician, from one of whose vertebræ there issued a fire which scorched the eyes of the beholders; and Krantzius relates, that during the wars of Godfrey of Bouillon, certain people of the territory of Nevers were burning with invisible fire, and that some of them cut off a foot or a hand where the burning began, in order to arrest the calamity. Nor have these effects been confined to man. In the time of the Roman consuls Gracchus and Juventius, a flame is said to have issued from the mouth of a bull without doing any injury to the animal.