In a memoir lately read before the Académie des Sciences, the following are stated to be the chief circumstances connected with spontaneous combustion. “1. The greater part of the persons who have fallen victims to it, have made an immoderate use of alcoholic liquors. 2. The combustion is almost always general, but sometimes is only partial. 3. It is much rarer among men than among women, and they are principally old women. There is but one case of the combustion of a girl seventeen years of age, and that was only partial. 4. The body and the viscera are invariably burnt, while the feet, the hands, and the top of the skull almost always escape combustion. 5. Although it requires several fagots to burn a common corpse, incineration takes place in these spontaneous combustions without any effect on the most combustible matters in the neighbourhood. In an extraordinary instance of a double combustion operating upon two persons in one room, neither the apartment nor the furniture was burnt. 6. It has not been at all proved that the presence of an inflamed body is necessary to develop spontaneous human combustions. 7. Water, so far from extinguishing the flame, seems to give it more activity; and when the flame has disappeared, secret combustion goes on. 8. Spontaneous combustions are more frequent in winter than in summer. 9. General combustions are not susceptible of cure, only partial. 10. Those who undergo spontaneous combustion are the prey of a very strong internal heat. 11. The combustion bursts out all at once, and consumes the body in a few hours. 12. The parts of the body not attacked are struck with mortification. 13. In persons who have been attacked with spontaneous combustion, a putrid degeneracy takes place which soon leads to gangrene.” In this singular malady medicine is of no avail. The combustion is kept up by causes apparently beyond the reach of remedy, and in almost every case, life is extinct before the phenomenon is perceived. CHAPTER XIII. DRUNKENNESS JUDICIALLY CONSIDERED.