Temperance prize essays / By Drs. Mussey and Lindsly.

Date:: 1835

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Temperance prize essays / By Drs. Mussey and Lindsly. Source: Wellcome Collection.

165/210 (page 159)

all a hed , OF DRUNKARDS. 159 sented to human view, but his shrieks, his cries, and lamentations, were enough to rend a heart of adamant. He complained of no pain of body— his flesh was gone. He said he was suffering the torments of hell; that he was just upon its thres- hold, and should soon enter its dismal caverns ; and in this frame of mind gave up the ghost. O, the death of adrunkard! ‘Well may it be said to beggar all description. I have seen other drunkards die, but never in a manner so awful and affecting. They usually go off senseless and: stupid as it regards a future state!’ This whole subject is one of great interest to the philosophic inquirer, and deserves further and more scientific investigation than has yet been bestowed upon it. Various theories have been proposed to account for this singular phenomenon. Some have supposed it was owing to the formation of phosphuretted hydrogen in the body. ‘This gas, it is well known, will take fire on exposure to the air; but there seems no proof that (if found at all in the human system), it is produced in such quantities as to account for the combustion of the whole body. We must therefore content ourselves with declaring our ignorance as to the causes of spontaneous combustion ; although there can be no doubt, after all the evidence that has been adduced on this subject, that such instances have actually occurred.* *T am indebted to Professor Silliman for the following remark :—‘*The entire body having become saturated with alcohol absorbed into all its tissues, becomes highly inflammable, as indicated by the vapor which reeks from the breath and lungs of a drunkard: this vapor, doubt- less highly alcoholic, may take fire, and then the body slowly consume.’