History of Spontaneous Human Combustion
Many people feel that Spontaneous Human Combustion was first documented in such early texts as the Bible, but, scientifically speaking, these accounts are too old and secondhand to be seen as reliable evidence.
Over the past 300
years, there have been more than 400 reports of persons burning to a crisp
for no apparent reason.
The first reliable historic evidence of Spontaneous Human Combustion appears
to be from the year 1673, when Frenchman Jonas Dupont published a collection
of Spontaneous Human Combustion cases and studies entitled De Incendiis
Corporis Humani Spontaneis.
Dupont was inspired
to write this book after encountering records of the Nicole Millet case,
in which a man was acquitted of the murder of his wife when the court
was convinced that she had been killed by spontaneous combustion.
Millet, a hard-drinking Parisian was found reduced to ashes in his straw
bed, leaving just his skull and finger bones. The straw matting was only
lightly damaged. Dupont's book on this strange subject brought it out
of the realm of folkloric rumor and into the popular public imagination.