A couple in India claim their baby has been on fire four times as a result of so-called spontaneous human combustion (SHC). Doctors at the Kilpauk Medical College Hospital in Tamil Nadu are treating the child for burns and are concerned that he may suffer further burns in the future.
While spontaneous combustion is a phenomenon known to happen to certain materials such as hay, coal and even pistachio nuts, SHC is generally believed to be a myth. Humans are mostly water and do not simply burst into flames. Furthermore, there hasn’t been any scientific proof or documentation that spontaneous human combustion is actually a real thing.
That said, there is at least one accomplished biology professor – a fellow at the University of Cambridge no less – that does credit SHC. Go figure.
One moment she was sitting there and the next… Pic: Michelle Nicolet (Flickr CC)
A London coroner also wrote about his theories of spontaneous human combustion back in 1961. They involved the human body creating flammable acetone.
From Cambridge News:
A range of conditions can produce ketosis, in which acetone is formed, including alcoholism, fat-free dieting, diabetes and even teething. So we marinated pork tissue in acetone, rather than ethanol. This was used to make scale models of humans, which we clothed and set alight. They burned to ash within half an hour. For the first time a feasible cause of human combustion has been experimentally demonstrated.
–Gavin Thurston, London coroner in 1961
Marinating pork in acetone is a bit different from the body creating a bit of the chemical, but wait… teething, you say? So this baby in India really could be spontaneously combusting? I still don’t believe in SHC, but you have to admit it’s not quite as BS sounding as before, is it?
Check out the video report on the Indian baby below.
See also: Spontaneous Human Combustion: Facts & Theories
Read more about Spontaneous human combustion: Burning man
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