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Letter: Dying embers

Published 3 October 2012

From Dougal Drysdale

Having read Brian J. Ford’s new theory on spontaneous human combustion (15 September, p 29), I feel that this myth should be dispatched.

As far back as 1861, in A Handbook of the Practice of Forensic Medicine, Based on Personal Experience. Volume 1 by Johann L. Casper (The New Sydenham Society, London), the phenomenon was dismissed as a “fable”.

Edinburgh, UK

Issue no. 2885 published 6 October 2012

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