article_snippet: One of the first serious accounts of it appeared in the august journal Philosophical Transactions Of The Royal Society in 1745, which recorded how a 62-year-old Italian countess had gone to bed one night feeling ‘dull and heavy’.
article_snippet: Many other cases followed, and by 1806, one scientist thought one scientist had the answer.
article_snippet: On The Combustion Of Humans, Pierre Lair suggested that the problem was the demon drink, and Pierre Lair subtitled Pierre Lair article, Products Of The Abuse Of Spirituous Liquors.
article_snippet: The explanation that alcohol was to blame quickly caught on, especially among moralists who were against the hard stuff.
article_snippet: In 1832, a popular Victorian magazine claimed all those who suddenly burst into flames were ‘habitually drunken’.
article_snippet: The notion was so widespread that when Charles Dickens included an episode of spontaneous human combustion in Charles Dickens 1852 novel Bleak House, the victim —
article_snippet: the villainous Mr Krook — was said to be ‘continual in liquor’.