14th November - Bodily Fire

Our next meeting will look at scientific and literary explorations of the strange phenomenon of spontaneous human combustion.Was this fact, or fiction?

We will meet, as usual, from 7.30-9pm in the Newnham Grange Seminar Room at Darwin College. Readings are:

• Paul Rolli, Joseph Bianchini and John Hilliard, ‘An Extract…Upon the Death of the Countess…’, Philosophical Transactions 43 (1744), 447-465.
• Charles Dickens, Bleak House (1852-3), chapter XXXII, 'The Appointed Time'.
• Justus von Liebig, Familiar Letters on Chemistry (1859 4th edn), letter XXIV, 296-322.

Optional further reading: J.L.Heilbron, ‘The Affair of the Countess Görlitz’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 138 (1994), 284-316.