Anomalies and Curiosities Part II

More quotes from the informative and chatty Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine (1896):

"Le Cat speaks of the bite of an enraged duck causing death, and Thiermayer mentions death shortly following the bite of a goose, as well as death in three days from a chicken-bite."

"In commenting on suicides, in 1835, Arntzenius speaks of an ambitious Frenchman who was desirous of leaving the world in a distinguished manner, and who attached himself to a rocket of enormous size which he had built for the purpose, and setting fire to it, ended his life."

"Pantophobia is a general state of fear of everything and everybody. Phobophobia, the fear of being afraid..."

"There is a tale told of a Hungarian monk who affirmed that he was able to decide the chastity of females by the sense of smell alone."

"Sometimes in the older writings we find records of incredible abstinence. Jonston speaks of a man in 1460 who, after an unfortunate matrimonial experience, lived alone for fifteen years, taking neither food nor drink. Petrus Aponensis cites the instance of a girl fasting for eight years."

"The theories advanced by the advocates of spontaneous human combustion are very ingenious and deserve mention here.... From an examination of 28 cases of spontaneous combustion, Jacobs makes the following summary:--
1) It has always occurred in the human living body
2) The subjects were generally old persons
3) It was noticed more frequently in women than in men
4) All persons were alone at the time of the occurrence
5) They all led an idle life
6) They were all corpulent or intemperate
7) Most frequently at the time of occurrence there was a light and some ignitible substance in the room
8) The combustion was rapid and was finished in from one to seven hours
9) The room where the combustion took place was generally filled with a thick vapor and the walls coverd with a thick, carbonaceous substance
10) The trunk was usually the part most frequently destroyed; some part of the head and extremities remained.
11) With but two exceptions, the combustion occurred in winter and in the Northern regions"