MAN WHO CAUGHT FIRE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 253, 25 October 1934, Page 24

MAN WHO CAUGHT FIRE.

Dr. Terence East, physician to King's College Hospital rfnd to the Woolwich Memorial Hospital, in an article in the "Lancet".on "An Explosive Eructation," describes an extraordinary case of "a middle-aged man, rather thin and pale, who said that for a number of years he lsad suffered at times from pain in the region of the stomach after food." "One evening he had taken his wife to the cinema. There, in the darkness, feeling inclined to smoke, ho had taken out a cigarette and put it between his lips; lie struck a match, bringing it up in his cupped fingers. Just at that moment a violent eructation occurred. To his alarm and astonishment, and of those seated near llim, there was a flash and a sharp explosion. The cigarette was blown from his lips across several rows of seats; his moustache was singed and his lips and fingers burnt. In pain and confusion he had hurriedly to leave the cinema. The astonishment of the neighbours at this 'fiery exhalation' can well be imagined." A few similar cases are on record; one, in 1896, of a man whose breath caught fire one night when he was blowing out a match, which he had struck to see the time.