Spontaneous Human Combustion and Claude-Nicolas Le Cat’s Hunt for Fame

Abstract

This article discusses eighteenth-century ideas about spontaneous human combustion: the idea that the human body—but especially the bodies of idle and liquor-drinking women—could burst into flames with no external source. It focuses particularly on the ideas and career strategies of the author of the most well-known text on this phenomenon, the master surgeon, medical popularizer, and academician Claude-Nicolas Le Cat. Le Cat was deeply involved in efforts to popularize medicine and science and was, at the same time, a deeply ambitious individual anxious to elevate himself to ever-greater prominence. To accomplish these aims, he needed to find ways to attract attention for himself and his ideas while maintaining his image as a serious man of science and not a charlatan. He and other medical authors worked in a kind of feedback loop, in which their pessimistic views about health, modernity, and degeneration led them to imagine ambitious reform projects that would improve health by transforming society itself. To do so, they needed to grab the public’s attention, which encouraged them to state their fears and concerns in sensational and alarmist terms. The article contributes to the history of medicine and science and explores larger themes of celebrity, expertise, and publicity. Engaging the public, even as an expert, neither was nor is a purely rational exercise, and studying Le Cat’s public relations strategies as well as his ideas makes clear how fraught this endeavor could be.