De Incendiis Corporis Humani Spontaneis


De Incendiis Corporis Humani Spontaneis is book published by a French author Jonas Dupont. It contains a collection of cases and studies on spontaneous human combustion. This book was published in 1763 and is considered to be the first reliable evidence of SHC.
Dupont was inspired to write the book after encountering the Nicole Millet case, in which a man was acquitted of killing his wife when the court ruled that she had been killed by SHC. Nicole Millet had supposedly been found burnt to death in an unburnt chair, and a young surgeon named Nicholas le Cat managed to convince the court that her death had been caused by spontaneous human combustion. Jonas Dupont's book brought SHC from being just a dark folkloric rumor into light of popular public imagination.