An unusual patient was admitted to a hospital in Chennai, India, whose illness has puzzled doctors: a three-month-old boy suffers from spontaneous body fires.
Last week, a three-month-old boy named Rahul was brought to a hospital in Chennai with multiple burns to his body. According to medical workers, the boy caught fire for the fourth time in his short life without an external source of ignition.
Doctors examined Rahul, but they could not find the cause of his strange illness, which greatly complicated the diagnosis. Doctors put forward a variety of versions, but the theory about the evaporation of gases through the baby's skin has gained the largest number of adherents.
Indian Aesculapians admit that they can do little to help a three-month-old patient, so they can only wait for his condition to stabilize and discharge Rahul from the hospital.
“We are familiar with all previous cases of spontaneous combustion only from the words of the mother, since there are no medical records on the boy's card. Before the child is discharged, we will conduct a series of tests to determine the type of gas that evaporates through his skin. The child is now in the intensive care unit and his condition is assessed as stable. Most likely, the patient will be discharged in two weeks,”Narayana Babu, head of the pediatric department, reported to reporters.
The mother of the unusual child told doctors that the first spontaneous combustion incident occurred when her son was only nine months old.
“Then people thought that I had burned Rahul myself. But it is not - it lights up by itself. Because of our child's illness, we have lost everything: good relations with others, work and peace,”she complains.
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However, not all doctors believed the story of the mother of the strange baby. For example, the combustiologist Jagan Mohan considers the spontaneous combustion version to be a hoax.
“Stories about spontaneous human combustion are attempts to mislead people. I emphasize once again: a child cannot spontaneously ignite, the doctor insists. "The sweat of alcoholics contains a very small percentage of alcohol, but even they do not complain about the sudden fire of their bodies."
Until Rahul is diagnosed correctly, he will receive only symptomatic treatment.