What would be a legit sounding medical term for Spontaneous Human Combustion?

Question

I am writing a sci fi novel, which is set 100 years into the future (2120). In it, one of my characters is a scientist and investigates a case of SHC where a victim was seen with flames coming from their abdomen/gut, before passing. He writes a report, and he says that in olden times (our present period), it was called Spontaneous Human Combustion, but now it is known by [medical sounding term] instead.

Specifically the cause involves a static spark in malfunctioning nerves in the gut, or a build up of a liquid called diphosphane, also due to a biochemical malfunction in the gut, which can act as an ignition source for the other flammable compounds which exist in the gut.

I am looking for a less paranormal, more formal medical term for SHC.

Answer 1

Just calling it Knowles Syndrome would probably be just fine and consistent with current practice.

But if you really want to go with sudden-onset acute hyperthermia, feel free.

Answer 2

Anaphlexis, or autoanaphlexis

(Thanks to AlexP for corrections)

I got it by going into Google Translate and trying to get latin for combustion. It was combustione, I didn't like that. So I tried greek next (the other language that is used for most scientific terms). Didn't like the first term I got (kaf-si), but the second one sounded sciency. It was "anaphlexy" (with the "x" sounding like "ks", so pronnounced more like "anaphleksy").

For the record I can't read greek to save my life. The actual word came out as ανάφλεξη, I am typing what I heard when I clicked the speaker icon.

I thought that making it end in "is" would make it better due to the Rule of Cool. Turns out that ancient greek had final "is" as a thing, so no RoC needed here. Thanks Tanner Swett for the info!

---

But seriously, nobody does it better than marvel. If you tell someone who is neither a scientist nor a Marvel fan that you are a physicist and that you are doing some experimental research on Pym Particles, they might just fall for it. You think that even Marvel fans wouldn't be fooled by this kind of stuff anymore, but then Jonathan Hickman got them doing some googling when he put this dialogue in House of X:

Notice the term Heller-Faust line. I am a computer scientist. A.I. is not my area, but I know enough about it to usually detect disinformation or bullshit when I hear laypeople talking about it. But I had to look that one up, even phone a colleague to know if that was a real thing!

---

The point being that you don't have to be accurate. You can pull a term from a body cavity and still make it work. Without hitting search engines anymore, I thought of a few more terms that you could use:

• Autopyrolysis (actually means "self-breaking through fire or high temperature")
• Phoenixalia
• Mors Ignea ("fiery death"). By the way I totally need to assemble a metal band with this name now.
• Fogosa (just means "hot girl" in my latin-based native language, but your audience might never find out)

Answer 3

Try Tachypyrolysis

From the Greek "tach-" (rapid), "pyro-" (fire), and "-lysis" (separating). The prefix "tachy-" is already well known in the medical realm (as in tachycardia or tachyphylaxis). "Pyrolysis" is itself a common term in the chemistry community, where it describes the thermal decomposition of a material at a high temperature.

Who knows, maybe in the future the medical community got tired of Latin/Greek and started using Esperanto instead. If that happened, you could use a term like Netakorpofaj (from netaŭga "inappropriate", korpo "body", fajro "fire"). Call it "NKF" for short. The implication that there exists an appropriate body fire is merely a coincidence.

Answer 4

If you want to name something in a realistic sounding way, you should think about how this name came to be.

The first question is who named it? If something was named by a scientific organisation, the name would be done in a very specific way. Diseases are very often named by the first patient. This does not mean the first person in history who ever got the disease, it's the first patient who's case was properly described in medical literature. As this is more of an affect, and not a real medical condition the actual combustion would most likely be John Doe's Syndrome. Sometimes instead of the patient, the doctor describing the disease uses his own name, but the effect is the same.

If this was described more in a lab than in the field, without a real person involved the name could be Latin. It could also just be an acronym for normal English words. SPH could be common. There could also be two name, one for the condition that leads to the gas buildup, and the other for the actual combustion, similar to HIV and AIDS.

The name could also come from more colloquial sources. In this case the name could be simpler. Depending on the source something this could be anything from SPH to Go-Boom-Disease. Think about how reached the media and made this name popular. A real world example would be Swine Flue.

Answer 5

Autogenic thoracic sarcopyrrosis (ATS)? I've mixed Greek and Latin, I think, but that ought to translate as something like 'self-generating chest flesh-fire'.

Answer 6

What about the Wick Effect which is theorized to be the cause of many real life reported SHC events. Basically after ingintion, the human body is kept aflame due to melting fat continuing to fuel the fire, and several cases of unexplained burning of a human body are thought to be caused by an accidental igition of clothing that burns and soaks in melting body fat until most of the body is burned away (With only the feet and occasionally hands being the only parts of the body to remain due to both parts having very low body fat compared to the rest of the body.

The typical ignition source is usually a cigarette and typical victims are elderly or otherwise exhibit a low mobility as the process is slow to start and consume the body.

Answer 7

Idiopathic thermal decomposition. “Idiopathic” is a medical term meaning “of unknown origin” and adds a touch of real medical terminology. Or, perhaps, idiopathic pyrolysis, though “pyrolysis “ has a meaning that doesn’t quite match (burning in an inert atmosphere).

Answer 8

Either "Edith Syndrome" or "Ado Syndrome", based on the name of Lot's wife from Judeo-Christian tradition. In that tradition, she turns back to view the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, resulting in her being turned into a pillar of salt.

If the combustion converts the victim's body into a pillar of ash, with charred flesh still attached to an intact blackened skeleton, then the parallel to the ancient story might be justified.

Alternatively, to get closer to the ashy remains of the combustion victims, you might call it "Pompaeii Syndrome" based on the compacted ash human simulacrums which were found at the base of Mt. Vesuvius.

Answer 9

Medical terms usually come from Latin or Greek (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCCY1LuE2-k). So, a good way to make up the name of a condition is to just concatenate latin/greek words at random... kinda.

Endo means "from the inside". Thermolysis is a rapid chemical reaction caused by heat that ruptures molecules (from Greek therme- (heat) and -lysis (to unbind))

Fwoosh! Endothermolysis: a rapid internal chemical reaction caused by heat. You can replace "thermo" with "pyro" (fire) to make it more explicitly related to fire. Also it sounds cooler.

Endopyrolysis.

Answer 10

What's wrong with the actual medical & scientific terms already in use for this anecdotal phenomenon?

• spontaneous human combustion
• preternatural combustion
• spontaneous combustion

All these terms show up in various Good Sources (Jstor, Lancet, NIH, etc)

Answer 11

For what you are describing, probably severe sodium poisoning. Here's a material data sheet https://cdn2.lasecsa.co.za/pdf/sds/Sodium%20Metal.pdf

Short version : light metals - sodium, lithium react with water to produce hydrogen gas, oxygen gas, and enough heat to self-ignite. When I was younger, it was a cool chemistry demonstration to throw pieces of metallic sodium into a pond and watch them explode.

Because it is so reactive, light metals in metallic form are usually encased in some kind of material that keeps water off - oil being common. Cellophane gelcaps loaded with a mineral oil and metallic sodium grains might do the same thing and allow ingestion.

Answer 12

This answer is in part a frame challenge.

"Spontaneous Human Combustion" has been scientifically shown to be no such thing.

It is a characteristic of fatty meats that if they are wrapped in cloth, which is then set alight in an enclosed area with a low rate of oxygen ingress that they smoulder, the fat melting and burning on the surface of the cloth like wax rising up a candle wick. In fact, this can lead to an otherwise non-flammable substance being able to burn.

This can be demonstrated fairly readily with an uncooked leg of pork and some woolen cloth. Wrap the pork in the wool, then light it in an enclosed space. The fat melts, and wicks through the wool where it burns.

Historical cases of SHC have in fact been cases where the victim has died at around the time that the fire starts - often from some source of ignition that a healthy, living person would reflexively avoid, like a cigarette, a heater or a cooker. However, being very ill or recently deceased, the "victim" is unable to move away or extinguish the fire, and if still alive when set alight, they die from the trauma shortly thereafter.

There have been recorded cases exactly like the OP's, where a person enters a room to see a flame suddenly erupt from the victim. This has been attributed to the fact that the victim merely smoulders when in a closed, oxygen-deprived room, but when the witness opens the door and enters, there is a sudden rush of oxygenated air into the room, which causes the smouldering fire to flare up in just that manner.

So... in such a case, a coroner might conclude that the victim met their fate as a result of some non-fire-related reason, or perhaps was incapacitated by some other cause, which enabled their clothed body to be set alight, causing their death.

The technical term applied to the case would therefore not be a medical term at all, but a fireman's description: a smouldering fire enabled by the wick effect, occurring in an enclosed, unventilated space, which upon the door being opened and admitting fresh, oxygenated air, caused the slow-burning oxygen-starved fire to flare up and burn more rapidly.

Any movement that might be attributed to the death of a living person at that specific moment where the smouldering flame flares up might be more accurately attributed to the suddenly increased heat of combustion causing post-mortem tissue contraction, movements and even vocalizations.

Any medical terminology used would be to describe (if there were sufficient remains to successfully autopsy) the cause of death or the cause of sufficient incapacity so that the victim could be unable to react to being burned sufficiently to avoid their death.

This could be any of a great many causes, from heart attack to a drug overdose, and is beyond the scope of this question.

The OP need not invent any implausible internal source of combustion unless future advances in technology enable a person to be poisoned in such a way that enables true spontaneous combustion from within.

Answer 13

If you want to describe the effects of SHC in a medical sounding way, you might consider a term like pernicious exothermia and let the reader do a 2+2

Answer 14

I'm thinking something along the lines of Exanthropyromortis?

Ex - outward (as in explosion) Anthro - Human (as in anthropology) Pyro - Fire Mortis - Death.

Or on the same lines but in two words Exanthropic Pyromortis (exanthropic as in used to be a human .... ) (sorry that's really grim)

Answer 15

There is no 'scientific' term for Spontaneous Human Combustion, as it is not a real condition.

The best advice I can give you is to use your creativity to create a term that fits your book best.

1. Look for synonyms.

2. Write twenty-five of your favorites in a list.

3. Combine them to make a term that fits the style of your story best.

Answer 16

Egopyronova

Pyroscade

Egoexohypthermia

Lots of scientific therms are just going from the common denominator to the specific denominator in order from start to finnish.

Like Birds WithLongWings ThathaveSmallBeaks WithYellowTip - often added with a name of discoverer or location of discovery if that location makes it unique.

So Ego (Person) (Exo) (Exotherm reaction) (hyper) (Huge) thermia (Temperature) is basically a attempt to construct such a word based on the rules above.

Answer 17

Rapid Onset Unexpected Sparkler Syndrome.

Bonus The Princess Bride reference gratis.

Answer 18

In our cells, we mammals, and I am assuming we are all mammals reading this, oxidize glucose to provide the energy needed to live.

Certainly, the topic of cellular metabolic chemistry is vastly complicated and any attempts of mine at explanation would be, by very definition, overly simplistic, base and unseemly sketches of cosmic beauty. But, crudely put, glucose is sugar and oxidation is combustion. Normally well regulated and self-limiting, producing just enough ATP, the true fuel of our cellular scale lives, that our cells may carry out the million tiny miracles for which they are responsible.

Since the oxidation is exothermic, if it became, momentarily, less well regulated, because of confusion in mitochondrial and glycolytic pathway communications, then it might be termed Runaway Glucose Oxidosis or Catastrophic Glucose Reduction or Glucose Reduction Avalanche.

Note: Reduction is used in the chemistry sense of the word, a chemical reaction that involves the gaining of electrons by one of the atoms involved in the reaction between two chemicals. The term refers to the element that accepts electrons, as the oxidation state of the element that gains electrons are lowered. This was not an attempt to be more accurate but because oxidation is a harsh jagged word and reduction is nicer, rhymes with seduction and subduction.

Answer 19

I kind of like the sound of "self-ignatory flatulence". I mean, just imagine the conversation:

Doctor: I'm sorry, Mrs. Jones, but your husband is gone.
Mrs Jones: Gone?!? What do you mean, "gone"?!?!?
Doctor: I'm very sorry, Mrs. Jones. There was nothing we could do.
Mrs. J: But...but...but...
Doc: If it means anything, it was very quick. He never felt a thing, I'm sure.
Mrs. J: But...just this morning...he sat down like he always does, and he asked me to
        make him breakfast, just like I always do. He had eggs, and beans, and refried 
        beans, and roasted beans, and canned beans, and chili with beans, and black 
        beans, and navy beans, and pinto beans, and beans-beans-beans-beans-beans! 
        Beans, beans, and more beans! That man *loved* his beans! And now, he's 
        GONE!!!! By the way, what did he die from?
Doc: Ummmm...self-ignatory flatulence.
Mrs. J: You mean...?
Doc: Yep. Death Farts.
Mrs. J: <swoons>