Mean Temperature 57·45.
[206] Mirror of the Months.
June 7.
Chabert.
The Human Salamander.
This exhibitor’s public performances in London, seem to have excited great curiosity in a multitude of persons unacquainted with the natural quality of the human body to endure extraordinary heat. The journals teem with astonishing accounts—people wonder as they read—and, by and by, they will “wonder at their own wonder.” Perhaps the most interesting account of his first appearance is the following:—
Hot! hot!—all hot!
Monsieur Chabert (the celebrated continental salamander) exhibited his power in withstanding the operation of the fiery element, at White Conduit Gardens, yesterday evening (June 7, 1826). In the first instance, he refreshed himself with a hearty meal of phosphorus, which was, at his own request, supplied to him very liberally, by several of his visiters, who were previously unacquainted with him. He washed down this infernal fare with solutions of arsenic and oxalic acid, thus throwing into the background the long-established fame of Mithridates. He next swallowed with great goût several spoonsful of boiling oil, and, as a dessert to this delicate repast, helped himself with his naked hand to a considerable quantity of molten lead. There are, we know, preparations which so indurate the cuticle as to render it insensible to the heat either of boiling oil or melting lead, and the fatal qualities of certain poisons may be destroyed, if the medium through which they are imbibed, as we suppose to be the case here, is a strong alkali. We cannot, however, guess in what manner Monsieur Chabert effected this neutralization; and it is but fair to state, that the exhibitor offered to swallow Prussic acid, perhaps the most powerful of known poisons, the effect of which is instantaneous, if any good-natured person could furnish him with a quantity of it. During the period when this part of the entertainment (if entertainment it can be called) was going on, an oven, about six feet by seven, was heated. For an hour and a quarter, large quantities of faggots were burnt in it, until at length it was hot enough for the bed-chamber of his Satanic Majesty. “O for a muse of fire!” to describe what followed. Monsieur Chabert, who seems to be a piece of living asbestos, entered this stove, accompanied by a rump-steak and a leg of lamb, when the heat was at about 220. He remained there, in the first instance, for ten minutes, till the steak was properly done, conversing all the time with the company through a tin tube, placed in an orifice formed in the sheet-iron door of the oven. Having swallowed a cup of tea, and having seen that the company had done justice to the meat he had already cooked, he returned to his fiery den, and continued there until the lamb was properly done. This joint was devoured with such avidity by the spectators, as leads us to believe, that had Monsieur Chabert himself been sufficiently baked, they would have proceeded to a Caribbean banquet. Many experiments, as to the extent to which the human frame could bear heat, without the destruction of the vital powers, have been tried from time to time; but so far as we recollect, Monsieur Chabert’s fire-resisting qualities are greater than those professed by the individuals who, before him, have undergone this species of ordeal. It was announced some time ago, in one of the French journals, that experiments had been tried with a female, whose fire-standing qualities had excited great astonishment. She, it appears, was placed in a heated oven, into which, live dogs, cats, and rabbits, were conveyed. The poor animals died, in a state of convulsion, almost immediately, while the fire queen bore the heat without complaining. In that instance, however, the heat of the oven was not so great as that which Monsieur Chabert encountered. If Monsieur Chabert will attach himself to any of the insurance companies, he will, we have no doubt, “save more goods out of the fire” than ever Nimming Ned did.[207]