This time 2012 or 1861: Can you tell the difference?

Another gem... this time from Prof Dougal Drysdale who continues to receive enquiries about spontaneous human combustion:

“It is sad to think that, in an earnest scientific work, in the year of grace 1861, we must still treat the fable of ‘spontaneous (human) combustion’, a thing that no one has ever seen or examined, the very proofs of whose existence rests upon the testimony of perfectly untrustworthy non-professionals.”

From: Caspar, J L: “A handbook of the practice of forensic medicine based on personal experience” (The New Sydenham Society, London, 1861)