Behind such supposedly scientific accounts lurked a strong moral agenda. In many supposedly objective scientific accounts, spontaneous combustion is seen as the result of over-indulgence in alcohol. Dickens relies heavily on this belief. Macnish held that drunks were particularly liable to spontaneously combust because of the build-up of inflammable alcohol in their bodies. Dickens' other source, the Philosophical Transactions, attempted to account for the mysterious death of Contessa Cornelia Zangari ne' Bandi by claiming that flammable gases from the wines and spirits she had taken had caused her to spontaneously combust.
Modern physiologists dismiss such ideas as ridiculous.
However, spontaneous combustion of drunkards had taken a firm hold in the popular imagination. Other writers before Dickens had portrayed spontaneous combustion as a punishment for alcoholism. Such incidents fitted neatly with Victorian Christian ideas of divine retribution. Christian temperance campaigners preached the evils of drink, urging people to sign a pledge of total abstention from alcohol. In a theology which held that the fires of hell were a punishment for evildoers, death by fire was a frequent form of divine retribution for sin.