Part 8 (1/2)

According to Livy, the ill.u.s.trious founder of Rome was reviewing his army in a plain near the marsh of Capra. Suddenly a storm accompanied by violent claps of thunder enveloped the king in a cloud so thick that it hid him from sight. From that moment Romulus was seen no more on earth.

It is true, Livy adds, that some of the witnesses suspected the senators of having torn him to pieces: kings have sometimes been subject to all kinds of surprises on the part of their ”courtiers.”

In most cases the electric matter produces burns more or less severe.

These, when they do not attack the whole organism as in the preceding examples, are localized to certain parts of the body. Sometimes they are quite superficial and only attack the epidermis. Often without absolute carbonization, they penetrate deep into the flesh and cause death after the most fearful suffering.

Here are some examples of different sorts of burns--

In 1865, in the Rue Pigalle in Paris, a man had his eyes burnt by lightning.

A young soldier of the 27th Battalion of Cha.s.seurs was armed, mounting guard at the Col de Soda. It was in the month of July, 1900. Suddenly he was surrounded by the dazzling glare of lightning, which was almost immediately succeeded by an awful explosion of thunder. The sentinel, leaving his arms, fell backwards screaming. People ran to him, and saw that the fluid, attracted by the point of the bayonet, had struck it, and, gliding down, the metal had burnt his feet rather severely.

At Malines, in Belgium, a mill was reduced to splinters by the fire of heaven. The miller and two of his customers were there at the time of the accident. Not one of the three men was killed, but the miller was seriously burnt in the head, on the chin and the cheeks. He was deaf and blind for twenty-four hours. One of the others was burned in the hands.

On June 19, 1903, at about six in the evening, during a bad storm, five farmers were crossing the Champ de Gentillerie near Saint-Servan, in order to take shelter. Three of them were walking abreast, the two others, of whom one was leading an a.s.s, were some paces behind, when suddenly the five men and the a.s.s were thrown on the ground by a violent clap of thunder. Three of the farmers, recovering their consciousness after the shock, observed that their two companions were struck; the head of one was carbonized, and the left side of the other was burnt as though by a red-hot iron.

Another phenomenon, no less appalling--

A woman who was struck had her leg so horribly burnt that, on removing the stocking, some particles of flesh adhered to it. From the knee to the end of the foot the skin was black as though carbonized, and the whole surface was covered with a species of blister full of a sero-purulent liquid. The burns were very serious but not mortal, and were localized in the leg.

Lightning also sometimes produces wounds which are more or less severe. It perforates the bones. The injuries it causes are similar to those inflicted by firearms.

It can also cause partial or total paralysis, the loss of speech or sight, temporary or permanent. Its action is manifold on the human organism.

A more extraordinary phenomenon still is that people who are struck show no sign of the slightest injury on a minute medical examination.

The ancients remarked this, as we see in the charming pa.s.sage from Plutarch: ”Lightning struck them dead without leaving any mark on the bodies nor any wound or burn--their souls fled from their bodies in fright, like a bird which escapes from its cage.”

We have already spoken of the smell of fulminated air and of ozone. In some cases there is more than that.

On June 29, 1895, lightning struck a low house at Moulins in the course of a violent storm. The fluid, eccentric as usual, attacked the outer chimney, the bricks of which were loose and projected slightly.

It broke some tiles on the roof, the length of one rafter, and inside the corn-loft it broke the wooden handle of an iron rake to splinters.

On the ground floor, bricks were both loosened and torn out near where the pipe of the stove went into the wall of the chimney-piece.

A dozen plates were broken in a cupboard to the left of the hearth, and a woman who happened to be near it at the time of the explosion, said she had felt her legs warmed by the burning air which came from the cupboard. The room was afterwards filled with a thick infected smoke, a veritable poison.

Sometimes the victims are nearly asphyxiated by the fulminic effluvium, and only owe their preservation to the extreme care which is lavished on them.

Very often the bodies and the clothes of people who have been struck give forth a nauseous smell--generally similar to that of burning sulphur.

In the month of August, 1879, a woman who had been struck at Montoulieu, in the Champ Descubert quarter, had her skull perforated as though a big ball had pa.s.sed through it, and her burnt clothes gave forth insupportable emanations.

Dr. Minonzio relates how three persons were wounded by lightning on board the Austrian frigate _The Medee_. ”I remember,” he says, ”the sensation which was caused in the locality by the stench which came from the bodies and clothes of these people who were struck--a stench nearly as offensive as that of burnt sulphur mingled with empyreumatical oil.”

One of the most frequent and good-natured effects of lightning on man is to shave his hair and beard, to scorch them, or even to depilate the whole body.

Generally the victim may consider himself lucky if he leaves a handful of hair as a ransom to the lightning, and escapes with a fright.

There is even a case given of a young girl of twenty who had her hair cut as though by a razor, without perceiving it or feeling the least shock.