Part 8 (2/2)

On May 7, 1885, two men who were in a windmill were struck by lightning. They were both struck deaf, and the hair and beard and eyebrows of one were burnt. In addition to this, their clothes crumbled to the touch.

A man, who must have been very hairy, was struck by lightning near Aix. The electric current raised the hairs of his body in ridges from the breast to the feet, rolled them into pellets, and incrusted them deeply in the calf of the leg.

Very often the injury to the hair, instead of being spread all over the body, limits itself to certain places where it is thicker or damper on the body of a man, and more especially on that of a woman.

Here are some curious examples.

In Dr. Sestier's learned work, vol. ii. p. 45, we read the following case observed at Montpellier:--

”Accidit apud Monspelienses ut fulmen cadens in domum vicarii generalis de Gra.s.si pudendum puellae ancillae pilos abraserit ut Barta.s.sius in muliere sibi familiari olim factum fuisse.”

Toaldo Richard has described similar experiences, and d'Hombres Firmas has described several others:--

A number of people were a.s.sembled at Mas-Lacoste, near Nimes, when lightning penetrated to where they were. A girl of twenty-six was thrown over and became unconscious; when she came to her senses, she could hardly support herself or walk, and felt a great deal of pain in the centre of her body. When she was alone with her friends, they examined her, and they saw ”non sine miratione pudendum perustum ruberrimum, l.a.b.i.a tumefacta pilos deficientes usque ad bulb.u.m punctosque nigros pro pilis, inde cutim rugosissimam; ejus referunt amicae primum barbatissimam et hoc facto semper imberbem esse.”

Lightning is indeed a joker, but so it has always been.

In most cases the hair grows again, but sometimes the system is completely destroyed, and the victim must either wear a wig or go bald.

We have already spoken further back of the case of Dr. Gaultier, of Claubry, who was struck one day by globular lightning, near Blois, and had his beard shaved off and destroyed for ever; it never grew again.

He nearly died of a curious malady, his head swelled to the size of a metre and a half in circ.u.mference.

We also hear of corpses of people who have been struck, which show no other injury than a complete or partial epilation.

For example, a woman who was struck in the road had the hair completely pulled out of the top of her head.

On July 25, 1900, a farm servant, Pierre Roux, was killed while in the act of loading a waggon of hay. The only trace the lightning left behind it was to completely scorch the beard of its victim.

Now, here is a case the complete opposite of the preceding ones and still more curious, in which the capricious and fantastic lightning attacked the epidermis without burning the hair which covered it.

At Dampierre thunder broke over a house belonging to M. Saumois. His arm, one leg, and the left side of his body were burnt, and the extraordinary thing is that the skin of the arm was burnt leaving the hair intact.

A little further on we shall have cases where the lightning has proved salutary in certain forms of illness.

Generally the people who are struck fall at once without a struggle.

It has been proved by a great number of observations that the man who has been struck by lightning so as to lose consciousness immediately falls without having seen, heard, or felt anything. This is easy to believe, since electricity is animated by a movement much quicker than that of light, and still more so than that of sound. The eye and ear are paralyzed before the lightning and the thunder could have made an impression on them; so much so that the victims, when they recover themselves, are unable to explain what has happened to them.

People struck by lightning nearly always sink on the very spot where they have been struck. Besides this, we have already remarked several cases where the people struck have preserved the exact positions they had at the moment of the catastrophe.

But, on the other hand, we can quote some examples, rarer, but diametrically opposed to these.

On July 8, 1839, lightning struck an oak near Triel (Seine-et-Oise), and also struck two quarrymen, father and son. This last was killed dead, raised, and transported twenty-three yards away.

The surgeon Brillouet was surprised by a storm near Chantilly, and was raised by the lightning and deposited twenty-five paces from where he had been.

On August 18, 1884, at Namur (Belgium), a man was flung ten yards from the tree under which he had been struck by lightning.

The following notice was in the papers in August, 1900:--

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