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.
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:--