442 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



ning who, on recovery, had no memory of pain. The 

 following circumstantial case is described by Hem- 

 mer: 



On June 30, 1788, a soldier in the neighbourhood 

 of Mannheim, being overtaken by rain, placed himself 

 under a tree, beneath which a woman had previously 

 taken shelter. He looked upwards to see whether the 

 branches were thick enough to afford the required pro- 

 tection, and, in doing so, was struck by lightning, and 

 fell senseless to the earth. The woman at his side ex- 

 perienced the shock in her foot, but was not struck 

 down. Some hours afterwards the man revived, but 

 remembered nothing about what had occurred, save 

 the fact of his looking up at the branches. This was 

 his last act of consciousness, and he passed from the 

 conscious to the unconscious condition without pain. 

 The visible marks of a lightning stroke are usually 

 insignificant: the hair is sometimes burnt; slight 

 wounds are observed; while, in some instances, a red 

 streak marks the track of the discharge over the skin. 



Under ordinary circumstances, the discharge from 

 a small Leyden jar is exceedingly unpleasant to me. 

 Some time ago I happened to stand in the presence of 

 a numerous audience, with a battery of fifteen large 

 Leyden jars charged beside me. Through some awk- 

 wardness on my part, I touched a^wire leading from 

 the battery, and the discharge went through my body. 

 Life was absolutely blotted out for a very sensible 

 interval, without a trace of pain. In a second or so 

 consciousness returned; I vaguely discerned the audi- 

 ence and apparatus, and, by the help of these external 

 appearances, immediately concluded that I had re- 

 ceived the battery discharge. The intellectual con- 

 sciousness of my position was restored with exceeding 

 rapidity, but not so the optical consciousness. To pre- 



