442 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



on recovery, had no memory of pain. The following 

 circumstantial case is described by Hemmer : 



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 con- 

 scious to the unconscious condition without pain. The 

 visible marks of a lightning stroke are usually insigni- 

 ficant : 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 con- 

 sciousness returned ; I vaguely discerned the audience 

 and apparatus, and, by the help of these external 

 appearances, immediately concluded that I had received 

 the battery discharge. The intellectual consciousness 

 of my position was restored with exceeding rapidity, 

 but not so the optical consciousness. To prevent the 

 audience from being alarmed, I observed that it had 



