DEA TH B Y LIGHTNING. 335 



On June 30, 1788, a soldier in the neighborhood of 

 Mannheim, being overtaken by rain, placed himself under 

 a tree, beneath which a woman had previously taken shel- 

 ter. He looked upward to see whether the branches were 

 thick enough to afford the required protection, and, in 

 doing so, was struck by lightning, and fell senseless to the 

 earth. The woman at his side experienced the shock in 

 her foot, but was not struck down. Some hours afterward 

 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 insig- 

 nificant: the hair is sometimes burned; 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 awkwardness 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 audience and apparatus, and, by the help -of these ex- 

 ternal appearances, immediately concluded that I had re- 

 ceived the battery discharge. The intellectual conscious- 

 ness of my position was restored with exceeding rapidity, 

 but not so the optical consciousness. To prevent the audi- 

 ence from being alarmed, I observed that it had often been 

 my desire to receive accidentally such a shock, and that my 

 wish had at length been fulfilled. But, while making this 

 remark, the appearance which my body presented to my 

 eyes was that of a number of separate pieces. The arms, 

 for example, were detached from the trunk, and seemed 

 suspended in the air. In fact, memory and the power of 

 reasoning appeared to be complete long before the optic 

 nerve was restored to healthy action. But what I wish 

 chiefly to dwell upon here is, the absolute painlessness of 

 the shock; and there cannot, I think, be a doubt that, to a 

 person struck dead by lightning, the passage from life to 

 death occurs without consciousness being in the least 



