Thunder and Lightning Part 25

Presently we shall come to the others awaiting their turn, then to the spectators, and finally to the markers at the targets.

The men were firing, either kneeling or lying.

A remained in position, kneeling "like a statue," unable to move. He turned right over as soon as he was touched. Killed.

B had _a pine tree depicted on his breast_--upside down, its roots indicated by some outlines up at the top; the picture was of a brownish rather than a blueish shade. It was suggested that it resembled a pine, because of a pine being ten metres away from the stand, but really it was more like a branch of fern. Killed.

C felt hardly anything apart from a certain heaviness in his limbs when picking himself up.

D had some slight burns, which were healed within two or three days.

E was holding his rifle with the barrel vertically. He found himself about 2-1/2 metres from his position on the ground, with a stone in his hands; his rifle had been bent in two below the trigger.

A's scorer held the pear-shaped handle of the electric bell between his fingers, his elbows upon the table. Saw nothing, heard nothing.

Felt himself suddenly bent up double, his face buried in the gravel; lost consciousness while he was being carried away; when he came to himself again he began to ramble in his speech; his pencil was broken lengthwise into four pieces. The wire of his bell had been electrified. By way of wound, he had a picture of a pine branch on his back; water issued from it as from a blister; there were no traces of blood. The picture disappeared at the end of two days. For a certain time the young man had a pain in his loins; he still limps somewhat; probably what he now suffers from is sciatic lumbago, the result of partial and temporary paralysis.

B's scorer had only some insignificant burns.

C's scorer only came to himself twenty minutes later as the result of artificial respiration. At the moment of the lightning he was pressing the electric b.u.t.ton with his thumb in order to give the signal, "Change the target;" he had a small hole in his thumb. This burn bled later, and the wound took four weeks to heal. He had also some burns on his legs.

D's scorer was holding the handle of the bell against his left cheek, on a level with his eye. The handle, made of wood, burst. The sight of his left eye is still affected, being very weak--the retina was probably torn away. The day after the accident, the young man's face became all inflamed, especially the part round the eyes. These were quite hidden. This inflammation, of a bluish tint, is due to the dilation of the small veins or of the capillaries.

Dr. Yersin, who attended several of the victims, attributes this dilation to a paralysis of the vasomotor nerves, "_which would also explain the tree-like form of the pictures seen upon the skin_," and the transudation (?) of water across the small blood-vessels.

E's scorer had time to see the men on his left fall, in a green or violet light. He had heard a general death-rattle-like chorus, "Aooo"--then, before he could make out what was happening, he found himself driven up against the wall of the stand. He had a wound under his feet; his thumb torn also, probably in trying to hold himself up against the wall.

Behind the scorers were a dozen other riflemen and some spectators. To the left the electric current left intact the rifles standing on the rack. Quite near this, a man awaiting his turn fell, clinging on to the neck of one of his comrades, also struck. Later he found his purse in the middle of the stand.

In the case of several of the spectators, the burns were to be found in separate sores. One had his hair burnt on one spot of about the size of a five franc piece; others, who had burns upon their feet and legs, are under the impression they saw a small blue flame at the tips of their shoes.

The general feeling was at first merely that of stupefaction. Terror did not come until afterwards. "Those who did not lose all consciousness were half stunned." A young boy was noticed jammed up against the wall, incapable of moving, but bewailing his inability to get to his father, who lay dead upon the ground. Two men took flight without throwing aside their guns; another ran as far as the village, and some hours afterwards he was found asleep in a house "to which there was nothing to take him." One young spectator, a stranger to the neighbourhood, was seized with a partial paralysis of the brain; he could not keep his balance when walking, and when questioned he would recite the names of stations on a Swiss railway. He is better now.

This event will not be soon forgotten in the Joux valley. But Dr.

Yersin's explanation of the Ceraunic pictures does not seem to me to be justified.

Here is a fourth instance, given me long ago by one of the most learned physicists of last century, Hoin, of the Inst.i.tute.

"I am going to tell you," he wrote to me in July, 1866, "of a stroke of lightning which was very curious in its effects. It occurred at midday on June 27, at Bergheim, a village situated to the north of Logelbach at the foot of the Vosges. It struck two travellers who had taken refuge under the tree and knocked them over senseless--one of them was lifted to a height of more than a yard and thrown upon his back. It was thought they must be dead, but thanks to the attention given to them at once, they were brought to themselves, and they are now out of danger. But here is the strange feature of the accident.

Both travellers have on their backs, extending down to their thighs, _the imprint, as though by photography, of the leaves of a lime tree_; according to the statement of the Mayor, M. Radat, _the most skilful draughtsman could not have done it better_."

Here is a fifth instance which I find among my records. The incident happened at Chambery, May 29, 1868.

In the course of a violent storm, a soldier of the 47th Regiment was struck by lightning underneath a chestnut tree. In a memorandum drawn up on June 18 by a learned doctor of Chambery, an eyewitness of the occurrence, the following facts are recorded:--

"The man who was killed had been standing in the centre of a group of eight soldiers, who had their guns in their hands, without bayonets.

Struck in the region of the heart, he did not succ.u.mb for about a quarter of an hour, after saying a few words. The corpse bore an oval plate, so to speak, of about 13 to 14 centimetres in length, by 4 to 5 in width, occupying largely the precordial region, and presenting the parchment-like aspect of a vesicatory that had become rapidly dried up. The clothes were neither torn nor burnt.

"Two hours after his death an examination of the body resulted in the discovery of a phenomenon already recorded by several observers--the reproduction of photo-electric pictures.

"On the right shoulder were three bunches of leaves of a more or less deep reddish violet hue, reproduced minutely with the most absolute photographic precision. The first, situated on the lower part of the inside of the forearm, represented a long branch of leaves like those of a chestnut tree; the second, which seemed to be formed by two or three such branches twisted together, was in the middle of the outside of the arm; and the third, in the middle of the shoulder, larger and rounder, showed only some leaves and small branches at the top and at the borders, the centre presenting a red stain diminishing towards the circ.u.mference. The body, when dissected, bore no sign of any interior lesion."

Here is a sixth instance:--

In June, 1869, a Trappist was struck by lightning at the monastery of Scourmant, near Chimay in Belgium. It was the afternoon, and the monks were busy mowing. The storm coming along obliged them to seek shelter.

One of them, who was following the mowing machine worked by two horses, directed it towards an ironwork enclosure, and knelt down beside this trellis. There was a terrible thunderclap, the horses bolted in their fright, and the monk remained with his face to the ground. The others, who saw him fall, ran up to his a.s.sistance, only to find him dead. The medical attendant of the monastery, sent for at once, discovered on the body two large and deep burns, identical in shape, and placed symmetrically to each side of the breast; he pointed out also to those who were present a white spot under the left armpit, _presenting a very distinct picture of the trunk of a tree with branches on it_.

Out of these six cases, five may be taken as fully authenticated.

Dr. Lebigne, Mayor of Nibelle (Loiret), published the following narrative in the _Moniteur_ of September 7, 1864.

"On Sunday, September 4, 1864, at about 10.30 a.m., three men were busy gathering pears about 200 metres out of Nibelle, when the pear tree was struck by lightning, and was distorted from top to bottom in the form of a screw; the lightning carried away the bark and about a centimetre of the wood beneath; then quitting the tree, it struck the head of one of the workmen, who was eating some bread at the time, and killed him, as well as a dog by his side. The head was burnt behind from top to bottom and was impregnated with a strong smell of sulphur.

"The two other workmen who were on the tree were thrown to the ground, and remained for some time senseless. When they came to themselves they could not move their legs. They were taken to their homes, and it was found that both had been in contact with the electric fluid. The astonishing thing about them is, that _one of them had the branches and leaves of the pear tree clearly imprinted on his breast as though by daguerreotype_. The terrible photographer had been merciful, however, for that evening both the men were up again and able to walk."

The _Comptes rendus_ of the Academie des Sciences for the year 1843 (xvi. p. 1328) records that in July, 1841, in the department of Indre-et-Loire, a magistrate and a miller's boy were struck by lightning in the vicinity of a poplar. It was found that both of them had on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s stains exactly like the leaves of a poplar. These marks, in the case of the magistrate, went away gradually as the blood began to circulate again. In the case of the boy, who was killed on the spot, they had faded somewhat by the day after, when decomposition had begun to set in.

_A propos_ of this case, very similar to those preceding, Arago recalled the fact that in 1786 Leroy, a member of the Academie des Sciences, declared that Franklin had several times told him how a man who was standing at a door during a storm had seen a tree struck by lightning opposite him, and that a representation of this tree was found imprinted upon his breast. Arago recalled, too, in this connection a report made to the old Academy in August 2, 1786, by Bossuet and Leroy, in which there was question of a man killed by lightning on May 10, 1585, in the Collegiate School of Riom in Auvergne; in this case the electric fluid had entered by the heel and gone out by the head, leaving on the body singular marks, described in the report. It was thought that the lightning on its way, through having forced the blood into all the vessels in the skin, must have made all the ramifications of these vessels sensitive to impressions from without. Extraordinary though this may appear, they go on to say, it is not new; Pere Beccaria cites a similar case; and Franklin's case is cited here also as a.n.a.logous. Besile, the author of the record of the Riom case, "did not hesitate," he tells us, "to attribute the effect to an eruption of the blood in the vessels of the skin, producing a result similar to that of an injection." The statement in the _Comptes rendus_ is ent.i.tled "Strange appearance of Ecchymoses formed by lightning upon the skin of two persons."

That is just the question. Was there in these pictures nothing but ecchymoses--infiltrations of the blood into the cellular tissue?

Perhaps that may be so in some cases, but not in all. Photography, the photo-electric pictures produced in the laboratories of physicists, Moses's _figures_(?), the Lichtenberg flowers, cathodic rays, Rontgen rays, radiography-all these things open new horizons for us. And even if we do not find any explanation satisfactory, we should not be justified in accepting the first offered to us as being so, if in fact it be not.

Here are four interesting cases recorded by Poey in his "Relation Historique des images photo-electriques de la foudre."

Mme. Morosa, of Lugano, seated near a window during a storm, experienced a shock from which she is not stated to have suffered any ill effects; but a flower, which had stood in the route of the electric current, was found perfectly _drawn_ on her leg, and this picture lasted the rest of her days.

In August, 1853, a young girl in the United States of America was standing at a window facing a nut tree at the moment of a dazzling flash of lightning; a complete picture of the tree was reproduced on her body.

In September, 1857, a peasant woman of Seine-et-Marne, who was minding a cow, was struck by lightning under a tree. The cow was killed, and the woman was thrown on the ground insensible. She was, however, soon revived. In loosening her clothes to attend to her, the people who came to her a.s.sistance found perfectly reproduced on her breast _a picture of the cow_.

On August 16, 1860, a mill at Lappion (Aisne), belonging to M.

Carlier, was struck by lightning. On the back of a woman of forty-four, who was also struck, the lightning left a reproduction (of a reddish hue) of a tree--_trunk_, _branches_, _foliage_, _and all_.

Her clothes bore no trace of the pa.s.sage of the lightning.

Unless we are to suppose that all these have been inaccurately observed, it seems to me that we must admit that there is something else besides ecchymoses, something else besides the workings of veins and arteries in these pictures wrought by lightning.

Certain of these tree-like pictures resemble the patterns we get in photographing electrical discharges upon sensitized plates. Might they not be produced by this discharge upon the surface of the body--or by the emission of electricity from the body struck?

The pictures we shall now hear of, to be distinguished from those already dealt with, are easier to explain, and about their genuineness there can be no doubt.

In the summer of 1865, a doctor from the neighbourhood of Vienna, Dr.

Derendinger, was returning home by train. On getting out at the station he found that he had not got his purse on him--some one probably had stolen it.

This purse was made of tortoise-sh.e.l.l, and had on one side of it a steel plate marked with the doctor's monogram--two D's intermingled.

Some time after, the doctor was called to attend to a stranger who had been found lying insensible under a tree, having been struck by lightning. The first thing that he noticed on examining the man's body was that on his thigh there was a reproduction, as though by photography, of his own monogram. His astonishment may be imagined. He succeeded in reviving the stranger, who was taken to a hospital. The doctor remarked that in his clothes his lost tortoise-sh.e.l.l purse would probably be found. So it proved. The individual struck by lightning was the thief. The electric fluid had been attracted by the steel plate, and had imprinted the monogram upon the man's body.

In this case we are set thinking of electro-metallurgy, all the more because there are a number of other instances which certainly belong to this category. Thus, for instance, on July 25, 1868, at Nantes, a stranger near the Pont de l'Erdre, on the Quai Flesselles, was enveloped by a flash of lightning, but proceeded on his way without experiencing any ill effects. He had on him a purse containing two pieces of silver in one compartment and a ten-franc piece in gold in another. On taking out his purse he found that a coating of silver taken from one of the silver pieces--a franc--had been transferred to both sides of the ten-franc piece. The franc, slightly thinner, especially over the moustache of Napoleon III., was in parts slightly bluish. This transference of the silver on to gold was made through the skin of the part.i.tion of the compartments![1]

Another case. In Gilbert's "Annalen der Physik" (1817) we read that a flash of lightning struck the tower of a chapel near Dresden and took the gilt off the framework of the clock and transferred it to the leaden runs of the window-panes in such a way as to leave no sign of how these had been gilded.