Arago states that a workman was struck under a pavilion, and that the pieces of his hat were found embedded in the ceiling.
Biot gives the case of a hat which was flung ten paces without a breath of wind.
We could multiply these very curious observations, but we must restrain ourselves so as to remain within the limits of this little book. Did I not say just now that lightning has sometimes--though very rarely--exercised a beneficial influence on sick people it strikes?
Yes; we hear of several cases where thunder has shown itself a rival to the noblest disciples of Esculapius, and where it has worked veritable miracles.
For instance, a person who had been paralyzed thirty-eight years, suddenly, at the age of forty-four, recovered the use of her legs, after a stroke of lightning.
A paralytic had been taking the curative waters of Tunbridge Wells for twenty years, when the spark touched him and cured him of his terrible infirmity.
Lightning has sometimes worked marvels on the blind, deaf, and dumb, to whom it restores sight, hearing, and speech.
A man who had the whole of his left side paralyzed from infancy was struck in his room on August 10, 1807. He lost consciousness for twenty minutes, but after some days he gradually and permanently recovered the use of his limbs. A weakness of the right eye also disappeared, and the invalid could write without spectacles. On the other hand, he became deaf.
Indeed, if we are to believe stories which appear to be authentic, a cold, a tumour, and rheumatism have been cured by lightning. We have given an example in our first chapter.
It is impossible to explain in what manner the subtle fluid accomplishes these wonderful cures. Are they to be attributed to the shock, to a general upheaval which brings back the circulation to its normal course? Or are we to attribute to the electric substance--still unknown to physicians and physiologists--an action capable of overcoming the most inveterate evils?
The science of Therapeutics already makes excellent use of the electricity of the machines. Can we, then, marvel much that lightning should rival our feeble electric resources? No! What a number of services might it not render if it were not for its mad independence! What an amount of lost power there is in the gleam of lightning!