LIGHTNING STROKE. ELECTRIC SHOCK.
Fatal. Non-fatal. Herbivora at pasture under tree. Symptoms: dazed for a few minutes, unconscious for hours, permanent paresis or paralysis. Lesions: lines of burned hair, skin or muscles, rigor mortis slight, decomposition rapid, bluish black venous and capillary congestion, extravasations, blood fluid. Diagnosis. Treatment: ammonia, ether, alcohol, caffein, nerve stimulants.
While a stroke of lightning is usually fatal, yet in certain cases, the victim is but temporarily stunned and recovers with more or less remaining paralysis. The subject has also great importance in connection with the claim of the owner against a company which may have insured his stock against lightning.
Any animal may be struck, but the herbivora which are turned out to pasture are especially liable to such injuries, because they seek shelter under trees, which operate as lightning rods.
Symptoms. In slight cases of shock whether by lightning or the current of a hanging live electric wire, the subject may be simply dazed and may or may not fall to the ground, and recover itself in a very few minutes. In other cases there is a more violent shock which prostrates the animal to the earth, where it may lie unconscious for some hours and yet quickly and completely recover. In still other cases after such prostration recovery is incomplete and the animal remains affected with paresis or paralysis of one or more, commonly of both hind, or all four limbs. In the more violent shocks death is instantaneous.
Often the impact and course of the current are marked by visible lesions. Sometimes the skin is wounded exposing a bluish black tissue beneath. More commonly there is an area of burnt hair, or straight, radiating or angular lines of raised and frizzled hair marking the course of the current. In a horse killed by an electric light wire in Ithaca recently the current had burned to a depth of several inches in the muscles of the shoulder which rested on the wire.
Lesions are often rather indefinite. There may be no appreciable change in the nervous system. Rigor mortis is slight; it passes off rapidly and decomposition sets in early. The venous system and capillaries are usually filled with liquid blood of a dark bluish black color, and at intervals are points, spots and patches of blood extravasation. The uniformly liquid state of the blood is one of the most marked phenomena of death from electricity. The dark blue congestion of the radical veins is also very pathognomonic, the part struck or traversed by the main current, being the seat of the most elaborate arborescent network. This arborescent appearance of the dark colored veins, and the petechiæ are often marked in the internal organs (brain, kidneys, liver, lungs).
Diagnosis. The environment of the animal will often clear the diagnosis. The patient is found helpless, or dead under a tree, by a pole, or under a hanging wire, and if a tree there are evidences of the electric shock in scattered leaves and branches, stripping off of the bark, or perhaps rending of the tree in pieces. In case of wires attached to or passing near such a tree, the supporting poles show similar splitting and rending. Add to these the fluidity of blood in the carcase, the thickly ramifying network of the minute dark bluish, red veins, the petechiæ and the comparative absence of cadaveric rigidity, and we have a picture very significant of lightning stroke.
Treatment in such cases is according to the condition. The primary unconsciousness is met by inhalations of ammonia or ether, or the injection of brandy or alcohol subcutem. Caffein, atropine or hyoscyamin may be used as substitutes. If consciousness returns recovery is usually rapid and complete. Should paresis or paralysis remain it must be treated like any ordinary case of these affections.