Thunder and Lightning

by Camille Flammarion

"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 breasts 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; Père Beccaria cites a similar case; and Franklin's case is cited here also as analogous. 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 entitled "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 "Rélation 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 assistance 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 passage 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.