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-shell, 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-shell 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 partition 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.
In these cases the analogy with galvano electro-metallurgy is evident. But in the earlier cases this was not so; the trees contained no metallic element. It was not a case of transference. They seem to have been photographed by the ceraunic rays.
On October 9, 1836, a young man was killed by lightning. The corpse bore in the middle of the right shoulder six rings of flesh-colour, which seemed the more distinct in that the rest of the man's own skin was very dark. These rings, overlapping each other, were of different sizes, corresponding exactly with those of the gold coins which he had on him on the right side of his belt, as the public official who examined his body and all the witnesses were able to testify.
This makes us think of radiography.