Thunder and Lightning

by Camille Flammarion

In the neighbourhood of the village of Rumigny, in Picardy, on August 20, 1769, at six o'clock in the morning, there was a sudden irruption of fulminating matter from the bosom of the earth in such quantities as to produce the most violent results. The sky was cloudy, and looked like a storm. A young farmer and his wife were following, at some distance, a vehicle drawn by four horses. Suddenly the driver of this, without seeing the lightning or hearing the thunder, was thrown to the earth. His four horses were stretched dead on the ground near the carriage. There was a smoking hole in the ground, from which the effluvium came forth and killed the young man and his wife at ten paces off and separated from each other by twenty paces. The current also knocked down, at a hundred paces, the father of the young man in the same fashion as it had done the driver, but without injuring one or the other.

The bodies showed no signs of a wound, only a considerable swelling and a great deformity of the features. The woman, who was young and pretty, became hideous; the whole of her body as well as that of her husband was absolutely yellow. The four horses had their intestines drawn from their bodies. They were all thrown on the same side. The man's hat was pierced and his hair burnt, but he had no bruise on his head.

This account, in which we must not be surprised to find the ideas and language of the time (let us observe in passing that the man who was struck did not hear the thunder, and had not even time to see the lightning of which he was the victim)—this account, I say, gives us an instance of ascending lightning. Here is another.

The traveller Brydone gives the following example, which he himself observed:—

On July 19, 1785, a storm burst near Coldstream between 12 and 1 a.m. A woman who was cutting hay on the banks of the Tweed fell backwards. She at once called to her companions, and said she had just received a violent blow on her foot for which she could in no way account. At the time there was no thunder or lightning in the sky. The shepherd of a farm at Lennel Hill saw a sheep fall near him, which a few minutes before appeared to be in perfect health; he found it stone dead. The storm then appeared very far off. Two carts laden with coal, and each driven by a young driver seated on a small seat in front, crossed over the Tweed. They had just climbed a small hill near the banks of this river when they heard a great detonation round about, similar to that which would be produced by the discharge of several guns. At the same instant the driver of the second cart saw the first, with his companion and the two horses, fall to the ground. The driver and horses were stone dead. The ground was pierced with three circular holes at the very spot where the wheels had touched it when the accident happened. Half an hour after this event the holes emitted an odour which Brydone compared to that of ether. The two circular iron bands which covered the felloes of the wheels showed evident signs of fusion in the two spots which rested on the ground at the moment of the detonation, and in no other place. The skin of the horses had been burnt, particularly about the legs and under the stomach. The body of the driver had marks of burning here and there. His clothes, his shirt, and, above all, his hat, were reduced to shreds, and gave out a strong smell.

Orioli gives an example of two men who were surprised by a violent storm near the village of Benvenide. They lay down on the ground to let the meteor pass. Some moments later one of them got up feeling very tired, but the other was dead. The bones of the latter were so soft that it was easy to bend them; his whole body was of the consistency of paste. The tongue had been torn from the roots, and no one knew what had become of it.

Now, just as the earth can strike, so can the human body become fulminating and act like lightning. After having been struck, it can effectively acquire the power to strike in its turn.

For instance, on June 30, 1854, a man named Barri was killed by lightning near the Jardin des Plantes, in Paris, and his body lay for some time exposed to a beating rain. After the storm had passed, two soldiers from the neighbouring guard-house tried to remove the body, and each received a violent blow when they touched it. They got off with a shock, perhaps because the body had been drenched with rain, which acted as a conductor to the electricity, and thus it had had time to lose a part of the fluid.

What a mysterious world is that of atmospheric electricity! It is truly the New World for the scientific mind—a mine, fruitful in unknown and even unsuspected marvels, which is perpetually disclosing its riches for our admiration.

One of our most valued collaborators in our researches on the nature of lightning is photography. Faithfully and unhesitatingly it registers an indestructible document of the fugitive lightning, which imprints itself on the sensitized plate, and the astronomer can afterwards examine the smallest details of the sudden apparition comfortably and at his leisure. We have already a considerable number of plates of the outline of the lightning in flight. An examination of these electric pictures is very interesting.