At Malines, in Belgium, a mill was reduced to splinters by the fire of heaven. The miller and two of his customers were there at the time of the accident. Not one of the three men was killed, but the miller was seriously burnt in the head, on the chin and the cheeks. He was deaf and blind for twenty-four hours. One of the others was burned in the hands.
On June 19, 1903, at about six in the evening, during a bad storm, five farmers were crossing the Champ de Gentillerie near Saint-Servan, in order to take shelter. Three of them were walking abreast, the two others, of whom one was leading an ass, were some paces behind, when suddenly the five men and the ass were thrown on the ground by a violent clap of thunder. Three of the farmers, recovering their consciousness after the shock, observed that their two companions were struck; the head of one was carbonized, and the left side of the other was burnt as though by a red-hot iron.
Another phenomenon, no less appalling—
A woman who was struck had her leg so horribly burnt that, on removing the stocking, some particles of flesh adhered to it. From the knee to the end of the foot the skin was black as though carbonized, and the whole surface was covered with a species of blister full of a sero-purulent liquid. The burns were very serious but not mortal, and were localized in the leg.
Lightning also sometimes produces wounds which are more or less severe. It perforates the bones. The injuries it causes are similar to those inflicted by firearms.
It can also cause partial or total paralysis, the loss of speech or sight, temporary or permanent. Its action is manifold on the human organism.
A more extraordinary phenomenon still is that people who are struck show no sign of the slightest injury on a minute medical examination. The ancients remarked this, as we see in the charming passage from Plutarch: "Lightning struck them dead without leaving any mark on the bodies nor any wound or burn—their souls fled from their bodies in fright, like a bird which escapes from its cage."
We have already spoken of the smell of fulminated air and of ozone. In some cases there is more than that.
On June 29, 1895, lightning struck a low house at Moulins in the course of a violent storm. The fluid, eccentric as usual, attacked the outer chimney, the bricks of which were loose and projected slightly. It broke some tiles on the roof, the length of one rafter, and inside the corn-loft it broke the wooden handle of an iron rake to splinters. On the ground floor, bricks were both loosened and torn out near where the pipe of the stove went into the wall of the chimney-piece.
A dozen plates were broken in a cupboard to the left of the hearth, and a woman who happened to be near it at the time of the explosion, said she had felt her legs warmed by the burning air which came from the cupboard. The room was afterwards filled with a thick infected smoke, a veritable poison.