![]() A bracelet or chain was, I believe, stated to be impressed, a coin, and a cross, or similar ornament. The marks, it was said, were of a dark bronze color, and the impressions were so distinct that they could not be doubted. In this case, in which a man was subjected to lightning shock, it was said that impressions of various ornaments were most distinctly left on the body, and, from the manner in which the report was drawn up, it carried with it an air of the strictest probity. " Some years ago an eminent meteorologist of this country forwarded to one of the learned societies the particulars of a case which had been sent to him by a medical man residing in the West Indies. Richardson confirms the popular impression, pretty generally, we believe, discredited by scientific men hitherto, that the impressions of metallic substances may be left on the bodies of persons struck by lightning. As it was, however, the lady recovered.ĭr. Had the wound been continuous from head to foot, a fatal result would have been inevitable. The steel clasp of the elastic garter, the steel of her corset, and the metal of her hoop skirt, appear at several points to have carried off the electric fluid. The lightning melted portions of the wires of her hoopskirt, also a small part of the lower end of the steel of her corset. The lightning passed off at the bottom of the heel, bursting open the heel-seam of a strongly sewed gaiter boot. The next burn began on the patella of the right knee, extending to the bottom of the heel, in reaching which it wound around the inner side of the leg. ![]() This burn was about 12 inches long, and about the same width as the first. The fluid here left her body, and finding some other conductor, passed down, still on the left side, to j ust above the crest of the ilium, extending thence forward and backward to the symphysis pubis. The burn thus produced was about three inches wide, covered with blisters. Thence the electric fluid passed down, burning the lower portion of the right ear, in which was a gold ear-ring then crossed the throat and passed down to the left of ihe sternum. The hair was much scorched, and under the knot of hair the skin was severely burned. The victim of the stroke, was struck upon the back of the head, where she had her hair done up in a knot and fastened by two hair pins. Eichardson, we have now before ug an account of a remarkable case of burning by lightning, in the American Journal of Medical Science. In these cases the parts which are burned are those which lie between the metallic points.Ĭorroborative of these conclusions of Dr. Metallic substances in the dress, such as pins, stay-busks, buckles, and the like, while they may, in one sense, have their use in directing the shock from point to point over the body to the earth by a superficial route, lead often to severe local injury. The burnings differ in degree they may be mere singeings of the hair, with superficial scorchings or blisterings of the skin or they may be extensive cauterizations leading to surrounding inflammatory action. The reason of this probably is that the burning shock itself is of the flaming rather than of the penetrating kind. Impressions on the body of an arbof e8cent kind, supposed to be impressions of trees or fences near or beneath which the person stood when struck by lightningiīenjfiM _ ums em the tody from Bgiitoteg e? eteetrteftl steeekĪre more likely to happen in cases when the person is not destroyed than when the shock is fatal. Ecchymoses, or vivid blue spots, sometimes accompanied with exudations of blood.Ĥ. Impressions on the body of metallic substances, such as coins, ornaments, beads, crosses.ģ. ![]() The following marks of injuries have been recorded:ġ. He has, therefore, now that the means of research are at command, investigated this subject with care, and has been able, by a few simple experiments, to place what had been doubtful in a sound and scientific position. Some of these have been considered by excellent authorities as chimerical,or as vulgarly-exaggerated descriptions of observed, or presumably observed, facts they have been left up to this time in singular doubt and obscurity. Eichardson, the conductor of the experiments referred to, says that several kinds of injuries to the external parts of the body have been described as following upon the reception of severe shocks from lightning electricity. There are, however, some other characteristic effects produced upon the surface of the body by lightning stroke which are worthy of attention. We gave on page 107, current volume, an account of some extensive and interesting researches with the great induction coil of the Polytechnic Institution in London, upon the effect produced by lightning stroke on the bodieB of animals, so far as these effects might be considered as indications of death. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |