that instantaneous or temporary
unconsciousness may result from lightning-stroke. Sometimes
superficial or deep burns may be the sole result, and again paralysis
of the general nerves, such as those of sensation and motion, may be
occasioned. For many years the therapeutic effect of a lightning-stroke
has been believed to be a possibility, and numerous instances are on
record. The object of this article will be to record a sufficient
number of cases of lightning-stroke to enable the reader to judge of
its various effects, and form his own opinion of the good or evil of
the injury. It must be mentioned here that half a century ago Le Conte
wrote a most extensive article on this subject, which, to the present
time, has hardly been improved upon.

The first cases to be recorded are those in which there has been
complete and rapid recovery from lightning-stroke. Crawford mentions a
woman who, while sitting in front of her fireplace on the first floor
of a two-story frame building, heard a crash about her, and realized
that the house had been struck by lightning. The lightning had torn all
the weather-boarding off the house, and had also followed a spouting
which terminated in a wooden trough in a pig-sty, ten feet back of the
house, and killed a pig. Another branch of the fluid passed through the
inside of the building and, running along the upper floor to directly
over where Mrs. F. was sitting, passed through the floor and descended
upon the top of her left shoulder. Her left arm was lying across her
abdomen at the time, the points of the fingers resting on the crests of
the ilium. There was a rent in the dress at the top of the shoulder,
and a red line half an inch wide running from thence along the inside
of the arm and fore-arm. In some places there was complete vesication,
and on its palmer surface the hand lying on the abdomen was completely
denuded. The abdomen, for a space of four inches in length and eight
inches in breadth, was also blistered. The fluid then passed from the
fingers to the crest of the ilium, and down the outside of the leg,
bursting open the shoes, and passing then through the floor. Again a
red line half an inch wide could be traced from the ilium to the toes.
The clothing was not scorched, but only slightly rent at the point of
the shoulder and where the fingers rested. This woman was neither
knocked off her chair nor stunned, and she felt no shock at the time.
After ordinary treatment for