ccording to
Orman's account of the affair, he first felt a violent blow on the
chest and shoulders, and then he was involved in a blinding light and
hurled into the air. He said he never lost consciousness; but when at
the hospital he seemed very deaf and stupid. He was discharged
perfectly cured twenty weeks after the occurrence. The scientific
explanation of this amazing escape from this most eccentric vagary of
the electric fluid is given,--the fact that the wet condition of the
man's clothing increased its power of conduction, and in this way saved
his life. It is said that the electric current passed down the side of
Orman's body, causing everywhere a sudden production of steam, which by
its expansion tore the clothing off and hurled it away. It is a
curious fact that where the flannel covered the man's skin the burns
were merely superficial, whereas in those parts touched by the cotton
trousers they were very much deeper. This case is also quoted and
described by Dr. Wilks.

There was a curious case of lightning-stroke reported at Cole Harbor,
Halifax. A diver, while at work far under the surface of the water, was
seriously injured by the transmission of a lightning-stroke, which
first struck the communicating air pump to which the diver was
attached. The man was brought to the surface insensible, but he
afterward recovered.

Permanent Effect of Lightning on the Nervous System.--MacDonald
mentions a woman of seventy-eight who, some forty-two years previous,
while ironing a cap with an Italian iron, was stunned by an extremely
vivid flash of lightning and fell back unconscious into a chair. On
regaining consciousness she found that the cap which she had left on
the table, remote from the iron, was reduced to cinders. Her clothes
were not burned nor were there any marks on the skin. After the stroke
she felt a creeping sensation and numbness, particularly in the arm
which was next to the table. She stated positively that in consequence
of this feeling she could predict with the greatest certainty when the
atmosphere was highly charged with electricity, as the numbness
increased on these occasions. The woman averred that shortly before or
during a thunder storm she always became nauseated. MacDonald offers as
a physiologic explanation of this case that probably the impression
produced forty-two years before implicated the right brachial plexus
and the afferent branches of the pneumogastric, and to some degree the