Lightning Cures.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 6 November 1914, Page 2

Lightning Cures.

There is an old saying to the effect that "faith will either kill or cure," and it would seem to apply to lightning also. Certainly it is a remedy which nobody could bo persuaded to try voluntarily, but there are many cases on record v. here permanent benefit has been derived from being struck by lightning—that is, subjected to Nature's own electrical treatment.

A telegraph employe in Germany who was manipulating his instruments during a severe thunderstorm was seen to fall at the very instant that a lightning flash of intense vividness occurred. At first he was thought to have been killed instantly, but it was .afterwards found that he was still alive,- although he was both senseless ■ and paralysed. In this state he remained about twenty-four hours, and then recovered completely. Strangely enough, prior to the lightning stroke he was in very indifferent health, but since that apparent catastrophe his health has been more robust than ever before in his life. A similar case took place on the island of Martinique, where thunderstorms are both frequent and severe. A well-known French resident was struck by lightning and picked up for dead. He was not dead, however, but only paralysed, and was treated with massage and artificial respiration. In a few hours he recovered, and from having been a man of very weakly health, poor appetite, and suffering from "general debility," as the pill advertisements say, he became henceforth "as fit. as a fiddle," losing all his old-time invalidism. Some time ago a deaf man was standing near a tree with a companion during a thunderstorm, when the tree was struck by lightning and shattered, the two men being thrown to the ground in a dazed condition. They probably owed their lives to the fact that they were not in actual contact with the tree, and both experienced the secondary force of the electrical discharge. The deaf man's companion was the first to find his voice, and the hitherto deaf man was amazed to find that he could hear him. The lightning had worked a cure of minor miracle and unstopped the deaf man'i ears. ~ More than one case has occurred of a lightning flash causing a dumb. man to speak. These have always been cases where some peculiar nervous affection has been the cause of dumbness. Alter a serious illness, for instance, a woman found herself unable to use her tongue in speesh, ard she sro remained for many years, making her wants known by writing them upon ,a slate which was kept beside her for the purpose. She was dreadfully frightened of thunderstorms, and used" to retire to the coal-cellar when they occurred. Needless to say, the lightning followed her there, and^ on one occasion, when ligntning and thunder were r,im>iltaneou<?, she was so frightened with the Hash and the tremendous crash which followed it that she ran screaming up the cellar steps as voluble with her tongue as ever she was in her life. She' had found her speech again.