FEAR OF LIGHTING.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 22, 9 January 1912, Page 7

FEAR OF LIGHTING.

It’is unlikely that any Written words will abolish the terror so manj feel at lightning storms. Nevertheless, the fears of the timid may be allayed, perhaps, by knowing a few facts which ought to show how groundless arfe flic fears so many people entertain. It may comfort the timid to know that the average number killed annually by lightning is less than one person in every three hundred and fifty thousand people. More persons are drowned in the river Thames every year than there are deaths from lightning all over the country in England. People living in cities are inclined to believe that the increasing number of telephone, telegraph, and trody wires increase the danger from electric storm? On the contrary, the maze of wires h a protection, and lessens the danger, since it is shown that where the wire/ attract the electricity they hold it anc discharge it only at the end of tin wires at the central station. The fact is that less than one-fifth of two linn dred lightning accidents every year oc cur in the cities and towns. The tree in the country are a far greater dan ger; sheltering under them in a thnn tier storm accounts for the proportion of four cases in the country to one in the towns. Another mistaken idea about lightning is that each case of stroke is necessarily fatal. Of/two 'hundred and twelve persons struck In lightning in one year only seventy-foil: were killed—just about one-third. Anc it has been shown that all these cases need not have proved fatal if medical assistance had been more quickly at hand. An electric stroke quite often produces a cessation of respiration for a time, but not actual death. Some few years ago a man was struck by lightning and was carried home for dead. While ho was being prepared for burial ho recovered consciousness—just seven hours after the stroke. An in vestigation proved that prompt mock cal assistance would have brought tr man round sooner, and a valuable lit would not have been jeopardised t r the extent recorded.