The Charleston daily news. [volume] (Charleston, S.C.) 1865-1873, 1871-06-26
About lightning.

The season of thunder storms being upon
us, it may be we'll to quiet the fears OF the
many nervous persons who dread death by
lightning and are. consequently in agony
while q storm is in progress. We owe much
OF this fear to the lightning itself in another
form. Before the days of the telegraph.
men and beasts we're stunned and killed
without our knowledge, but now the tele
graph tells OF a thousand accidents BY food
and field of which we formerly heard moth
ing. Hence it. appears that more people are
killea. by lightning :han ever before. 1t il
not so in fact, onl, in appearance. Electro
magnetism has msas the whole United
States, one neighbor!,soo. 80 far as violent
deaths aud remarkable accidents are con-
cerned, and lightning seems to be more dan
gerous than heretofore because OF the wider
range of our information. Allowance being
made for the increased density Of population,
the chances are much the ~same-about one
in a milllon-that amy particular individual
will be struck by lightning.
But supposing the individual is struck,
what then? The question may be answered
by two statements to which we are indebted
to modern science: First, hard as it may be
to realize the fact, it is nevertheless a fact
perfectly we'll established that, before we can
ever see the fash the lightning has struck
it's work is done and over. Weappear to see
the flash in its zigzag pathway down the
skies at each exact instant Of it's actual pro.
gress, but the bolt has reached the earth be-
fore We are conscious Of it's beginning.
Second, it takes time to perceive and to
feel. A barefoot boy sticks a thorn in his
heel. he thinks he knows more about his
suffering than anybody else. he is mistaken.
He feels more, but he knows less. BE does
not know that before he can feel at all, the
sensation produced by the thorn must travel
from his heel to his head and from his head
back to his heel again. All this requires
time. .
Further, every thought, every emotion,
every sensation causes a certain rearrange-
ment OF the atoms in the nerves and in the
brain. Quick as this Encouragement is, it
consumes time. Now suppose an injury so
violent, a shock 90 great that this rearrange-
ment cannot take place. The nerve cannot
transmit the sensation, the brain cannot
take cognizance of it-there is no feeling
whatsoever.
Well, the rapidity Of sensation and Of
thought have been measured; 30 has the
velocity Of lightning; and lightning is just
about one million times swifter than sensa-
ton. Helmholtz has determined the velocity
Of nervous transmission and finds it to be
! not quite one hundred feet in a second, or
less than one-tenth of the velocity OF sound
in air.. A whale fifty feet long, wounded in
the tail, would not be conscious Of the in
jury till half a second after the wound had
been inflicted. Now, if it takes a tenth Of a
second for you to feel 3 sensation, and it re-
quires only the hundred thousandth part of a
second for a rifle ball to pass clear through
your head, how are you going 70 feel any
sensation? You can't do il. You are dead
before you are conscious OF it. But the
velocity OF lightning is very much greater
than that Of a bullet from a rifle; electricity
darts from the earth to the moon, some 240,
900 miles, in a second. Lightning destroys the
possibility Of feeling, leaves the man dead,
goes twenty-foW thousand miles through the