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 vomiting center in the
medulla; hence, when the atmosphere was highly charged with
electricity the structures affected became more readily
impressed. Camby relates the case of a neuropathic woman of
thirty-eight, two of whose children were killed by lightning in
her presence. She herself was unconscious for four days, and when
she recovered consciousness, she was found to be hemiplegic and
hemianesthetic on the left side. She fully recovered in three
weeks. Two years later, during a thunder storm, when there was no
evidence of a lightning-stroke, she had a second attack, and
three years later a third attack under similar circumstances.
There are some ocular injuries from lightning on record. In these
cases the lesions have consisted of detachment of the retina,
optic atrophy, cataract, hemorrhages into the retina, and rupture
of the choroid, paralysis of the oculomotor muscles, and
paralysis of the optic nerve. According to Buller of Montreal,
such injuries may arise from the mechanic violence sustained by
the patient rather than by the thermal or chemic action of the
current.
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