An essay for the recording of illustrious providences

It is moreover difficult to determine how Men are killed therewith, when no visible impression is made upon their Bodies. Some think it is by a mere instantaneous suffocation of their An• ••al spirits. That poysonful vapours do sometimes ⟨p. 117⟩attend the Lightning is manifest. Seneca saith, that Wine which has been congealed with the Lightning, after it is dissolved, and in appearance returned to its pristine state, it causeth the persons that shall drink of it, either to die or become mad. Naturalists observe, that venomous Creatures being struck with Lightning lose their poison; the reason of which may be, not only the heat but the venom of those Vapours attracting the poison to themselves. And that Vapours will kill in a moment is past doubt. In the Philosophical transactions for the year 1665. (P.44.) It is related that seven or eight persons going down Stairs into a Coal-pit, they fell down dead as if they had been shot: There being one of them whose Wife was informed that her Husband was stifled, she went near to him without any inconvenience; but when she went a little further, the Vapours caused her instantly to fall down dead. And it is famously known, concerning the Lake Avernus in Campania, that if Birds attempt to fly over it, the deadly vapours thereof kill them in a moment. But the Lightning doth more than merely suffocate with mortiferous vapours. It sometimes penetrates the Brain, and shrivels the Heart and Liver when nothing does appear outwardly. And it does (as Dr. ⟨p. 118⟩Goodwin in his lately published judicious Discourse about the punishment of Sinners i• the other World (P.44.) aptly expresseth) lick up the vital and animal spirits that run in the Body, when yet the body it self remains unburnt. Those spirits are the Vinculum, the tie of Union between the Soul and Body, which the Lightning may consume without so much as singing the body or clothes there. Nevertheless, upon some it leaveth direful marks, and breaketh their very bones in pieces, and sometimes tears away the flesh from the Bones. There are some Remarkable Instances confirming this, published in the Philosophical Transactions. Dr. Wallis in a Letter written at Oxford, May 12. 1666. giving an account of a very sad accident which had then newly happened there.