David Chas. Schechter

Electrical treatment of electrocution.

Primitive man cowered before the terrifying spectacie of storms. To him they represented diviniB fulmination. Thunder was the roar, and lightning the dreadful retribution of the raging god. The heathen belief that the thunderbolt was a deitys weapon extended to the pantheons of most of the early civilizations. Thus, statuary of the Greek Zeus and Roman Jupiter depicted them wielding darts, and the Inca Catequil was shown armed with a sling and mace. • Folkloric notions cohcerning the sacred origin of lightning held that only through celestial will could such an awesome force slay without leaving any mark of violence on internal organs to account for how death occurred. Even after the kinship between lightning and electricity was recognized, for a lohg time the biophysical inechanisms underlying their deadliness evaded identification.