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Show HAD A FEAR OF LIGHTNING Lifelong Dread Made Woman Unconscious Uncon-scious and She Died From Fright. During n thunderstorm at Newton, N. J., a woman who "through all her life of fifty years had felt a nervous dread of lightning" became unconscious uncon-scious from fright and died. Cannot the multitudes of otherwise' rational people who are obsessed by the same dread take counsel of the fate of this unfortunate and allay their fears? asks the New York World. They suffer an access of terror in every thunderstorm, and In effect undergo un-dergo the agony of death many times. Yet there are few other forms of death so painless or so remote. In 1912 in the whole country only 243 persons per-sons were killed by lightning, of whom but 42 were females. Women, who mainly feel this fear, should be encouraged en-couraged by their greater Immunity. But, in fact, twice as many people are burned to death in conflagrations in a year as are killed by thunderbolts, and the number of those who die from organic heart disease compared with those who die from lightning is as 354 to 1. No doubt the superstition that has attached from the earliest times to deaths by lightning has had something some-thing to do with the survival of the fear. People who view their inescapable inescap-able exit from this world with, philosophy philos-ophy should be ready to accept a lightning light-ning stroke as an end as easy as any other. It Is too Instantaneous to admit of physical sensation, while the fear-ridden fear-ridden are assured that if the Hash is seen the sufferer is safe!. |