PEDIATRICS Vol. 70 No. 4 October 1982, pp. 596
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AN ELECTRICAL INFANT AS REPORTED IN 1870

T. E. C. Jr MD

Nineteenth century medical literature abounds with strange pediatric case reports; none is more bizarre than the following, published in 1870 in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal.

AN ELECTRICAL INFANT—There is a wonderful account in all the French papers of an outstanding baby just dead, at the age of ten months, at St Urbain, near Lyons. The strongest medical evidence is said to be given that the child was so highly endowed with electricity that all the persons in the same room with him received constant electric shocks. Its end was apparently painless, but accompanied by still more astounding manifestations. At the instant of death luminous effluvia proceeded, it is affirmed by the doctors, from the body of the child, which continued for several minutes after its decease. The case is supposed to be quite unprecedented in the world of science.