It hardly seems credible that anyone could benefit from being hit by lightning, but there are some curious reports of people cured of chronic medical conditions after lightning strikes.

In 1911, a bolt of lightning tore through a house in Connecticut and struck a 65-year-old woman, Mrs Jane Decker, who had been deaf since childhood. "Mrs Decker was lame and sore for a number of days," reported the New York Times. "Her hearing is now so good that she is able to carry on a conversation in an ordinary tone of voice."

A woman in Oklahoma who had been paralysed by multiple sclerosis and used a wheelchair was struck by lightning inside her bathroom.

The lightning passed through metal piping, hurling the woman out of her wheelchair, but despite the trauma she gradually regained feeling and movement in her legs over the following months and eventually walked again.

In England, a lightning strike several years ago blasted a shop front in Birmingham, throwing a woman inside to the floor and leaving her temporarily paralysed down her righthand side. But the next morning she woke up and found the severe arthritis that had crippled her right hand had completely disappeared. Over the following weeks the swelling in her hand also vanished.

There seems no rational explanation for any of these incidents – and medical experts warn that anyone seeking a medical cure by deliberately getting hit by lightning is more likely to be killed, or at least seriously injured.