"Putrefaction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... expense of violence, only half satisfied this tender and serious spirit. The headlong precipitation of a people into the truth, a '93, terrified him; nevertheless, stagnation was still more repulsive to him, in it he detected putrefaction and death; on the whole, he preferred scum to miasma, and he preferred the torrent to the cesspool, and the falls of Niagara to the lake of Montfaucon. In short, he desired neither halt nor haste. While his tumultuous ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... crowd of "holy places" forming part of this mythology. The city was full of the worship of Apollo and of the nymphs. The degradation of the people was awful. The peculiarity of these centres of moral putrefaction is to reduce all the race of mankind to the same level. The depravity of certain Levantine cities, which are dominated by the spirit of intrigue and delivered up entirely to low cunning, can scarcely give us an idea of the degree of corruption reached ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... with wells. Owing to this Momia is found in these sands, bring the flesh of such as have been drowned in the sea of sand, which is there dried up by the heat of the sun, and the excessive dryness of the sand preventing putrefaction. This Momia or dried flesh is esteemed medicinal; but there is another and more precious kind of Momia, being the dried and embalmed bodies of kings and princes, which have been preserved ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... upon that piece of pasteboard the wife had seen a crime which the mother could never forgive, the partner had seen a crime which the friend could never forgive. Think of a loved face suddenly melting before your eyes into a grinning skull, then into a mass of putrefaction, then into the ugliest fiend of hell, leering at you, distorted with all the marks of vice and shame. That is what I saw, that ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... their burning climate the putrefaction of dead bodies was a cause of pestilential diseases, the Egyptians, in many of their towns, had adopted the practice of burying their dead beyond the limits of the inhabited country, in the desert of the West. To go there, it was necessary to pass the channels of the river, and consequently ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... generation" being revived by the way. When Pasteur in 1857 showed that the lactic fermentation depends on the presence of an organism, it was already known from the researches of Schwann (1837) and Helmholtz (1843) that fermentation and putrefaction are intimately connected with the presence of organisms derived from the air, and that the preservation of putrescible substances depends on this principle. In 1862 Pasteur placed it beyond reasonable doubt that the ammoniacal ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... vain efforts? Solitude sent me to nature, and nature to love. Standing in the street of Mental Observation, I saw myself pale and wan, surrounded by corpses, and, drying my hands on my bloody apron, stifled by the odor of putrefaction, I turned my head in spite of myself, and saw floating before my eyes green harvests, balmy fields, and the pensive harmony of the evening. "No," said I, "science can not console me; rather will I plunge into this sea of irresponsive ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... distance near Quintero, Lord Cochran, and Mrs. Maria Graham, found that the water, even at high tide, did not reach rocks, on which oysters, muscles, and shells still adhered, the animals inhabiting which, recently dead, were in a state of putrefaction. Finally the whole banks of the lake of Quintero, which communicates with the sea, had evidently mounted considerably above the level of the water, and in this locality the fact could not escape ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... beautiful ruddy and tawny tints that lend to Florentine bronze that warm living look so much preferable to the gray-green aspect of common bronzes, which might easily be mistaken for statues in a state of putrefaction. Satiny gleams played over its rounded forms, doubtless polished by the amorous kisses of twenty centuries, for it seemed a Corinthian bronze, a work of the best era of art, ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... the shrouded graves, my friend; I will call you so notwithstanding what has happened, for I still think you are a gentleman; open me up, I say, the shrouded graves—set me among the hideous dead, in all their ghastly and loathsome putrefaction—lay me side by side with the sweltering carcass of the gibbeted murderer—give me such a vision, and expose me to the anger of the Almighty when raging in his vengeance; or, if there be a pitch of horror still ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... shortly afterwards, he was quite unconcerned about visiting her in her illness; and when she died, after promising to attend her funeral, he deferred his coming for several days, so that the corpse was in a state of decay and putrefaction before the interment; and he then forbad divine honours being paid to her, pretending that he acted according to her own directions. He likewise annulled her will, and in a short time ruined all her friends and acquaintance; not even sparing those ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... the water, shows large amounts of nitrogenous matter, and apparently indicates a polluted supply; but, if the reason for this apparent pollution lies in the presence of a swamp, no danger to health therefrom is to be apprehended. Such water also is less subject to decay or putrefaction, and if a water-supply for a house is to be taken from a small pond, a gathering ground containing swamps is likely to furnish a more satisfactory water, color alone excepted, than one free from ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... of the manor. Was he missing? Then, who was his heir? Any sons? Dead of the plague! Brothers? Dead of the plague! Wife? Dead of the plague! Children? Kinsfolk? All gone! Their blackening carcases huddled in sweltering masses of putrefaction in the wretched hovels, while the pitiless July sun blazed overhead, "Calmer than clock-work, and ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... and he who gets intoxicated injures his health; that they give a man who still believes in the resurrection of Jesus, to understand that he has not yet learned the first elements of the theory of putrefaction and perishableness. That the adversaries of faith in a God thus express themselves, and try to conquer as much ground as possible for their frosty doctrine, is certainly quite natural; but that even advocates of theism should permit such stuff to be presented to them, and ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... were severely wounded. Women and children flocked into the streets, raising cries of welcome to us. Of all the vile, dirty places on earth, Omdurman must rank first. There was no effort at sanitary observances, and dead animals, camels, horses, donkeys, dogs, goats, sheep, cattle, in all stages of putrefaction, lay about the streets and lanes. There were dead men, women, and children, too, lying in ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... problem: either the victims deposited by the mother are dead, and desiccation or putrefaction attacks them promptly, or else they are living, as indeed the larvae require; but then "what will become of this fragile creature, which a mere nothing will destroy, shut in the narrow chamber of the burrow among vigorous beetles, for weeks on end working their long spurred legs; or at grips with ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... quantities as the carbonate in the atmosphere, being produced from the putrefaction of nitrogenous animal and vegetable matter; ammonium salts are also found in small quantities in rain-water, whilst ammonium chloride (sal-ammoniac) and ammonium sulphate are found in volcanic districts; and crystals of ammonium bicarbonate have been found ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the port by Malays on long bamboo poles, this method of conveyance being necessitated by the superstitious refusal of the natives to touch even the skin of the dreaded beast. But the labour was to a large extent wasted, for putrefaction advanced, while the skin was in transit, to such an extent that all but the head had to be ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... deadly dose of the diphtheritic poison; if it saves the little creature from death, it is assumed to be potent enough for use on human beings, and, handled with all possible precautions against putrefaction or any contamination with pathogenic bacteria, it is furnished to physicians, its degree of potency ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... an appalling stench of putrefaction rose from a sewer near by that several people were turned sick; a woman was taken ill and handed over in a fainting condition to a couple of National Guards, who carried her off to a pump a few yards away. All held ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... absolutely new, but it was in some sense included in the work of the six days"; and that "even new species, if any appear, have existed before in certain native properties, just as animals are produced from putrefaction." ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Christian. Not a Catholic, but a Christian. Indeed, because I am a Christian am an anti-Catholic. My heart is Christian, and my brain is Protestant. It is with joy that I see in Catholicism signs, not of decrepitude, but of putrefaction. Charity is being dissolved in the most sincerely Catholic hearts into a dark mud, full of the worms of hatred. I see Catholicism cracking in many places, and I see the ancient idolatry upon which it has raised itself bursting forth through the ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... that fair prey? Must that divinest form, Which love and admiration cannot view Without a beating heart, whose azure veins Steal like dark streams along a field of snow, 15 Whose outline is as fair as marble clothed In light of some sublimest mind, decay? Nor putrefaction's breath Leave aught of this pure spectacle But loathsomeness and ruin?— 20 Spare aught but a dark theme, On which the lightest heart might moralize? Or is it but that downy-winged slumbers Have charmed their nurse coy Silence ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... takes the medaille militaire in recompense for his valour); noted the increasing pallor of her flesh, watched the skin gradually assume a distinct greenish tint (a greenishness which I cannot describe save that it suggested putrefaction); heard the coughing to which she had always been subject grow thicker and deeper till it doubled her up every few minutes, creasing her body as you crease a piece of paper with your thumb-nail, preparatory to tearing ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... regulate the specific gravity of the blood and other fluids of the body; (2) to preserve the tissues from disorganization and putrefaction; (3) to enter into the composition of the teeth and bones. These are only a few of the uses of salts in the body, but are sufficient for our purpose. Fruits and nuts contain the least quantity of salts, meat ranks next, then vegetables and pulses, cereals contain most ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... put a man to immediate death for opinions I disliked, and so to get rid of the man and his opinions at once, than to fret him with a feverish being, tainted with the jail-distemper of a contagious servitude, to keep him above ground an animated mass of putrefaction, corrupted himself, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... neatly set forth what he considers the task of the author. According to him, the man of to-day has lost courage; he interests himself too little in life, his desire to live with dignity has grown weaker, "an odor of putrefaction surrounds him, cowardice and slavery corrupt his heart, laziness binds his hands and his mind." But, at the same time, life grows in breadth and depth, and, from day to day, men are learning to question. And it is the writer who ought to answer their questions; but he ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... "the drawer missing. That contained substances offensive to the sight or smell, which my maid, conducted to it by her nose, conceived to be some animal curiosities I had been collecting, in a state of putrefaction and decay, and did not hesitate to throw them into the fire. I afterwards found myself very much at a loss, whenever my subject led me to the mention of objects of this character, and I therefore spoke of them as seldom as possible." After bestowing that tribute of admiration and ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... be seen feeding voraciously upon the filthiest carrion of animals; and not unfrequently upon a human body in a state of putrefaction—the corpse of some deluded victim to the superstition of Juggernaut—which has been thrown into the so-styled sacred river, to be washed back on the beach, an object of contention between pariah dogs, vultures, and these ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... we might do so," I observed; "but in this hot climate I doubt whether we could get the salt in with sufficient rapidity to stop putrefaction. However, of course, it would assist ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... happening every day, while so many lay sick, white persons sufficient for burying the dead were scarcely to be found; and though they were often interred on the same day they died, so quick was the putrefaction, so offensive and infectious were the corpses, that even the nearest relations seemed averse ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... due to putrefaction; the colours always show best when the oyster has been a bad one. Hence they are considered a defect and are called ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... that the Parts of rotten Wood, rotten Fish and the like, are also in motion, I think, will as easily be conceded by those, who consider, that those parts never begin to shine till the Bodies be in a state of putrefaction; and that is now generally granted by all, to be caused by the motion of the parts of putrifying bodies. That the Bononian stone shines no longer then it is either warmed by the Sun-beams, or by the flame of a Fire or of a Candle, is the ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... ceremonies in his household. Returning to England in 1477, he dedicated to King Edward IV. his famous work, "The Compound of Alchymy; or, the Twelve Gates leading to the Discovery of the Philosopher's Stone." These gates he described to be calcination, solution, separation, conjunction, putrefaction, congelation, cibation, sublimation, fermentation, exaltation, multiplication, and projection! to which he might have added botheration, the most important process of all. He was very rich, and allowed it to be believed that he could make gold out of iron. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... custom of keeping the putrefying corpse unburied in the house as a mark of affection. At Gaua, in Santa Maria, the body was dried over slow fires for ten days or more, till nothing but skin and bones remained; and the women who watched over it during these days drank the juices of putrefaction which dripped from the decaying flesh. The same thing used formerly to be done in Mota, another of the Banks' Islands. The corpses of great men in these islands were adorned in all their finery and laid out on the open space in the middle of the village. Here bunches ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... lives to it; but when the shadow of death begins to fall upon them, it is as ready to aid in their destruction. Like calumny, which blackens whatsoever is suspected, oxygen pounces upon the failing and completes their ruin. The processes of fermentation and putrefaction cannot commence in any substance, until it has first taken oxygen into combination. Thus, cans of meat, hermetically sealed, with all the air first carefully expelled, undergo no change so long as the air does not get access to them. If the minutest opening remain, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... millions of micro-organisms, circulating in the blood, which give rise to the disease characteristic of the fungus with which the animal has been infected. The condition called sapraemia, or septic intoxication, for example, is undoubtedly due to the entrance of the excretory products of putrefaction bacteria into the circulation. This can be proved by injecting into an animal a small portion of these products obtained from cultures of germs of putrefaction. Characteristic symptoms will ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... is the little grain of truth which has vitality amid the putrefaction of Sludge's nature? Liar and cheat as he is, he cannot be sure "but there was something in it, tricks and all." The spiritual world, he feels, is as real as the material world; the supernatural interpenetrates the natural at every point; in little things, as in great things, God ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... been made respecting it. It is an amphibious plant, thriving only in water or wet soils, is very productive, and the stalks after a summer's growth secrete a large quantity of sugar. It has the power, when the stalks are ripe, of resisting putrefaction, and will become blanched and more nutritious by being cut and laid in heaps in the winter season, at which time only it is useful. The cultivator of this plant must not expect to graze his land, but allow all the growth to be husbanded as above; and although it will not be ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... hearth, it contains materials for making food for the cottager's tables and new faggots for his fire. The wick of every burning lamp draws up the carbon of the oil to be made into carbonic acid at the flame. All matters in process of combustion, decay, fermentation, or putrefaction, are returning to the atmosphere those constituents, which they obtained from it. Every living animal, even to the smallest insect, by respiration, spends its life in the production of this material necessary to the growth ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... dark-coloured liquor of the cuttle fish, was also bleached by chlorine, but the black matter of the lungs was not destroyed or bleached in the slightest degree by chlorine, it even survived unimpaired the destruction of the lungs by putrefaction in air. ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... adult in health exhales by the lungs and skin in the twenty-four hours three pints at least of moisture, loaded with organic matter ready to enter into putrefaction; that in sickness the quantity is often greatly increased, the quality is always more noxious—just ask yourself next where does all this moisture go to? Chiefly into the bedding, because it cannot go anywhere else. And it stays there; because, except perhaps a weekly change ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... the parent, becomes a regular animal, furnished with bones and sinews, and covered with feathers. Let us consider; can there be more wanting to complete the Meditation on a Pudding? If more is wanting, more may be found. It contains salt, which keeps the sea from putrefaction: salt, which is made the image of intellectual excellence, contributes to the formation ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... pinching of the nostrils; sometimes they are excessively enlarged by putrid swelling, with the tip of the nose eaten away. The embalmers, we know, were not sure of their means, and the mummies were not always a success. In some cases putrefaction ensued, and corruption and even sudden hatchings of larvae, those "companions without ears and without eyes," which died indeed in time but only after they had ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... with equal force from each nostril and should not have an unpleasant odor. If the stream of air from one nostril is stronger than from the other, there is an indication of an obstruction in a nasal chamber. If the air possesses a bad odor, it is usually an indication of putrefaction of a tissue or secretion in some part of the respiratory tract. A bad odor is found where there is necrosis of the bone in the nasal passages or in chronic catarrh. An ulcerating tumor of the nose or throat may cause the breath to have an offensive odor. The most offensive breath occurs where there ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... very principles and institutes of science—that philosophy which, in the words of Macaulay, "began in observations, and ended in arts." A few words will suffice to close his personal history. While riding in his coach, he was struck with the idea that snow would arrest animal putrefaction. He alighted, bought a fowl, and stuffed it with snow, with his own hands. He caught cold, stopped at the Earl of Arundel's mansion, and slept in damp sheets; fever intervened, and on Easter Day, 1626, he died, leaving his great work unfinished, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... to offer his thoughts about the Pores of bodies, and a kind of Valves in wood; about spontaneous generation arising from the Putrefaction of bodies; about the nature of the Vegetation of mold, mushromes, moss, spunges; to the last of which he scarce finds any Body like it in texture. He adds, from the naturall contrivance, that is found in the leaf of a ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... shut up for some time together was poisonous when inhaled by others; and possibly more so, if the men be of different races. Mysterious as this circumstance appears to be, it is not more surprising than that the body of one's fellow-creature, directly after death, and before putrefaction has commenced, should often be of so deleterious a quality, that the mere puncture from an instrument used in ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... wonderfully generated, betrayed more terrible symptoms. Fever and delirium terminated in lethargic slumber, which, in the course of two hours, gave place to death. Yet not till insupportable exhalations and crawling putrefaction had driven from his chamber and the house every one whom ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... aggressor, just as the logic of its opponents' position ties them to a negative and protesting or merely insubordinate part. If the latter should prevail, their victory would become tantamount to national dissolution, either by putrefaction, by revolution, or ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... him, and, as if instinctively, he went up to the bed and pulled down the clothes, when he recoiled back with horror at uncovering the face of his mother, now of a livid blue and in the last stage of putrefaction. ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... respiration and circulation of the blood, which being foreclosed and the supplies cut off, all that remained of it floating before death in the atmosphere, must be condensed upon the cold corpse and lie harmless.[31] It must also be evident that when putrefaction begins, no production of what belonged to the living body can remain unchanged, but must undergo the transformation in form, substance and quality, ordained for all things; for putrefaction, although it may possibly ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... perfectly the process of respiration. Under all these circumstances, a good deal can often be effected by art. In every instance, therefore, in which we have not positive evidence of the child being dead, in the existence of putrefaction, or of such malformation as is incompatible with life, it is our duty to give a fair trial to the means for restoring suspended animation; and as long as the slightest attempt at motion of the respiratory organs is evinced, or the least pulsation of the heart continues, we have good grounds ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... fermented liquors have an antiseptic quality. They act in direct opposition to putrefaction, and in proportion to the quantity of alcohol which they contain, so will be their value and beneficial tendency. Now the circulating fluids of our system have a continual tendency to putrefaction; and the food we take, both ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... the harmony of the infinite. They fail to see that these warring creeds are but the necessary differentiations of a common faith. Lay the winds, still the tides, and old ocean, that perennial fount of health, becomes a stagnant pool of putrefaction—a malodorous "mother of dead dogs." Force presupposes friction. Let the sectaries fight, each doing valiant battle for his own dogma, for when they all agree religion will be dead and progress at an end. It is not necessary that you and I ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... over has the note of disagreeableness, or of putrefaction, been struck—long duration. Other indications of ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... when I found myself in that place chill and gloomy as the tomb; when I felt choked by the mephitic gases that arose from this seat of infection; when I found myself in the presence of a heap of corpses mutilated by the scalpel, disfigured by putrefaction and partially devoured by rats and worms; when, beneath tables laden with these horrible remains, I saw mean tubs filled with human entrails mingled with limbs and heads severed from their trunks; when I felt fragments of flesh reduced to the state of filthy ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... which it emitted drove all the inhabitants of the country away. Alexander marched his troops rapidly off the ground, leaving, as the direct result of the battle, a wide extent of country depopulated and desolate, with this vast mass of putrefaction and pestilence reigning in awful silence and solitude in the midst ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... naturally larded with lumps of fat, it is soon subject to corrupt, so that (though abounding within fourty miles) London Poulterers have no mind to meddle with them, which no care in carriage can keep from Putrefaction. That Palate-man shall pass in silence, who, being seriously demanded his judgment concerning the abilities of a great Lord, concluded him a man of very weak parts, 'because once he saw him, at a great Feast, feed on ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... order they are cruciferous plants; and all contain much nitrogen, or vegetable albumen, with a considerable quantity of sulphur; hence they tend strongly to putrefaction, and when decomposed their odour is very offensive. Being cut into pieces, and pressed close in a tub with aromatic herbs and salt, so as to undergo an acescent fermentation (which is [75] arrested at that stage), Cabbages form the German Saurkraut, which is strongly recommended against scurvy. ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... the fetor attending copious continued sweats, it is owing to the animalized part of this fluid being kept in that degree of warmth, which most favours putrefaction, and not suffered to exhale into the atmosphere. Broth, or other animal mucus, kept in similar circumstances, would in the same time acquire a putrid smell; yet has this error frequently produced miliary eruptions, and increased every kind of ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... worms have shown, until they began the spinning of their cocoons, every sign of perfect, robust health. Any indication of the disease called flacherie, from which the worms so often die after the fourth moult and turn black from putrefaction, or of any other disease from which silk worms suffer, should be considered as ample reason for not using the cocoons for the purpose in question. They should, on the other hand, be sold for the filature. If the worms have all the indications ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... being, as he said, of a cantankerous turn, to Mr. Treluddra, principal "jowder," i.e. fish salesman, of Aberalva. Whereon Treluddra, whose conscience told him that there was at present in his back-yard a cartload and more of fish in every stage of putrefaction, which he had kept rotting there rather than lower the ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... you, but I am anxious to explain them. First, then, in all known chemical changes in which oxygen gas is absorbed and carbonic acid gas formed, heat is produced. I could mention a thousand instances, from the combustion of wood or spirits of wine to the fermentation of fruit or the putrefaction of animal matter. This general fact, which may be almost called a law, is in favour of the view of Dr. Black. Another circumstance in favour of it is, that those animals which possess the highest temperature consume the greatest quantity of ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... was of the same nature as ours. But directly after death our bodies begin to dissolve into dust, and are disposed towards putrefaction, because when the natural heat departs, there supervenes heat from without which causes corruption. Therefore it seems that the same thing ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... however, is also mixed with another elastic substance resembling air, which differs from it in numerous properties, and is, with good reason, called aerial acid by Professor Bergman. It owes its presence to organised bodies, destroyed by putrefaction ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele
... interested in any effort made among Painters to prove that they are alive—but when I find, thrust in the van of your leaders, the body of my dead 'Arry, I know that putrefaction alone can result. When, following 'Arry, there comes on Oscar, you finish in farce, and bring upon yourselves the scorn and ridicule of ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... upon the unspeakable torment of the unceasing agony. Thus, dying like a thief, like a dog, basely, vilely, physically, He had sunk himself to the deepest depth of fallen humanity and had not spared Himself the last ignominy of putrefaction. ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... whether the fungusses should be classed in the animal or vegetable department. Their animal taste in cookery, and their animal smell when burnt, together with their tendency to putrefaction, insomuch that the Phallus impudicus has gained the name of stink-horn; and lastly, their growing and continuing healthy without light, as the Licoperdon tuber or truffle, and the fungus vinosus or mucor in dark cellars, and the esculent mushrooms on beds ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... power of a non-univocal agent does not wholly manifest itself in the production of its effect: as, for example, the power of the sun does not wholly manifest itself in the production of an animal generated from putrefaction. Now it is clear that God is not a univocal agent. For nothing agrees with Him either in species or in genus, as was shown above (Q. 3, A. 5; Q. 4, A. 3). Whence it follows that His effect is always less than His power. It is not necessary, therefore, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... mistake - a newfangled notion altogether - to suppose that there is any natural antagonism between putrefaction and health. They know better than that, in the Common Council. You may talk about Nature, in her wisdom, always warning man through his sense of smell, when he draws near to something dangerous; but, that won't go down ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... the salt of life, which not only gives a grateful smack to it, but dries up those crudities that would offend, preserves from putrefaction, and drives off all those blowing flies that would corrupt it. Let a man be sure to drive his business rather than let it drive him. When a man is but once brought to be driven, he becomes a vassal to his affairs. Reason and right ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... it is perfectly true," she said, "that a young man called Graham has invented an entirely new explosive, the formula for which he brought to Henry's with him that day. It isn't only what happens when the shell explodes, but a sort of putrefaction sets in all round, and they say that everything within a mile dies. There were spies down even watching his experiments. There were spies following him up to London, there were spies in Henry's Restaurant when like a fool he gave the thing away. Fischer was the ringleader of this lot, ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... temperatures of heat; and their being endued with life prevents them from being destroyed by digestion in the stomach, probably in the same manner as the powers of life prevent the fermentation and putrefaction of the stomach itself. Hence I conclude, that worms are originally taken into our alimentary canal from without; as I believe similar worms of all kinds are to be found out of ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... their surgeon, nurse, or cook; and the space between decks was so confined that the miserable patients had not room to sit upright in their beds. Their wounds and stumps, being neglected, contracted filth and putrefaction, and millions of maggots were hatched amidst the corruption of their sores. This inhuman disregard was imputed to the scarcity of surgeons; though it is well known that every great ship in the fleet ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... leave their little ones, when they appear, face to face with such abundant nourishment. When they emerge from the envelope the young larvae find themselves in the presence of this stored food, which has been softened by putrefaction and rendered more easy of digestion. If the treasure has not fallen on a spot easy to dig, the Necrophorus quickly recognise the fact, and do not waste time in useless labour. Endowed with considerable strength relatively to their size, three or four of them creep beneath ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... their character or social position were sent to the Bastille or other state prisons; some were entombed in subterranean dungeons—in those dark pits, stifling or deadly cold, invented by feudal barbarism. The remains of animals in a state of putrefaction were sometimes thrown in after them, to redouble the horror! The hospital of Valence and the tower of Constance at Aigues-Mortes have preserved, in Protestant martyrology, a frightful renown. The women usually showing themselves more steadfast than the men, the most obstinate were shut ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... texture; the flesh is white; they grow more readily in open places, such as dry pastures and waste lands, than in places humid or shaded by wood. In general, those should be suspected which grow in caverns and subterranean passages, on animal matter undergoing putrefaction, as well as those whose flesh ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... refuse To bite, and only dogs for physic use. As, where the lightning runs along the ground, No husbandry can heal the blasting wound; Nor bladed grass, nor bearded corn succeeds, But scales of scurf and putrefaction breeds: Such wars, such waste, such fiery tracks of dearth Their zeal has left, and such a teemless earth, But, as the poisons of the deadliest kind Are to their own unhappy coasts confined; 230 ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... and in this particular as well as others which have been mentioned are better prepared to serve as nutrients to the body than are meats. Besides, nuts have the advantage of being clean, free from the products of disease and putrefaction. Meats of all sorts, as found in the market, with the exception of canned meats, abound with putrefactive bacteria to an astonishing degree. This is true of dried, smoked and salted meats as well as of the fresh meats and game which are displayed upon the walls of the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various
... they are trampled. In its trenches they fall. On its ghastly holocaust they burn. Could the muster-roll of this great army be called, and could they come up from the dead, what eye could endure the reeking, festering putrefaction? What heart could endure the groan of agony? Drunkenness! Does it not jingle the burglar's key? Does it not whet the assassin's knife? Does it not cock the highwayman's pistol? Does it not wave the incendiary's torch? Has it not sent the physician reeling into the sick-room; and the minister ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... respectively attack. The Scolia, which attacks a larva of the rose-beetle, stings it in one point only, but in this point the motor ganglia are concentrated, and those ganglia alone: the stinging of other ganglia might cause death and putrefaction, which it must avoid.[70] The yellow-winged Sphex, which has chosen the cricket for its victim, knows that the cricket has three nerve-centres which serve its three pairs of legs—or at least it acts as if it knew this. It stings the insect first ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... bank with poles, they were at last able to hoist their sail to a fine breeze, and steer for the coast before the wind at the rate of about three miles an hour. But it was not until they had gained half a mile from the bank that they were no longer annoyed by the dreadful smell arising from the putrefaction of so many bodies, for to bury them all would have been a work of too great time. The last two days of their remaining on the island, the effluvia had become so powerful as to be a source of the greatest horror and disgust ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... the rational and discursive faculty, it comes to a purer intellectual one, so that it can present itself to the mind, without feeling itself befogged by the exhalations of that humour, which, through the exercise of contemplation, has been saved from putrefaction in the stomach and is duly digested. In this state, the present enthusiast shows himself to have remained thirty years, during which time he had not reached that purity of conception which would make him a suitable habitation for the wandering species, which offering ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... world, and it is not unreasonable to believe that there may be some connection between this fact and the equally notorious one that we are the most unhealthy people in the world. An untold amount of disease results from the too free use of flesh during the hot months. Heat promotes putrefaction; and as this change in meat is very rapid in warm weather, we can not be too careful not to eat that which is in the slightest degree tainted. Even when it goes into the stomach in a normal condition, there is danger; for if too much is eaten, or the digestive ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... eyes being closed during sleep, this spirit heated by the eyelids becomes inflamed, and sets some faculty in motion, as the imagination. For, does it not happen that wood of different kinds, and fish bones, produce some light when their heat is excited by putrefaction? Why then may not the heat excited in this confined spirit produce some light? He proves afterwards that imagination ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... the captain of what he was an eye-witness; and carried with him a little piece of flesh, which he had cut off, and which was about a finger's length. All the company ran immediately to the place of burial, and having made an exact observation of the body, found it to be all entire, and without any putrefaction. The sacerdotal habits, with which he had' been vested after his disease, were nowise damaged by the lime. And what was most amazing to them all, was, that the holy corpse exhaled an odour so delightful, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... our poor captain was lying dead in the cabin was constantly obtruding. All that night the carpenters were up making up his coffin, for he was to be buried the next day. The body is never allowed to remain many hours unburied in the tropical climates, where putrefaction is so rapid. The following morning the men were up at daylight, washing the decks and putting the ship in order; they worked willingly, and yet with a silent decorum which showed what their feelings ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... death;—miles and miles sometimes of gaunt white mangrove skeletons standing on gray stuff that is not yet earth and is no longer slime, and through the crust of which you can sink into rotting putrefaction. Yet, long after you are dead, buried, and forgotten, this will become a forest of soft-wooded plants and palms; and finally of hard-wooded trees. Districts of this description you will find in great sweeps of Kama country for example, and in the rich low regions up to the base ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... secret gas is pumped. The dead body, lying in this receptacle for two hours, absorbs certain parts of the gas which enters the pores and touches those parts of the dead body not reached by the injected fluid. By this process no part of the body is subject to putrefaction and the muscles all retain their rigidity, so that one hundred years after burial the features ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... were ferments to which air was necessary, called by Pasteur the aerobics, and others to whom oxygen was fatal, the anaerobics. He proved, also, by an exhaustive series of experiments, that what is called putrefaction of animal matter is the result of the combined work of the aerobics and the anaerobics, which reduce that part not taken up by oxygen to dead organic matter, ready in its turn to form ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... Essie; neither had been the result of the other; they had been swept together, descended blindly in company, submerged in the passion that he had thought must last forever, but which had burned to ashes, to nothing more than a vague sense of putrefaction in life. ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... and extinction, then in the sordid and icy dark that would remain there could be no war of like nature with this that to-day gives the land its woful baptism of blood and tears. Oh, no! there would have been peace—and putrefaction: peace, but without its sweetness, and death, but without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... Also we make them differ in colour, shape, activity, many ways. We find means to make commixtures and copulations of different kinds; which have produced many new kinds, and them not barren, as the general opinion is. We make a number of kinds of serpents, worms, flies, fishes, of putrefaction; whereof some are advanced (in effect) to be perfect creatures, like bests or birds; and have sexes, and do propagate. Neither do we this by chance, but we know beforehand, of what matter and commixture what kind of ...
— The New Atlantis • Francis Bacon
... of the pantry and cellar is important, in order that one may make improvements in conditions. Putrefaction will start at 50 deg., so that a pantry or closet where food is kept should have a temperature at least as low as that. Cellars where canned goods are stored should have a temperature of 32 deg. or over. Apples are frequently stored in outside cellars, ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... Roman thinkers, gazing mournfully at the seething mass of moral putrefaction round him, detected and deigned to notice among its elements a certain detestable superstition, so he called it, rising up amidst the offscouring of the Jews, which was named Christianity. Could Tacitus have looked forward nine centuries to the Rome of Gregory VII., could he have beheld ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... have found that a fresh cabbage leaf, put under a glass vessel filled with common air, for the space of one night only, has so affected the air, that a candle would not burn in it the next morning, and yet the leaf had not acquired any smell of putrefaction. ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... disturbers of play-houses; they break the windows, and commonly the landlords, of the taverns where they drink; and are at once the support, the terror, and the victims, of the bawdy-houses they frequent. These poor mistaken people think they shine, and so they do indeed; but it is as putrefaction shines in ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... gay; and the lettuces lounged in line with an air of careless indolence. And as he looked at them all, the markets which he had left behind him that morning seemed to him like a vast mortuary, an abode of death, where only corpses could be found, a charnel-house reeking with foul smells and putrefaction. He slackened his steps, and rested in that kitchen garden, as after a long perambulation amidst deafening noises and repulsive odours. The uproar and the sickening humidity of the fish market had departed from him; and he felt as though he were being born anew in the pure fresh air. Claude ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... after death the muscles continue to contract under stimuli. When this irritability ceases—and it seldom exceeds two hours—rigidity and hardening sets in, and in all cases precedes putrefaction. It is caused by the coagulation of the muscle plasma. It commences in the muscles of the back of the neck and lower jaw, and then passes into the muscles of the face, front of the neck, chest, upper extremities, and lastly to ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... Vitrioll, according to Dioscorides, Galen, AEtius, Paulus AEgineta, and Oribasius, are to heate and dry, to bind, to resist putrefaction, to give strength and vigour to the interiour parts, to kill the flat wormes of the belly, to remedy venemous mushromes, to preserve flesh over moyst from corruption, consuming the moysture thereof by its heat, and constipating by his astriction the substance of it, and pressing forth ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... internal which urges us to an act, but, on the other hand, one or more sensations may exist at the base of this something to put it in action. I have proved, for example, that the egg-laying instinct in the corpse fly (Lucilia caesar) is only produced by the odor of putrefaction. As soon as the antennae, which contain the organ of smell, are removed from these flies they cease to lay, while other more severe operations, or removal of one antenna only does not produce ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... sheep dogs flee in terror from this mournful place, and when one leans over it one perceives a disgusting odor of putrefaction. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... months of June and July, the thermometer is at from 88 to 90 degrees. What must it be, then, in the latitude of 6 or 7, under a vertical sun, and where, after the rainy season, the effluvium which arises from the putrefaction of vegetables is productive of the most fatal effects? Sir James L. Yeo agrees with their account, in his statement laid before the Admiralty of ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... not life that you have built—you have made a cesspool! You have bred filth and putrefaction by your deeds! Have you a conscience? Do you remember God? Money—that's your God! And your conscience you have driven away. Whither have you driven it away? Blood-suckers! You live on the strength of others. You work with other people's hands! ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... Dr. Sierich's book the unexpected sequel of the tale. Here is enough for my purpose. Though the man was but new dead, the ghost was already putrefied, as though putrefaction were the mark and of the essence of a spirit. The vigil on the Paumotuan grave does not extend beyond two weeks, and they told me this period was thought to coincide with that of the resolution of the body. The ghost always marked with decay—the danger seemingly ending with the process of dissolution—here ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Resurrection of Lazarus, who had been four days dead. Considering the corrupt state of the body, which had been in the tomb three days, he presented the grave clothes bound about him as soiled by the putrefaction of the flesh, and certain livid and yellowish marks in the flesh about the eyes, between quick and dead, very well considered. He also shows the astonishment of the disciples and other figures, who in varied and remarkable attitudes are holding their garments ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... the whited sepulchre of his religious observances had concealed a mass of putrefaction. The sceptic confessed that his refusal of religion was largely due to his hatred of the demands of God's holy law. The multitudes confessed that they had been selfish and sensual, shutting up their compassions, and refusing clothing and food to the needy. The publican confessed that he had ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... ago, a huge animal was found imbedded in the ice in Siberia: from a comparison of its skeleton with those of existing species, Cuvier inferred that this animal must have been antediluvian; and yet, so completely had the cold prevented putrefaction, that dogs willingly ate of the still existing flesh. At St Petersburg, when winter is approaching, the fish in the markets become almost like blocks of ice, so completely are they frozen; and in this state they will remain sound for a lengthened period. Dead poultry, and other articles ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... that had met her on the occasion of her visit. But upon our arrival at the scene of operations we soon found that a fortnight had made a vast amount of difference in the condition of the oysters. For whereas when we had last visited the oyster-bed the process of putrefaction had only just begun, it had now advanced so far that the fish were not only completely decayed but had also in many cases so completely dried up under the influence of the sun's rays as to have, to a very great extent, ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... speaks of the tundra as the very grave of nature, the sepulchre of the primeval world, because it is the tomb of so many animals whose remains have been protected from putrefaction for thousands of years. How interesting would it be could these animals be brought to life and be endowed with sufficient intelligence to relate the history of their ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... and dreary. Great drops of rain fell occasionally and another storm seems imminent. Every one feels thankful though that the weather still remains cold, and that the gradual putrefaction of the hundreds of bodies that still line the streams and lie hidden under the miles of driftwood and debris is ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... foods either partly or completely. Many foods need partial or complete sterilization for safety. They must be completely sterilized if the germs that produce fermentation or putrefaction and thereby spoil food would be destroyed. This is done when fruits and vegetables are canned for keeping. Foods that are exposed to dust, flies, and improper handling should be thoroughly cooked in order to destroy any pathogenic germs that might be ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... indicates frigid regions aloft. Nevertheless such phenomena as putrefaction have occurred often enough to make super-tropical regions, also, acceptable. We shall have one more datum upon the Super-Sargasso Sea. It seems to me that, by this time, our requirements of support and reinforcement and agreement have been quite as rigorous for acceptance as ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... feast upon carrion and every form of filth. They are polution personified, and yet they are the salvation of the indolent people, who would, but for the timely service of these ravenous birds, soon be wallowing in fetid refuse and putrefaction under the fierce rays ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... Endeavour River). He found it to consist of two rusty old corrugated iron buildings, vaguely surrounded by an enormous amount of primaeval desolation and immediately encompassed by several hundred dead cattle (in an advanced state of putrefaction) picturesquely disposed about the outskirts of the premises. But Denison, being by nature a cheerful man, remembered that his brother (who was pious) had alluded to a drought, and said that rain was expected every day, as the newly-appointed Bishop of North Queensland had ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... section of stone grew fetid moss that quivered with the microscopic organisms that infest age-rotten places. Sections of the flooring and woodwork also reeked with mustiness. In one dark, webby corner of the room lay a pile of bleached bones, still tinted with the ghastly grays and pinks of putrefaction. Northwood, overwhelmingly nauseated, withdrew his eyes from the bones, only to see, in another corner, a pile of worm-eaten clothing that lay on the floor in the outline ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... change was observable in the eyes, the mouth, feet, or hands of the corpse, the murderer was conjectured to be present, and many innocent spectators must have suffered death. "When a body is full of blood, warmed by a sudden external heat, and a putrefaction coming on, some of the blood-vessels will burst, as they will all in time." This practice was once allowed in England, and is still looked on in some of the uncivilized parts of these kingdoms as a detection of the criminal. It forms a solemn ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... periodical plague of London was thinning out the inhabitants of that dirty city. In the lower part of the city skirting the Thames, the sewerage was very bad and but the poorest sanitary rules existed. After a hard rain, the lanes, alleys and streets ran with a stream of putrefaction, as the offal from many tenement houses was thrown in the public highway, where the rays from the hot sun created malarial ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... of the scalp sutures of silk are recommended because this resists putrefaction and holds the wound edges together. Interrupted sutures about a finger-breadth apart are recommended. "The lower part of the wound should be left open so that the cure may proceed properly." Red powder ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... formidable than the cannon and the sword. Of the thousands and ten thousands, that perished in our late contests with France and Spain, a very small part ever felt the stroke of an enemy; the rest languished in tents and ships, amidst damps and putrefaction; pale, torpid, spiritless, and helpless; gasping and groaning, unpitied among men, made obdurate by long continuance of hopeless misery; and were, at last, whelmed in pits, or heaved into the ocean, without notice and without remembrance. By incommodious encampments and unwholesome stations, where ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... so intolerably stale and fusty that I had to come into the passage again and fetch a few breaths to humour my nose to the odour. As in the cabin, however, so here I found this noxiousness of air was not caused by putrefaction or any tainting qualities of a vegetable or animal kind, but by the deadness of the pent-up air itself, as the foulness of bilge-water is owing to its being imprisoned from air in ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... the contrast at London — I am pent up in frowzy lodgings, where there is not room enough to swing a cat; and I breathe the steams of endless putrefaction; and these would, undoubtedly, produce a pestilence, if they were not qualified by the gross acid of sea-coal, which is itself a pernicious nuisance to lungs of any delicacy of texture: but even this boasted corrector cannot prevent those languid, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... their boundless misery, it only remained for him to sink down among them, or to avert his eyes, to close his ears to their supplications, and escape with hurried steps from this atmosphere of blood and putrefaction, in order to rescue his own life from the ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach |
