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Debility   /dəbˈɪləti/   Listen
Debility

noun
1.
The state of being weak in health or body (especially from old age).  Synonyms: feebleness, frailness, frailty, infirmity, valetudinarianism.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Debility" Quotes from Famous Books



... Lucia, this year droop; Three zodiacs filled more, I shall stoop; Let crutches then provided be To shore up my debility. Then, while thou laugh'st, I'll sighing cry, "A ruin, underpropp'd, am I". Don will I then my beadsman's gown, And when so feeble I am grown, As my weak shoulders cannot bear The burden of a grasshopper, Yet ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... advance today. The head is right, at least," but the doctor looked anxious and spoke low as he said, "I am not satisfied about her yet. That want of power over the limbs, is more than the mere shock and debility, as it seems to me, though Ward thinks otherwise, and I trust he is right, but I cannot tell yet as to the spine. If this should not soon mend I shall have Fleet to see her. He was a fellow-student of mine very clever, and I have more faith in him than in ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... small quantities, bruised to a pulp, may be very advantageously used in fevers attended with debility."—DARWIN'S ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... Taylor had tasted the first public failure of his powers, the latter wrote: "To my ever dearest Mr. Barron say, if you please, that I miss him more than I regret him—that I acquiesce in his retirement from Norwich, because I could ill brook his observation of my increasing debility of mind." This chosen companion of William Taylor must himself have been no ordinary man; and he was the friend besides of Borrow, whom I find him helping in his Latin. But he had no desire for popular distinction, lived privately, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Controller-General."—"You have a spite against him," said Madame, "because he would not grant what you asked"—"That is true," said he, "but though that might possibly incline me to tell a disagreeable truth, it would not make me invent one. He is losing his intellects from debility. He affects gallantry at his age, and I perceive the connection in his ideas is becoming feeble and irregular."—The King laughed; but three months afterwards he came to Madame, saying, "Sechelles gives evident proofs of dotage in the Council. We must ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... debilitated by excessive drinking of India Tea, as to render it alone the prey of melancholy, palsies, epilepsies, night-mares, swoonings, flatulencies, low spirits, hysteric and hypochondriacal affections. For tea that is pernicious is not only poison to those who, from any cause of corporal debility or mental affliction, are liable to the above diseases;—but it is also too frequently found to render the most healthy victims of these alarming complaints. And as nervous disorders are the most complicated in their distressing circumstances, the greater care should ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith

... country is unhealthy, not so much from fever as from debility of the whole system, induced by damp, cold, and indigestion: this general weakness is ascribed by some to maize being the common food, it shows itself in weakness of bowels and choleraic purging. This may ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... This relative debility is, at the same time, more apparent to the stockholders than to their customers. The superstructure and "plant" of the Erie has lately stood interested inspection from abroad with great credit, and that of the Great Western is unexceptionable. The vote of travelers may be safely allotted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... my case, and pronounced my lungs perfectly sound; and declared that if I should live an hundred years I'd never have lung trouble. He informed me that I was suffering from a complication of diseases, and general debility caused by over-work and the general excitement and hus'ling naturally attending my business; and assured me that with the energy and determination I showed in my disposition to get well, he would bring me out all right. He was much surprised, ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston

... Haven, and as he passed through that town the next morning, the scenes of early life in which he had there been an actor, moved in melancholy succession over his mind. That day he grew more indisposed; he experienced an unusual languor, listlessness and debility; chills, followed by hot flashes, heavy pains in the head and back, with incessant and intolerable thirst. It was near night when he reached Killingsworth, where he halted, as he felt unable to go farther: he called for a bed, and through the night was racked with ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.

... Europe and Asia were multiplied by Justinian; but the repetition of those timid and fruitless precautions exposes, to a philosophic eye, the debility of the empire. [111] From Belgrade to the Euxine, from the conflux of the Save to the mouth of the Danube, a chain of above fourscore fortified places was extended along the banks of the great river. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... most anxious to preserve; and the interest which I perceived others had in getting rid of me, increased my desire to recover. My recovery was, however, for some time doubtful. I was seized with a fever, which left me in a state of alarming debility. My old nurse, whom I shall henceforward call by her name of Ellinor, attended me with the most affectionate solicitude during my illness;[76] she scarcely stirred from my bedside, night or day; and, indeed, when I came ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... Debility was succeeded by disease—fever preyed upon its little frame, which was now reduced to a skeleton. One short month only had elapsed from its birth, and it lay, in the silence of exhaustion upon the arm of its mother. Its eyes, whence the flickering light was escaping fast, looked ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... is endued with the most energetic, poisonous properties, producing, when administered even in small doses, severe nausea and vomiting, cold sweats, universal tremors, with extreme muscular debility." From its exerting a peculiar action on the nervous system, as ascertained by the well directed experiments of Mr. Brodie, it powerfully controls the action of the heart and arteries, producing invariably a weak, tremulous pulse, with all the apparent symptoms ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister

... was to make for her a little book which he called "Faith for Cloudy Days," consisting of energising and sustaining phrases from certain great writers,—as it were, a bottle of philosophical phosphates against seasons of spiritual cowardice or debility. There one opened and read: "Sudden the worst turns best to the brave" or Thoreau's "I have yet to hear a single word of wisdom spoken to me by my ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... oftener it is endured, the greater is their estimation among their people. No bandages are applied to the wounds thus inflicted, nor is any attention paid to their cure; but, from the extreme exhaustion and debility caused by want of sustenance and sleep, circulation is checked, and sensibility diminished; the bleeding and inflammation are very slight, and the ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... to his father soon after announced that poor Mr. Cargill had been seized with a nervous fever, and again, that his reconvalescence was attended with so much debility, it seemed both of mind and body, as entirely to destroy his utility as a travelling companion. Shortly after this the travellers separated, and Cargill returned to his native country alone, indulging upon the road in a melancholy abstraction of mind, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... altitudes. This lowering of the sexual powers, Tarnowsky is of the opinion, might partly account for the comparative slight increase of population on highland regions; and he is of the opinion that, when the debility is transmitted, it may become a source of degeneration that operates upon the ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... his treasure, Father Hagoult suddenly appeared; and, being apprized of what was inside the box, insisted on its being opened. The papers were at once confiscated, and were never given back. Their loss caused the boy a serious shock, which, combining with debility of longer standing, brought on a malady that necessitated his leaving the school. The Principal himself advised the removal. In 1813, between Easter and prize distribution, he wrote to Madame Balzac asking her to come immediately and fetch her son away. The lad, he explained, was prostrated ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... revelations of the effects of alcohol on the cellular tissue of the brain—Opinions of high scientific authorities against its use—No need of resorting to stimulants either for refreshment, nourishment, or pleasure—Tea and coffee an extensive cause of much nervous debility and suffering—Tend to wasteful use in the kitchen—Are seldom agreeable at first to children—Are dangerous to sensitive, nervous organizations, and should be at least regulated—Hot drinks unwholesome, debilitating, and destructive to teeth, throat, ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... I had never set eyes on him before, so much was certain. He was small, as I have said; I was struck besides with the shocking expression of his face, with his remarkable combination of great muscular activity and great apparent debility of constitution, and—last but not least— with the odd, subjective disturbance caused by his neighbourhood. This bore some resemblance to incipient rigour, and was accompanied by a marked sinking of the pulse. At the time, I set it down to ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

... rival. Thus, in anaemia, where the blood is so poor, it restores the strength; in bronchitis and other chest diseases it helps to relieve the loaded tubes of phlegm; in consumption and similar wasting maladies it conserves the vital powers; in debility it creates new force; in indigestion it is often digestible when all else is indigestible; in nervous disease it renews the nervous energy. The list, in fact, might be multiplied indefinitely, but enough has been instanced to prove ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... indeed they required, as fever and ague had weakened them much,) and in a few days all traces of their sufferings had disappeared; but poor Sturt, who had been complaining for some days before of great debility and headache, was seized on the morning of the 3d with a violent attack of Koondooz fever, which soon prostrated his strength and caused me some uneasiness. He weathered the storm, however, and by the 11th was ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem

... saddening influence of debility and defeat, he might count the cost of his campaigning, the martial spirit still burned within him. His connection with the army, it is true, had ceased at the death of Braddock, but his military ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... organs; it may therefore be adviseable to devote a few lines to the consideration of these points, as well for the satisfaction of the public, as for his instruction and the improvement of his second edition. Dyspepsia, or indigestion in its simple form, occurs either as a disease of debility, or as a consequence of excess: the first arises from numerous causes, and seldom exists alone: the secretion of the gastric juice is not only impaired, for the office of no organ continues in a state of activity, all ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... Mavis when he first saw her. She and Norah were as like as two peas out of one pod in the matter of looking fragile and yet firm, as gracefully delicate of form as it is possible to be without arousing any suspicion of debility or unhealthiness. The back of Mavis' stooping neck used to be exactly like this girl's—a smooth, round stem, without a crease or a speck on it, a solid, healthy neck, and yet so slender that his great hand would ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... state of excitation in which he may find her; and he should give a dose of physic immediately after the bleeding. When the physic begins to operate, he should administer half a drachm of opium and half an ounce of sweet spirits of nitre. Unless she is in a state of great debility, he should allow nothing but gruel, and she should be kept as quiet as possible. By these means he may occasionally allay the general or local irritation that precedes or causes the abortion, and the cow may yet ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... happiness of seeing her husband incessantly busy and satisfied for nearly eight months. But the shock he had lately given her was too severe; she sank into a state of languor and debility which steadily increased. Balthazar was now so completely absorbed in science that neither the reverses which had overtaken France, nor the first fall of Napoleon, nor the return of the Bourbons, drew him from his laboratory; he was neither ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac

... this highway cuts through, the city, wreathed in smoke, and a great oceanic stretch of roofs are in easy view, and at closer range, an outlying section of public asylums for the city's discard of its debility and its senility. ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... that she was almost dumb-founded, and feared either to speak or to think. Biddy differed from either of her mistresses—the young or the old; she appeared to have lost all hope, and her physical energy was fast giving way under her profound moral debility. ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... his illness—no medical adviser, no friend at hand, and he daily growing weaker and weaker. He began to totter in walking, clinging to the furniture and walls, when he thought he was unobserved (for he was not willing to acknowledge the extent of his debility), and his wan face was of a ghastly paleness. His sufferings too were sometimes fearfully intense, so that in spite of his habitual self-control, his groans would fill the house. At other times a kind of lethargy seemed ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart

... apostle of Prussian culture, 'for we wish to make it possible for ourselves to remain in friendly relations with other English-speaking peoples.' And so on—the whole of the Bernhardi doctrine, explained in quiet fashion by a man whose very debility of mind made his talk the more impressive, for he was simply parroting what he had often heard. No one criticized his proposals, nor did we dislike him. It all seemed too mad; a rather clumsy jest. His world of ideas did not touch our world at any point, so that real ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh

... death, would puzzle the most profound pathologist. It might, perhaps, be set down as a disease of the heart, induced by corrupt morals, with the following complications: Softening of the brain from the study of State sovereignty; extreme nervous debility from the reproach of a guilty conscience; injury to the spine by suddenness of fall; weakness of the limbs from bad whiskey, and impurity of the blood from contamination. The child of secession is dead—as dead ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer

... weakness &c. adj.; debility, atony[obs3], relaxation, languor, enervation; impotence &c. 158; infirmity; effeminacy, feminality[obs3]; fragility, flaccidity; inactivity &c. 683. anaemia, bloodlessness, deficiency of blood, poverty of blood. declension of strength, loss of strength, failure of strength; delicacy, invalidation, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... planted by the Buccaneers, a set of hardy laborious men, who continued so for a long course of years; till following the example of their neighbours, in the purchase and use of Negroe slaves, idleness and excess prevailing, debility and disease naturally succeeded, and have ever since continued. If, under proper regulations, liberty was proclaimed through the colonies, the Negroes, from dangerous, grudging, half-fed slaves, might become able, willing-minded labourers. And if there was not a sufficient number of ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet

... fit of the colic. The night of the 10th of October he writhed in pain upon his bed, while repeated vomitings weakened his already exhausted frame. The next day he was conveyed to Vienna, but in such extreme debility that he fainted several times in his carriage by the way. Almost in a state of insensibility he was carried to the retired palace of La Favourite in the vicinity of Vienna, and placed in his bed. It was ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... poor stuff. The Month at Malvern is disfigured by similar faults of style; but Mr. Lane has really something to tell us in that work: and there is a good deal of interest at once in knowing how a man who had been reduced to the last degree of debility of body and mind, was so effectually restored, that now for years he has, on occasion, proved himself equal to a forty-miles' walk among the Welsh mountains on a warm summer day; and also in remarking the boyish exhilaration of spirits in which Mr. Lane writes, which he tells us is quite a characteristic ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... invariably lessen its quantity. Mr. Burns asserts that in these cases the milk 'does not become hurtful,' but in this opinion I must beg leave to differ from him; since I have repeatedly seen it, from this cause, palpably altered in appearance, and have observed diarrh[oe]a and great debility produced in the children who were suckled ...
— Remarks on the Subject of Lactation • Edward Morton

... fortunes told by night, or in the grey of the morning. If a fortune-teller promised long life, all the warnings of the doctor went for nothing. Then, again, the people mistook the oppression which was one of the first symptoms of the fever, for debility; and before the doctor was sent for, or in defiance of his directions, the patient was plied with strong drinks, and his case rendered desperate from the beginning. Mr Walcot had complained that the odds were ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... sceptical attitude of the scientist that was mine, I believed. I had no doubt I could do what Morrell said he had done three times. Perhaps this faith that so easily possessed me was due to my extreme debility. Perhaps I was not strong enough to be sceptical. This was the hypothesis already suggested by Morrell. It was a conclusion of pure empiricism, and I, too, as you shall see, demonstrated ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... Cavalry, and afterwards most unmercifully beaten with the clubs or batons of Police and Special Constables, and also trampled upon by the horses of the Cavalry, whereby he was so much injured, that he was, from that time, incapable of attending to his ordinary employment, and lingered in pain and debility until the night of the 6th of September ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt

... and, as might be expected in her circumstances, it appeared that she had besought the host to sell some books for her, which he had done. One of these books it was which, with its forgotten mark, had fallen into the hands of Petrea. Sara, on account of her debility, had been compelled to remain several days in that place, but she had been gone thence probably a week; and they saw by the Day-book[21] that it had been her intention to proceed thence to an inn which lay on the road to Petrea's ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... green hillock where Mr. and Mrs. Dent slept side by side, but no nervous terror seized her now as formerly; the great present horror swallowed up all others, and, though she trembled from physical debility, she dragged herself on till the rude, rough paling of the burying-ground stood before her. Oh, dreary desolation; thy name is country graveyard! Here no polished sculptured stela pointed to the Eternal Rest beyond; no classic marbles told, in gilded characters, the virtues of the dead; no flowery-fringed ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... is immediately in the negative, for women in comfortable circumstances may have large families, with no sign of weariness and dejection. No, the causes of ill-health and debility are diverse, and to pretend to solve the question by conception control is a mockery, for it salves the conscience of the community without really dealing with the question of the disabilities of the working woman, or the true cause of her ...
— Conception Control and Its Effects on the Individual and the Nation • Florence E. Barrett

... was there himself, his wife Pelepa, three other chiefs, and some attendants; and here again was this exulting spectacle as of people on their marriage day. Faamuina (when I last saw him) was an elderly, limping gentleman, with much of the debility of age; it was a bright- eyed boy that greeted me; the lady was no less excited; all had cartridge-belts. We stayed but a little while to smoke a sului; I would not have kava made, as I thought my escapade was already dangerous (perhaps ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Providence ever seem so averse to her own work, that debility should be found to be amongst the best things." ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... is "A lady who has been cured of great nervous debility after many years of misery." Again, the advertiser is a "Retired clergyman," or a "Sufferer restored to health, and anxious to benefit his fellow men." In whatever form the announcement is made, the advertiser is usually one and the same person—an ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... overweening self-confidence, in a desire for worldly fame, or in a too great love of knowledge. Nothing of this nature it is that troubles me; nothing bearing any relation to self-conceit, but, in a certain sense, something entirely opposed to it. I feel a lassitude, a debility and abandonment of the will so great—I am so ready to weep for tenderness when I see a little flower, when I contemplate the ray, mysterious, tenuous, and swift, of a remote star—that it ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera

... But it seems to us, although the miasmatic plains of Bengal may perhaps present even a sharper contrast to the Vedic region than do Key West and Cuba to Georgia, that the climate in effecting a moral degradation (if pessimism be immoral) must have produced also the effect of mental debility. Now to our mind there is not the slightest proof for the asseveration, which has been repeated so often that it is accepted by many nowadays as a truism, that Buddhism or even post-Buddhistic literature shows any trace of mental decay.[25] There certainly is mental weakness in the ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... fermentative sourness of the stomach makes the food so acid when sent into the bowels that the bile, pancreatic and other intestinal juices cannot neutralise them, and so the fats themselves are not emulsified and digested, which fully accounts for the mental depression and debility of ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... and cannibal designs, I would not hesitate to throw him into the sea. Upon this he immediately seized me by the throat, and drawing a knife, made several ineffectual efforts to stab me in the stomach; an atrocity which his excessive debility alone prevented him from accomplishing. In the meantime, being roused to a high pitch of anger, I forced him to the vessel's side, with the full intention of throwing him overboard. He was saved from his fate, however, by the interference of Peters, who ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... no share, and which had farther aggrandized every one of the three powers of which they were most jealous, I found them in a perfect frenzy of rage and indignation: not that they were hurt at the shocking and uncolored violence and injustice of that partition, but at the debility, improvidence, and want of activity in their government, in not preventing it as a means of aggrandizement to their rivals, or in not contriving, by exchanges of some kind or other, to obtain their share of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... posture of form, an expression of face, which a painter of fitting sentiment and skill would have loved to study. The visitor had gained the door; and as he stood there, his noble height—the magnificent strength and health of his manhood in its full prime—contrasted alike the almost spectral debility of extreme age and the graceful delicacy of Fanny—half girl, half child. There was something foreign in his air— and the half military habit, relieved by the red riband of the Bourbon knighthood. His complexion ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... as he scraped potatoes and sliced bacon with slender white fingers that seemed better suited to hold a pen than a knife. She ordered him about like a slave, and he obeyed, too, with willing pleasure, for in spite of his general appearance of debility he was as happy to be in camp as any ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... collections is not so readily discovered. In this case, as in most of the others, we found a considerable quantity of water in the abdominal cavity. Dropsy is commonly considered as a disease of debility, but in these cases it often appeared, while the strength was unimpaired, and the heart acted with very extraordinary force. If the blood was driven with rapidity through the arteries, while an obstruction existed at the termination ...
— Cases of Organic Diseases of the Heart • John Collins Warren

... to complete living, let him look around and see how many men and women he can find in middle life, or later, who are thoroughly well. Occasionally only do we meet with an example of vigorous health continued to old age; hourly do we meet with examples of acute disorder, chronic ailment, general debility, premature decrepitude. Scarcely is there one to whom you put the question, who has not, in the course of his life, brought upon himself illness from which a little knowledge would have saved him. Here is a case of heart disease consequent on a rheumatic fever that followed ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... debility of mind, and even badness of heart concealed under a splendid exterior! The fairest of the species, and of the sex, often want sincerity; and without sincerity every other qualification is rather a blemish, than a virtue, or excellence. Sincerity operates on the ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... unfortunately found it impossible to ignore, it was their sweetest relaxation to give themselves up entirely to the remembrance of the old regime, and when they spoke of this era, they forgot their age and debility, and were once more the young roues of ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach

... constipation, diarrhoea, nose-bleed, and bleeding from the lungs are also present at times, as well as sleeplessness, toothache, and other disorders. The effects of kumys are considered of especial value in cases of weak lungs, anaemia, general debility caused by any wasting illness, ailments of the digestive organs, and scurvy, for which it is taken by many ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... etiolation. There is a risk that the privilege which withdraws the privileged elements of Society from competition will cause them to degenerate. In fact, Jacoby in his Studies in Selection, in connexion with Heredity in Man,[252] concludes that "sterility, mental debility, premature death and, finally, the extinction of the stock were not specially and exclusively the fate of sovereign dynasties; all privileged classes, all families in exclusively elevated positions share the fate of reigning families, although in a minor degree and ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel

... blood is affected, and a general disturbance ensues. This is due to the action of a poison, called a toxin, which is set free as a result of the growth of the bacteria in some one part of the body, which poison is then carried by the blood throughout the entire system, inducing fever and a general debility. ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... life was now drawing to a close; her debility increased, her sight and hearing nearly failed her; but in these afflictions she was enabled to look upwards with increasing faith and resignation. In a letter on the 5th of March, 1839, she wrote the following paragraph,(340) which was perhaps the last ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... and boldly feel, It is so TO ME. My character has got its natural regulator, my heart beats, my lips speak truth, I can walk alone, or offer my arm to a friend, or if I lean on another, it is not the debility of sickness, but only wayside weariness. This is the philosophy I want; this much ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... and flat on top, while in the latter it is of a somewhat globular shape. The fontanelle is prominent and throbs forcibly in inflammation of the brain, is too large in rickets and hydrocephalus, bulges in the latter affection, and sometimes sinks in conditions with only slight debility. ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... frazier on a hunting excurtion up the Kilhaw-a-nak-kle river which discharges itself into the head of Meriwethers Bay. no word yet of Sergt. Gass and party. Bratten is verry weak and complains of a pain in the lower part of the back when he moves which I suppose proceeds from debility. I gave him barks and Salt peter. Gibsons fever Still Continues obstinate tho not verry high; we gave him a dose of Dr. Rushes pills which in maney instancis I have found extreamly efficasious in fevers which are in any measure Caused by the presence of boil. the niter has produced a perfuse perspiration ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... by self-abuse, and if they survive and marry, their children will have small bones, small frames and sickly constitutions. It is therefore not strange that instinct should lead women to admire men not touched with these symptoms of physical debility. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... longer insensible to the heat of a burning atmosphere; and they remarked to each other with melancholy forebodings, the tendency to corpulence by which his frame was now distinguished; the sure sign of a premature debility of system." ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... of masturbation are moral not physical. Loss of will-power, self-reliance, presence of mind, reasoning power, memory, courage, idealism, and self-control; mental and physical debility, laziness, a diseased fondness for the opposite sex, and in later years, some degree of impotence or sterility, are ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... following this he developed an extreme deformity of the spine and trunk, the latter "telescoping into itself" until the nipples were on a level with the anterior superior spines of the ilium. For two years he suffered with debility, fatigue, bronchitis, night-sweats, headache, and great thirst. Mentally he was dull; the bones of the face and extremities showed the hypertrophies characteristic of acromegaly, the soft parts not being involved. The circumference of the trunk at the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... Count Belchigen, attributed the discovery of a number of new diseases to the debility born of daily tea-drinking. Dr. Paulli denied that it had either taste or fragrance, owing its reputation entirely to the peculiar vessels and water used by the Chinese, so that it was folly to partake of it, unless tea-drinkers could ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray

... were not much relieved by an incessant rowing and bailing, without a particle of food to assuage our hunger or one drop of fresh water to cool our parched tongues. Anxiety was depicted in every visage, and our spirits were clouding like the heavens over them. Capt. Hilton, whose sickness and debility had been increased by fatigue and hunger, could no longer smother the feelings that were struggling within.—The quivering lip, the dim eye, the pallid cheek, all told us, as plainly as human expression could tell, that the last ray of that hope which had supported him during the day, was now fading ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins

... of his recovery. In fact, he feared that his unhappy patient had not many days to live. He ordered him wine, tonics, and light but nutritious food to be taken sparingly, and desired that he should be brought into the open air as often as the debility of his constitution could bear it. His complaint, he said, was altogether a nervous one, and resulted from the effects of cruelty, terror, want of sufficient nourishment, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... every faculty, and disqualifies them for attending to the most ordinary affairs: and then let them reflect how little able they will be to transact the most important of all business, in the moment of excruciating pain, or in the day of universal debility. ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More

... thus discovered he thy state and raged * With wrath and fain all guidance would defy. Then bade he Ibrahim's son on face be thrown * And painful beating to the bare apply; With stripes he welted and he tare his sides * Till force waxed feeble, strength debility. So rise and haste thee to thine own and fetch * Thy power, and instant for the tribe-lands hie; Meanwhile I'll busy to seduce his men * Who hear me, O thou princely born and high; For of the painful stress he made ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... Night he spent till a late hour in reading and study, changing his bedroom frequently to avoid assassination. Religious functions that might disturb the public peace he forbade. Compelling the bishop of Asuncion to resign on account of senile debility, Francia himself assumed the episcopal office. Even intermarriage among the old colonial families he prohibited, so as to reduce all to a common social level. He attained his object. Paraguay became a quiet state, whatever might be ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd

... does not submit? If you do not submit you are lost. You are condemned irretrievably to perversions, to debility, ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... Eliza, and most of the great painters, poets, and musicians of his age. For Lord Byron he had a most ardent and exaggerated admiration. Paganini had stopped at Nice on his way from Paris, detained by extreme debility, for his last hours were drawing near. Under the blue sky and balmy air of this Mediterranean paradise the great musician somewhat recovered his strength at first. One night he sat by his bedroom window, surrounded by a circle of intimate friends, ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris

... His memory was extremely tenacious, and whatever he once learned he always had at his command; and yet this brave earnest worker and gifted man was a sufferer from ill-health all his life. With constitutional debility, increased by anxiety and perplexity during the long process of his inventions, and the subsequent care of defending them in court; yet, through constant temperance and watchfulness over his peculiar difficulties, his life was preserved to the great ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... retained some taste for classical lore, and would gladly relax, after the drudgery of the school was over, by conning over a few pages of Horace or Juvenal with his usher. A similarity of taste begot kindness, and accordingly he saw Butler's increasing debility with great compassion, roused up his own energies to teaching the school in the morning hours, insisted upon his assistant's reposing himself at that period, and, besides, supplied him with such comforts ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... regard to the power of this passion to contribute to the sum of pleasurable sensations in life. Those who have spent their youth in criminal excesses and have prepared for themselves, as the comforts of their age, corporeal debility and mental remorse may well inveigh against such pleasures as vain and futile, and unproductive of lasting satisfaction. But the pleasures of pure love will bear the contemplation of the most improved reason, and the most exalted virtue. Perhaps there is ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus

... so cautiously silent as to our little Sally? You do not say that she is better or worse; from which I conclude she is worse. I am not wholly pleased with your plan of meat diet. It is recommended upon the idea that she has no disorder but a general debility. All the disorders of this season are apt to be attended with fevers, in which case animal diet is unfriendly. I beg you to watch the effects of this whim with great attention. So essential a change will certainly have visible effects. Remember, I do not absolutely ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... boots, to attend theatres, and, if possible, to stay all night on the pretence of waiting for the early edition of the great dailies. If a boy is once thoroughly caught in these excitements, nothing can save him from over-stimulation and consequent debility and worthlessness; he arrives at maturity with no habits of regular work and with ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams

... through her talk, and she was in a final burst of laughing when the train slowed into Stamford. There a girl came into the car trailing her skirts with a sort of vivid debility and overturning some minor pieces of hand-baggage which her draperies swept out of their shelter beside the chairs. She had to take one of the seats which back against the wall of the state-room, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Dreamland. They talked o' the doin's o' the Four Hundred an' the successes o' Lizzie. They trilled an' warbled; they pounded the family piano; they golfed an' motored an' whisted; they engaged in the titivation of toy dogs an' the cultivation o' general debility; they ate caramels an' chocolates enough to fill up a well; they complained; they dreamed o' sunbursts an' tiaras while their papas worried about notes an' bills; they lay on downy beds of ease with ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller

... Painfully alive to a sense of dependence, she was ready at any time to work beyond her strength rather than to eat the bread of charity. This kept her steadily bending over her work until nature again became exhausted, and she was forced, from direct debility, to suspend her labours for at least the half of every day. As April came in, with an occasional warm day, her appetite gradually left her, and she began to experience a loathing of food. Weakness, headaches, ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... the most assiduous frequenters of the confessional in his church was a young and pretty girl, Julie by name, the daughter of the king's attorney, Trinquant—Trinquant being, as well as Barot, an uncle of Mignon. Now it happened that this young girl fell into such a state of debility that she was obliged to keep her room. One of her friends, named Marthe Pelletier, giving up society, of which she was very fond, undertook to nurse the patient, and carried her devotion so far as to shut ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... not long in finding out the learned and venerable SCHWEIGHAEUSER, who had retired here, for a few weeks, for the benefit of the waters—which flow from hot springs, and which are said to perform wonders. Rheumatism, debility, ague, and I know not what disorders, receive their respective and certain cures from bathing in these tepid waters. I found the Professor in a lodging house, attached to the second hotel which we ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... brings them; they stop at effects and never hark back to causes. Paul had one of those essentially confiding natures, without ill-feelings, but also without foresight. His weakness proceeded far more from his kindness, his belief in goodness, than from actual debility of soul. ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac

... vividly as we habitually do in dreams, and seem to see or hear in fair reality that which is in our minds, is an old fact, and requires no confirmation. An ignorant or superstitious man fallen into this state, may find good reason to tell ghost stories to his neighbors. Disease, and the debility preceding death, make people on their death-beds very liable to plays of this kind on their failing faculties; and one solemnity or cause of dread, thus being added to another, seems to give the strength of reason to a ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... ever Man before you boast of having Crowds of Beggars? And what are we else? For I verily think, tho' Sir William Petty says, Nature never design'd above one in 500 to beg by forcing them on the Charity of others, (thro' some Lameness, Crookedness, or other accidental Debility, that incapacitates them to Labour) that in Ireland one in seventy are Beggars, (at least for the Summer Season,) and sixty of the Remainder incapable of relieving them, thro' their own Distresses. All the Advantages we have thro' the encrease of ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous

... case of a martial people, to a certain point a principle of strength; it gives a sort of intellectual force to the impetuosity and obstinacy of their attacks; while, on the other hand, it is in the long run a principle of debility, as blinding them to the most evident and imminent dangers, and, after defeat, burdening and precipitating ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... politicians are said to bid for the Presidency. But one thing is indispensable: he must tell what he thinks; he is strong only in his convictions; the sacrifice of them he cannot make; it were but his debility, if he did; and the treasury of all the fortunes of the richest parish were no more than a cipher to purchase it from any one who, quick as he may be to human kindness, may have a more tremulous rapture for the approbation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... doctor's business to save his patient's life, if he could possibly do it. Maurice had been reduced to the most perilous state of debility by the relapse which had interrupted his convalescence. Only by what seemed almost a miracle had he survived the exposure to suffocation and the mental anguish through which he had passed. It was perfectly clear to Dr. Butts that if Maurice could see the young woman to whom he owed ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... she shook hands with each, and they almost rung her hand off. In the door-way stood her father, not bare-headed, but expectant, who received her with paternal warmth. Freda knew that he must for once have forgotten himself and his nervous debility to have thus exposed himself to the frosty air. In the hall was Lady Mary ready with smiles and embraces, with which Freda would gladly have dispensed; but she did her best to seem, if she could not ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... believe that women were intended to suffer as much as they do, and be as helpless as they are, in child-bearing. In spite of the third chapter of Genesis, I cannot believe [the beneficent action of ether had not yet mitigated the female portion of the primeval curse] that all the agony and debility attendant upon the entrance of a new creature into life were ordained; but rather that both are the consequences of our many and various abuses of our constitutions, and ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... nearly every instance, without even the usual debility consequent upon withdrawing the ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... Maid of Kent," a poor country servant-girl, born in Kent, subject from nervous debility to trances, in which she gave utterances ascribed by Archbishop Warham to divine inspiration, till her communications were taken advantage of by designing people, and she was led by them to pronounce sentence ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... particular tutor died of well-marked, uncomplicated starvation. They may, even, in extreme cases, be carried off by a thin, watery kind of apoplexy, which sounds very well in the returns, but means little to those who know that it is only debility settling on the head. Generally, however, they fade and waste away under various pretexts,—calling it dyspepsia, consumption, and so on, to put a decent appearance upon the case and keep up the credit of the family and the institution where they have passed ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... woman's, but it had surely taken its character from certain features of her own: it was clear, firm, individual. It had nothing of that air of general debility which usually marks the manuscript of young ladies, yet its firmness was far removed from the stiff, conventional slope which all Englishwomen seem to acquire in youth and retain through life, I don't see how any man in my situation could have helped reading ...
— Who Was She? - From "The Atlantic Monthly" for September, 1874 • Bayard Taylor

... (sell) komerci. Deal out disdoni. Dealer komercisto. Dean fakultestro. Dear kara. Dear (person) karulo. Dear (price) multekosta. Dearth seneco. Death morto. Deathless senmorta. Debar eksigi. Debase malnobligi. Debate disputo. Debauch dibocxigi. Debauch dibocxo. Debility malforteco. Debit debito. Debris rubo—ajxo. Debt, to get into sxuldigxi. Debt sxuldo. Debtor sxuldanto. Debut komenco. Decadence kadukeco. Decalogue dekalogo. Decant transversxi. Decanter ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... should be composed—a custom radically different from that of the Omaha and Ponka,—and all other matters of like character. Power is tacitly committed to the leading chief, to be held so long as he governs to general satisfaction, subject, however, to the advice of the soldiers. Age, debility, or any other natural defect, or incapacity to act, advise, or command, would lead a chief to resign in favor of ...
— Siouan Sociology • James Owen Dorsey

... head, and he and Jefferson exchanged a glance of sullen hate which made Washington extend his long arms at once. All went well until the President, with a premonitory sigh, introduced the dynamic name, Genet. Hamilton forgot his debility, and was all mind, alert and energetic. Jefferson, who had come to hate Genet as an intolerable nuisance, would have been the first at another moment to counsel the demand for recall which he knew was now inevitable, but he was in too bad a humour ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... years without giving a single concert. We believe the one given by him in Pleyel's room, in 1844, was after an interval of nearly ten years] of his concerts be attributed rather to the wish he felt to avoid occasions which did not bring him the tribute he merited, than to physical debility. Indeed, he put his strength to rude proofs in the many lessons which he always gave, and the many hours he ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... in a little apple honey, or other suitable substance, and followed up in the morning with a dose of castor oil, or salts, to produce a brisk purge. Sometimes an emetic is preferred. Either a cathartic or an emetic will leave the system under some debility. The mistake frequently made is, in not following up the evacuating medicine with tonics. This should be done invariably, unless the paroxysm of fever has commenced. A few doses of sulphate of quinine or Peruvian bark in its crude ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... see'st me, Lucia, this year droop; Three zodiacs fill'd more, I shall stoop; Let crutches then provided be To shore up my debility: Then, while thou laugh'st, I'll sighing cry, A ruin underpropt am I: Don will I then my beadsman's gown; And when so feeble I am grown As my weak shoulders cannot bear The burden of a grasshopper; Yet with the bench of aged sires, When I and they keep termly ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick



Words linked to "Debility" :   asthenia, softness, debilitate, debile, wasting, cachexia, unfitness, astheny, cachexy



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