"Nervous system" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is able to break him—that having conquered man after man, perhaps even with fatal results to his riders, he has become absolutely depraved and impossible of submission. She only knew that her heart was beating rapidly, painfully, that her breath came in gasps, that her whole nervous system was involved in some manner of anguish. She saw the Chinese cook run past to witness the game, but all her faculties were focused on the man and horse—both sinister, ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... be done away with before "the body can be molded to the expression of high thought." For this purpose the "decomposing," "relaxing" or "devitalizing" motions are given. The old gymnast doubled up the fist and, with great tension, gave a blow which jarred the whole nervous system. The "freeing" motions of Delsarte give harmonious, restful, wave movements to ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... gradual coalition of organic life upon this globe. In 1855, in his "Principles of Psychology," he gave a new exposition of the laws of mind, based upon this principle, and held that it is by experience, registered in the slowly perfecting nervous system, that the mental faculties have been gradually evolved through long courses of descent, each generation inheriting all that had been previously gained, and adding its own increment to the sum of progress; that all knowledge, and ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Nervous System.—The erectile tissue surrounding the spinal cord and origin of the spinal nerves in the Cetacea did not extend into the interior of the cranium. The entire encephalic mass weighed 2-1/2 lbs.: cerebrum, 2 lbs.; cerebellum, 1/4; pons and medulla, 1/4 ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... one knows, or at least as all intelligent people know, the special department in which Gibberne has gained so great and deserved a reputation among physiologists is the action of drugs upon the nervous system. Upon soporifics, sedatives, and anaesthetics he is, I am told, unequalled. He is also a chemist of considerable eminence, and I suppose in the subtle and complex jungle of riddles that centres about ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... relieved, and the result of the next war-party was anxiously looked forward to, to learn if the oblation was accepted by the Great Spirit. The crying and lamentations continued, however, unabated, so much to the derangement of Beckwourth's nervous system that if he could, he would have gladly retired from the village to seek ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... "Poor kid! You're all in. Late hours too much for you, I reckon. Come on now—tell Pap everything. Ease off your heart. It's wonderful what crying does for the nervous system. I laid out on a prairie one night when I was about your age and just naturally bawled. You'd 'a' thought I was a baby steer, hanged if you wouldn't 'a' thought so. It's the fight scared you plumb to pieces. Carthy told me about it and how you let the good-looking ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... guided by means of the nerves, a training for the guidance of the muscles means, so far as the physique is concerned, first, a training for the better use of the nervous force. The nervous system is so wonderful in its present power for good or ill, so wonderful in its possible power either way, and so much more wonderful as we realize what we do not know about it, that it is not surprising that it is ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... are helpless, and that learn to walk with difficulty. Accordingly, and in consequence of its connection with the cerebrum, subcortical center and the spinal cord, the cerebellum is a station of the muscular and of the chief nervous system, by means of both of which qualities we keep our equilibrium. The more massive cerebellum with woman, together with the comparative shortness and tenderness of her bones, explains her comparative quickness and easiness of motion, her quicker ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... AND SPINAL CORD are quite often the seat of syphilitic affections. A tumor, known by the name of "gumma," is the result. The blood vessels of the entire nervous system may be affected and, as a consequence, we often see cases of paralysis, apoplexy, ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... publication come the two volumes collectively entitled "The Principles of Psychology." In these volumes an attempt is made to trace objectively the evolution of mind from reflex action through instinct to reason, memory, feeling, and will, from the interaction of the nervous system with its environment. Subjectively, mental states are analyzed, and it is contended that all of them—including those primary scientific ideas, the perceptions of matter, motion, space, and time, assumed in the "First Principles"—can ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... solid, but consists of nerve tissue, fibres and ganglion cells, surrounding a small central canal. For the sake of uniformity in nomenclature this nerve-cord may be called the neurochord. It is the central nervous system, and contains within itself the elements of the brain and spinal marrow of higher forms. The neurochord tapers towards its posterior end, where it is coextensive with the notochord, but ends abruptly in front, some distance behind the tip of the snout. The neurochord attains its greatest ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... unimportant, that this phantom sword did not move with my eye, but remained for some time, apparently, only in one part of the heavens. I looked aside and lost it. When I looked back, there was the image still. These are hallucinations which arise from a disordered condition of the nervous system; they are the seeing or the hearing of what is not, and they are not by any means uncommon. Out of these there must, undoubtedly, arise a large number of well-attested stories of ghosts, seen by one person only. Such ghosts ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... voice. Hence we see that physical health is essential to a good voice, and the proper use of the voice is itself one of the most invigorating exercises that can be practised. All the vital organs are called into healthful action through this extraordinary manipulation of the breath, and the nervous system, both vitally and ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... of electricity was ushered in during Mr. Coffin's early manhood. The telegraph, which has given the world a new nervous system, being less an invention than an evolution, had from the labors of Prof. Joseph Henry, in Albany, and of Wheatstone, of England, become, by Morse's invention of the dot-and-line alphabet, a far-off writer by which men could annihilate time and distance. One of the first to experiment ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... horror unbalancing the mind, but that is more rare. It is not generally the slight, nervous men who suffer worst from shell-shock. It is often the stolid fellow, one of those we describe as being utterly without nerves, who goes down badly. Something snaps in him. He has no resilience in his nervous system. He has never trained himself in nerve-control, being so stolid and self-reliant. Now, the nervous man, the cockney, for example, is always training himself in the control of his nerves, on 'buses which ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... factors that we term biological heredity, to make all the needed muscular and nervous adjustments that result in walking. Indeed, the very conformation of these muscles and of the appropriate parts of the nervous system may be said to be primarily adapted to the movements made in walking and in similar activities. In a very real sense the normal human being is predestined to walk, not because his elders will assist him to learn the art, but because his organism ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... age Watt suffered from continual and violent headaches, which often affected his nervous system for many days, even weeks; and he was similarly afflicted throughout his long life. He seldom rose early, but accomplished more in a few hours' study than ordinary minds do in many days. He was never in a hurry, and always had leisure ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... is unnecessary to add that this should always be done, as nothing is more unjust than to leave her in a state of ignorance where the natural expression of her maturity may fill her mind with fears which may affect her nervous system ever after, even if they do not lead her to do acts which may permanently impair her reproductive vitality, and injure her health in other ways. All that she needs to know about the proper care of her person should be told her in the most considerate ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... in displaying himself amidst his councillors, his officers of the household, and his train of vassals, allies, and dependents, the Marquis of Argyle probably wished to make an impression on the nervous system of Captain Dugald Dalgetty. But that doughty person had fought his way, in one department or another, through the greater part of the Thirty Years' War in Germany, a period when a brave and successful soldier was a companion for princes. The King of Sweden, and, after his example, even the ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... head and looked upon the packet as it lay on the table. All at once a strange sensation came over me, such as I had never experienced before—a singular blending of curiosity, awe and pleasure, the remembrance of which, even at this distance of time, produces a remarkable effect upon my nervous system. What strange things are the nerves—I mean those more secret and mysterious ones in which I have some notion that the mind or soul, call it which you will, has its habitation; how they occasionally ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... as I myself was concerned, all exertion was then over. The nervous system was almost shattered to pieces. Both my memory and my hearing failed me. Sudden dizzinesses seized my head. A confused singing in the ear followed me wherever I went. On going to bed the very stairs seemed to dance up and down under me, so that, misplacing ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... apparently, but not really, general, so we may sum up a definite number of general propositions in one proposition, which will be apparently, but not really, more general. If by a separate induction applied to every distinct species of animals, it has been established that each possesses a nervous system, and we affirm thereupon that all animals have a nervous system; this looks like a generalization, though as the conclusion merely affirms of all what has already been affirmed of each, it seems to tell us nothing but what we knew before. A distinction, however, must be made. ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... dreamer, were he an artist like Pushkin or Turgenev even, could never have invented them in the waking state. Such sick dreams always remain long in the memory and make a powerful impression on the overwrought and deranged nervous system. ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Youth we may first consider: In the transition from childhood to manhood great changes take place in the nervous system. There is for a time a period of confusion, in which the nerve cells are acquiring new powers and new relations. This is followed by a time of joy and exuberance, a sense of a new life in a new world, a feeling ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... unawares whom I considered fit for my purpose, and subdue him or her completely to myself. Then after one or two failures I hit upon a method, which I perfected at length into entire simplicity, by which I was able to tap the nervous system and draw into myself as much as ever I needed of the abounding force of life, without leaving any sign which even the most skilful ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... made that way, because you haven't got a nervous system that can stand the racket. The noises alone will do for you. You'll be as right as rain if ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... measure of nervous derangement in return. Either he absents himself entirely from all fellowship, and lives a recluse in a garret, with carpet slippers and a leaden inkpot; or he comes among people swiftly and bitterly, in a contraction of his whole nervous system, to discharge some temper before he returns to work. I do not care how much or how well he works, this fellow is an evil feature in other people's lives. They would be happier if he were dead. They could easier do without his services in the Circumlocution ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... steersman's cry of "Land!" and he would certainly greatly err who ascribed the whole result to a prospect of fresh food. The sight of a dear one, whom the sufferer has long desired to see, sustains the life that was about to go, and imparts strength and health. It is a fact, that joy can quicken the nervous system more effectually than all the cordials of the apothecary, and can do wonders in the case of inveterate internal disorders denied to the action of rhubarb and even mercury. Who then does not perceive that the constitution ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... complex; and the most complex animal, in its development from the ovum or egg, passes through all these grades of structure, ending in that which is above all, and distinctively its own. 'Without going into tedious details, man presents, as regards the most important of his constituent structures, his nervous system, the successive characteristics of an avertebrated animal, a fish, a turtle, a bird, a quadruped, a quadrumanous animal, before he assumes ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the majority of our schools, when viewed in connection with the physiological laws already explained, sufficiently accounts for that irritability, listlessness, and languor which have been so often observed in both teachers and pupils. Both irritability of the nervous system and dullness of the intellect are unquestionably the direct and necessary result of a want of pure air. The vital energies of the pupils are thus prostrated, and they become not only restless and indisposed to study, but ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... your public, simply disappointment and lamentation in yourself ... For so it is, Lisaveta: feeling, any warm, hearty feeling is always banal and unusable, and only the irritations and the cold ecstasies of our demoralized, of our artistic nervous system are useful in art. It is necessary that one should be something superhuman and inhuman, that one should have a strangely distant and uninterested relation to everything human, in order to be able or even tempted to play life, to play with it, to represent it ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... thought at the present time to which this assertion must appear quite senseless, to which it must seem based only upon self-delusion. Those who think in this way will find it easy, from their point of view, to prove that "all soul-life" is bound up with the nervous system. One who holds the standpoint from which this book has been written, can thoroughly understand such proofs. He understands people who say that only superficiality can assert that there may be some kind of soul-life ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... aisles are now full to overflowing with that weird chanting which one hears nowhere but in Rome at this solemn season. Those voices, neither of men nor women, have a wild, morbid energy which seems to search every fibre of the nervous system, and, instead of soothing or calming, to awaken strange yearning agonies of pain, ghostly unquiet longings, and endless feverish, unrestful cravings. The sounds now swell and flood the church as with a rushing torrent of wailing and clamorous supplication,—now ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... are only to be fully perceived and appreciated by the thoughtful. Now the heart of the nation throbs strongly at the centre, while the current of activity flows quickly and freely to the remotest corners of the state. The telegraph provides a nervous system unknown before. By its means every portion of the country is placed in immediate contact with every other part; the thrill of joy and the moan of desolation are no longer things of locality; they are shared ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... he explored, tracing and classifying, filled with awe. The incredible creature knew little or nothing of its own nervous system and would not have been aware of loss if the most essential portion of its brain had been surgically removed! Its life span was only a small fraction of what it should have been since, in its ignorance, it failed to repair itself as it had the innate ability to do. And yet, what ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... distressing sense of heat or a smarting sensation. The menstrual function is frequently deranged, the bowels costive, the urethra, by being pressed, becomes irritable and burns and smarts whenever the urine is evacuated. The sleep is disturbed and unrefreshing, and the whole nervous system is unstrung. ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... unattended by any circumstances or preliminaries, they startle dreadfully; and by the vibration being diffused from the feet over the whole body, they shake the whole nervous system in a way which even long use has ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... you may see for yourself that the theory of generations of gentle blood and breeding, combined with exceptional advantages, sometimes culminating in genius, finds its illustration in him. Also, alas! that such men are too often the prey of a highly wrought nervous system that coarser natures and duller brains are spared. When he was younger—I knew him at Cambridge—nor, indeed a few years since, he had not drained that system; his youthful vigour immediately rushing in to resupply ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... higher stage in the development of latent faculties than the negro race has reached. Not only is the negro a stranger to the diverse intellectual and sentimental qualities which we denote by the name of love: nay, even in a purely bodily sense it may be asserted that his nervous system is not only less sensitive, but less well-developed. The negro loves as he eats and drinks.... And just as little as a black epicure have I ever been able to discover a negro who could rise to the imaginative ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... the celebrated specialist was summoned, but his examination was sickening in its brevity, and his verdict held out no hope. "The nervous system has received some terribly sudden shock," he said; "and there is a serious rupture of the vessels of the heart. She may recover consciousness, but it will be only momentary. We see many appalling sights in my profession, ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... between black and green tea is simply this: the former is allowed to cure or ferment in the sun about fifty minutes longer than the latter, and during this extra fifty minutes certain elements pass off which are thought to affect the nervous system; hence green tea has a greater effect upon weak nerves than the black, but you see the same leaf makes either kind, as the owner elects. But here comes in a strange prejudice. Green tea of the natural color could not ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... and chimerical idea began to disturb me—the idea of being flung from my horse? was I not disgraced for ever as a horseman by being flung from my horse? Assuredly, I thought; and the idea of being disgraced as a horseman, operating on my nervous system, caused me very acute misery. 'After all,' said I to myself, 'it was perhaps the contemptible opinion which the surgeon must have formed of my equestrian powers, which induced him to offer to take my horse ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... on grounds of health, since the wear and tear of too intense absorption in any pursuit is apt to wreck the nervous system. I urge it on the ground of mental sanity, since a man cannot maintain his mental poise if he follows the object of his devotion singly, without seeing it in relation to other objects. And I urge it also on the ground of spirituality, ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... you." Who has not heard a parent give forth such a mandate? And a school-master, too, to some little urchin, who tries to obey, but from that moment begins to squirm, and turn, and hitch, and chiefly because his nervous system is all deranged by the very duty imposed upon him. And, besides, what if Tommy, in the exuberance of his feelings, while sitting on the bench, does stick out his toe a little beyond the prescribed line. Or suppose Jimmy ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... but for a moment on this subject, the danger of such a practice must be obvious. So sudden a change from a temperature of nearly 100 of Fahrenheit to one quite low, perhaps scarcely 40, must and does have a powerful effect on the nervous system even of an adult; but how much more on that of a tender infant? We may form some idea of this, by the suddenness and violence of its cries, by the sudden contractions and relaxations of its limbs and body, and by its palpitating heart and ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... dangerous and uncertain remedy, and it probably has not one medicinal use that cannot be more suitably met by other remedies. One can readily imagine easier digestion as the result of the sedative influence of the after-dinner cigar upon a disquieted nervous system, especially if the coincident irritation of alcohol and coffee have need of correction; but it can also be imagined that in most of such cases the remedy has been the cause of and will further increase the disordered condition, and that nutrition of deficiently nourished ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... subsidiary services most in the public eye—tanks and aeroplanes—I will return presently. As to the Signal Service, the "nervous system" of the Army, on which "co-operation and combination" depend, it has grown, says the Field Marshal, "almost out of recognition." At the outbreak of war it consisted of 2,400 officers and men; by the end of the war it ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... written in three weeks; another she wrote at the bedside of a son dying of consumption, she being bound by contract to finish the work at a given time. Acting day and night as nurse, the overtasked mother was obliged to stimulate her nervous system by a constant use of strong coffee, and betweenwhiles would turn to the unfinished novel and write of fictitious joys and sorrows while her own heart was bleeding for the beloved son dying beside her. It was no doubt owing to this constant taxation of the brain that her intellect was but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... already developed, and its wall is differentiated for the first time into an animal or dermal layer (ectoblast), and into a vegetative or intestinal layer (hypoblast). At the sixth stage, there branched off the prothelmis, or worms, with the first formations of a nervous system, the simplest organs of sense, the simplest organs for secretion (kidneys) and generation (sexual organs), represented to-day by the gliding worms or turbellaria; as the seventh stage, the soft worms, as he called them at first—the blood worms, or coelomati, as he describes them ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... whatever my job is piratically termed, will become vacant. The pace is pretty rapid. Last night I dreamed that the new Hotel Elkins was founded on my chest; and I have had troubles enough of the same kind before to show me that my nervous system is slowly ravelling out." ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... state of human nature, was at the same time visited with a disorder so afflictive, that they who know it by dire experience, will not envy his exalted endowments. That it was, in some degree, occasioned by a defect in his nervous system, that inexplicable part of our frame, appears highly probable. He told Mr. Paradise[193] that he was sometimes so languid and inefficient, that he could not distinguish the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... buckskin and flannel; then the steeping of your sodden head in the pellucid depth, with bubaline snortings and expirations of satisfaction; then, as the first cold stream from the "tinpot" courses down your spine, what electric thrills start from a dozen ganglia and flush your whole nervous system with new life! Finally, there is the plunge and the wallow and the splash, with a feeling of kinship to the porpoise in its joy, under the influence of which the most silent man becomes vocal and makes the walls of the narrow ghoosulkhana resound with amorous, ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... connected with the patient's health, ought to preponderate in the physician's mind, when it might be reasonably doubted whether the act of making a will, would or would not essentially affect the nervous system, and otherwise derange the functions of the body. A very pretty argument, in excellent Edinbro' Latin, was made on each side of the question. I think, on the whole, the physicos had the best o' it; for they could show a plausible ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... (demon, shall I not rather say?) of Hasheesh had entire possession of me. I was cast upon the flood of his illusions, and drifted helplessly whithersoever they might choose to bear me. The thrills which ran through my nervous system became more rapid and fierce, accompanied with sensations that steeped my whole being in unutterable rapture. I was encompassed by a sea of light, through which played the pure, harmonious colors that are born of ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... paralysis, growing out of a sense of insecurity. It is purely an unnatural sensation, that temporarily disorganizes the nervous system. I knew a man who, whenever placed in such a ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... repealers ended in the secession of the Young Irelanders from the Repeal Association. O'Connell was at heart glad of this, for his physical and intellectual energies were flagging, and the constant tantalising to which he was subjected in the association by these young men irritated his nervous system, and impaired his health. He made a show of conciliation, and sent a Roman Catholic clergyman of considerable importance, the Rev. Dr. Miley, to open negotiations with Smith O'Brien, whom he did not hesitate ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... purpose of passing for apparitions:—in every instance I have known or heard of (and I have collected very many) the consequence has been either sudden death, or fits, or idiocy, or mania, or a brain fever. Whence comes the difference? evidently from this,—that in the one case the whole of the nervous system has been by slight internal causes gradually and all together brought into a certain state, the sensation of which is extravagantly exaggerated during sleep, and of which the images are the mere effects and exponents, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... nervous system was writhing with the feeling of impotence. Mechanically, unresisting now, he followed his enemy down the main staircase of the chateau and out through the wide open gates. He could not bring himself ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... shock on the nervous system is curiously various in different individuals. The three men who were so near to the volcano at that moment involuntarily looked round and saw by the lurid blaze that an enormous mass of Krakatoa, rent from top to bottom, was falling headlong into ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... the individual adjustive actions which were originally intelligent may by frequent repetition become automatic, so in the lifetime of species actions originally intelligent may by frequent repetition and heredity so write their effects on the nervous system that the latter is prepared, even before individual experience, to perform adjustive actions mechanically which in previous generations were performed intelligently. This mode of origin of instincts has been appropriately called (by Lewes—see "Problems ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... fearful night it was! Pliny's shattered nervous system was not strong enough to endure the shock. Mrs. Hastings went from one fainting fit to another, with wild shrieks of anguish between—but all sound that escaped Dora, when Theodore gently and tenderly told her "the ...
— Three People • Pansy
... hospital because I am ill, because my doctor has sent me there, and because I need to be looked after like a child, because I am ruined.... And it torments me and grieves me, my nervous system is ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... its peculiar individual, family, racial, and national characteristics. Here the combined determiners determine the color of the eyes, the characteristics of the hair, the texture of the skin, its color, the size of the body, the stability of the nervous system, the size of the brain, etc., while the suppressors do a similar work in the modification of this or that family or ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... to understand Sub-Consciousness? So do I—as much as that our digestion operates and our blood circulates without asking our permission. It is not unreasonable to suppose that Sub-Consciousness is simply the psychical side of the molecular changes that are going on in our nervous system. There is more than "metaphysical conceit" in ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... the forces of nature. We must rest on our achievements. The nineteenth century is not likely to add to them; we must wait for the twentieth century. Many of us, perhaps most of us, felt in that way. We had seen our planet furnished by the art of man with a complete nervous system: a spinal cord beneath the ocean, secondary centres,—ganglions,—in all the chief places where men are gathered together, and ramifications extending throughout civilization. All at once, by the side of ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of nerve-force to any part of the body. Occultists have known this for many centuries. Joy, hope, faith: these are very potent factors in improving the health conditions—simply because they act upon the sympathetic nervous system, and this latter acts upon the circulation. Happiness dilates the blood-vessels. Fear contracts them. Thus, unbounded faith; renewed hope; sudden joy; enforced will-power; all have a marked effect upon bringing ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... received the second blow over the left shoulder-bone, he laughed. His confessor inquired the reason of demeanour so unbecoming—his situation. "I only lavish at my own folly, my father," answered Mandrin, "who could suppose that sensibility of pain should continue after the nervous system had been completely deranged ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... incident was the action of the little Springfield bullet. Evidently the very high velocity of this bullet from its shock to the nervous system had delivered a paralyzing blow sufficient to knock out the lioness for the time being. Its damage to tissue, however, was slight. Inasmuch as the initial shock did not cause immediate death, the lioness recovered sufficiently ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... lived exactly as many years as before, we should feel as if we lived twice as long and were twice as old as now." This is a suggestion for Mr. Well's "Anticipations" Is evolution leading us in this direction or the other? Is it retarding or "quickening the molecular arrangements of the nervous system?" Are we becoming "more delicately balanced so that physical changes proceed more quickly as thoughts become more comprehensive, feelings more intense, and will, stronger." Does the time it needs to think, feel, and ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... shortly before as well as after that year. In 1840 he first promulgated the opinion that "the brain, although the organ of consciousness, is subject to the laws of reflex action, and in this respect does not differ from other ganglia of the nervous system."[304] And in a paper read before the British Association, September, 1844, he observed, "Insanity and dreaming present the best field for investigating the laws of that extension of action from one portion of the brain to the other, by which ideas follow each other in sequence, giving ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... described as a tiny life in itself. But they are built up in man into such a close association that what affects one part of the body affects all. The pain which the whole being feels if a part is wounded, if one cell in the human body is hurt, should prove that to the least intelligent. The nervous system binds all the tiny cells together, and they form in this totality a being infinitely higher, more powerful, than the cells which compose it. They are able to act together and achieve things impossible to the separated cells. Now humanity today is, to some ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... that the Lord has given him. Of course, I don't believe in the abuse of a good thing, but it's better to abuse it a little sometimes than not to have it at all. If virtue consists in deadening the nervous system to all pleasurable influences, why, you may just mark my name off the list. There was old man Haskill. I sat up with him the night after he died, and one of the men with me was harping upon the great life the old fellow had lived—never chewed, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... immoderate employment of tea and coffee; that which appears to be dependent on advanced age; and all those tremblings which proceed from the various circumstances which induce a diminution of power in the nervous system. But by attending to that circumstance alone, which has been already noted as characteristic of mere tremor, the distinction will readily be made. If the trembling limb be supported, and none of its muscles be called into action, the trembling will cease. In the real Shaking Palsy the ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... death, usually directly by apoplexy, caused by anger, grief, or joy, have been current and generally accepted. On the other hand, irritability and moroseness caused by disordered organs of digestion, change of acumen or morals due to injury of the brain or nervous system, and insanity produced by bodily diseases, are also accepted proofs of the effect of the body on ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... it'd ever been done before, but he was dead as a human being—no brain worth salvaging above the isthmus. So, the big guns at the hospital saw a chance to try their game on human material, superb body and lower nervous system in ideal condition, waiting for a ...
— A Matter of Proportion • Anne Walker
... too active, and that the influence of tobacco is quieting,—great is the enjoyment of a comfortable pipe after dinner. I grant, on observing him at that period, that it appears so. But I also observe, that, when the placid hour has passed away, his nervous system is more susceptible, his hand more tremulous, his temper more irritable on slight occasions, than during the days when the comfortable pipe chances to be omitted. The only effect of the narcotic appears, therefore, to be a demand for another narcotic; and there seems no decided advantage ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... a nervous system of superb quality, which used for the good of those she touched would have hallowed her life; misused, she drifts into unlovable old age, a selfish neurotic. She could have been a leader in her community, a blessing ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... keep together instead of being mutually negatory. But Euphemia is always putting everything into some hiding-hole or other, which she calls its "place." Trivial things in their way, you may say, yet each levying so much toll on my brain and nervous system, and demanding incessant vigilance and activity. I calculated once that I wasted a masterpiece upon these mountainous little things about every three months of my life. Can I help thinking of them, then, and asking why I suffer thus? ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... heightened spirits. All the acuter symptoms had vanished already. He sanctioned his patient's departure from town as soon as Madame Dalibard's convenience would permit, and recommended only a course of restorative medicines to strengthen the nervous system, which was to commence with the following morning, and be persisted in for some weeks. He dwelt much on the effect to be derived from taking these medicines the first thing in the day, as soon as Helen woke. Varney and Madame Dalibard exchanged a rapid glance. Charmed ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Merrick. "Her whole nervous system has given way; all the ordinary functions of her brain are in a state of collapse. I can give you no plainer explanation than that of the nature of the malady. The fever which frightens the people ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... I once had an uncle who was a man of wonderful learning. He was a collegian, a master of half a dozen or more languages, and for all this he paid the price of his good health. All his life, he suffered the pangs of an outraged stomach and nervous system. He could never make any use of his splendidly cultivated brain, and was a miserable, unhappy burden to himself and friends to the end of his life. His end was sad, tinged with the element of ridiculousness. He was sitting in a field one day, resting during a short walk, when a great vicious ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... house at five minutes to four. Patrick, who with Molly his wife looked after the domestic affairs, was at the front gate gazing down the street in the direction from which he always came. At sight of him Pat came running. Norman quickened his pace, and every part of his nervous system was in turmoil. ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... what he heard till he spoke to poor Ned, who, however, not having a looking-glass, did not seem to be aware of the change. After this he grew weaker and weaker; his nervous system, when he fell overboard, had received a shock which was too much for him. Murray had resolved to send him home, when the surgeon reported that the poor fellow had not many hours to live. Before night he breathed his last, and was buried in the seaman's ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... after her long journey, and accustomed as she had lately been to early hours. Lucy indeed felt determined that the same thing must not happen again on any account, as the consequences to Amy of having her mind and nervous system excited so late at night, when she was always too much disposed to wakefulness, ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... was hanging upon the wall in front of him. He was not a very imaginative man, not a man given to fancies, a dreamer of dreams more real to him than life, or a seer of visions. But to-day he was stirred, and perhaps the unwonted turmoil of his mind acted subtly upon his nervous system. Afterward he felt certain that it must have been so, for in no other way could he account for a fantasy that beset him ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... The effect of this force upon the subject will depend very much upon the health, mental capacity and general character of the operator. Its action in general should be soothing and quieting upon the nervous system; stimulating to the circulation of the blood, the brain and other vital organs of the body of the subject. It is the use and application of this power ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... worked out plans of mobilization and arrangements for obtaining horses instantly on the outbreak of war; and last, but not least, "the organization of a General Staff which shall act as the brain and nervous system of the army, and shall draw to it and pass through its training as large a number of officers as possible, so that experienced staff officers shall be numerous in the event ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... the next morning he advised a complete change for Dorothy. She was physically well enough, he said, but the shock to her nervous system might result in complete prostration, unless her mind was speedily disabused of the ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... any confidence in the doctor at Belford, Mrs. Delvin had sent an urgent message to a physician at Edinburgh, famous for his skill in treating diseases of the nervous system. "I cannot expect him to reach this remote place, without some delay," she said; "I must bear my suspense as well as ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... girl is overwrought to a terrible degree. I am delighted that she is to get a rest. It will be life to her; and in the morning she will be all right. Her nervous system is on the verge of a breakdown. Did you notice how fearfully disturbed she was, and how red she got when she came in and found us talking? An ordinary thing like that, in her own house with her own guests, wouldn't under ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... partially successful. The water ghost appeared at the specified time, and found the heir of Harrowby prepared; but hot as the room was, it shortened her visit by no more than five minutes in the hour, during which time the nervous system of the young master was wellnigh shattered, and the room itself was cracked and warped to an extent which required the outlay of a large sum of money to remedy. And worse than this, as the last drop of the water ghost was slowly sizzling itself out on the floor, she whispered to her would-be ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... the first attack of fever Newman was taken ill of a far worse one, which gave a great shock to his nervous system. He was in real danger of losing his life this time, possibly because, Dr. Cronin being absent, there was no one to treat him. He suffered, too, greatly from continual sleeplessness. When he was recovering, ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... giving way to inertia, weakness and depression.... Those who desire to live should settle this well in their minds, that nerve power is the force of life and that the will has a wondrously strong and direct influence over the body through the brain and the nervous system.'[5] ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Though history has decided none of these questions, a child could not hesitate to answer in the negative. Surely the bile-suffused cheek of Buonaparte, his wrinkled brow, and yellow eye, the ceaseless inquietude of his nervous system, speak no less plainly the character of his unresting ambition than his murders and his victories. It is impossible, had Buonaparte descended from a race of vegetable feeders, that he could have had either the inclination or the power to ascend the throne of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... was slight inducement for going ashore, oppressed as I was with the ever-present incubus of dread. At intervals this feeling became less acute, but only to return, strengthened by its short absences. After a time my danger sense became blunted. The nervous system became torpid under continuous stress, and refused to pass on the sensations with sufficient intensity to the brain; or the weary brain was asleep at its post and did not heed the warnings. I ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... (of which military drill is only one particular form) is based upon, the existence of this power which the nervous system possesses, of organising conscious actions into more or less unconscious, or reflex, operations. It may be laid down as a rule, that if any two mental states be called up together, or in succession, with due frequency and vividness, ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... sense of satisfaction, dulled by the overhanging afternoon, perhaps, but perceptible: he had the feeling of one who has been true to a cause. The operation of the elevator was unsinful and, save for the shock to Duke's nervous system, it was harmless; but Penrod could not possibly have brought himself to exhibit it in the presence of his mother or any other grown person in the world. The reasons for secrecy were undefined; at least, Penrod did ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... Bayley's outbreak to drop at once into trivialities. For it must be understood that Madeline's little touch of coquetry had been merely instinctive, a sort of unconscious reflex action of the feminine nervous system, quite ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... home by his friend Clayton and the servants of the establishment. The young baronet proceeded to open a number of letters, and during the perusal of one in particular his countenance changed, betokening some shock sustained by his nervous system. Evening wore into night, but he would neither eat nor converse. At length he confessed to Clayton that he had received an affecting expostulation from his wife's former lover, who had written, while ignorant of the marriage, calling ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... white. He walked with that uneasy affectation of ease that marks an overstrained nervous system and an under-exercised body. He hesitated at the White Stone Pond whether to go to the left of it or the right, and again at the fork of the roads. He kept shifting his stick in his hand, and every now and then he would get in the way of people ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... things in life. I may say I am in entire sympathy with my son's aspirations. By the way, it occurs to me that the extraordinary refusal of my pupils to expand under cocaine may be but another manifestation of the remarkable nervous system that characterises my family. It may be connected in some mysterious way with my son's genius. But possibly, sir, ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... molecules when free in the serum. This theory, though not yet established, certainly affords the most satisfactory explanation at present available. In support of it there is the remarkable fact, discovered by A. Wassermann and Takaki in the case of tetanus, that there do exist in the nervous system molecules with combining affinity for the tetanus toxin. If, for example, the brain and spinal cord removed from an animal be bruised and brought into contact with tetanus toxin, a certain amount of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... out the chancellor, as though his nervous system had received a shock which nothing but a week ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... be sure, the figure has been so long used that it is now scarcely felt as a figure; its force and definiteness have departed. Consequently we may speak of being on a tension without having in mind at all a comparison of our nervous system with a stretched garment, or with an outreaching arm, or with a tightly strung musical instrument, or ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... thought; but trust for the words and even for the illustrations to the inspiration of the moment. They go on boldly: but their path crumbles away behind them as they advance. Their minds are in splendid working order: they turn off admirable work Sunday by Sunday: and while mind and nervous system keep their spring, that admirable work may be counted on almost with certainty. They have Fortunio's purse: they can always put their hand upon the sovereigns they need: but they have no hoard accumulated which they might draw from, should the purse some day fail. And ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... profession there have been many alumnae of prominence, notably Dr. Alice Hamilton, '93m, who has recently become Assistant Professor of Industrial Medicine in the Harvard Medical School, and Dr. Harriet Alexander, who has become an authority on diseases of the nervous system. Two Chinese graduates of the medical school, Dr. Ida Kahn, '96m, and Dr. Mary Stone, '96m, have done a great work for their fellow countrymen in their ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... paralysis, coma, and death; fatality rates 30%. African Trypanosomiasis - caused by the parasitic protozoa Trypanosoma; transmitted to humans via the bite of bloodsucking Tsetse flies; infection leads to malaise and irregular fevers and, in advanced cases when the parasites invade the central nervous system, coma and death; endemic in 36 countries of sub-Saharan Africa; cattle and wild animals act as reservoir hosts for the parasites. Cutaneous Leishmaniasis - caused by the parasitic protozoa leishmania; transmitted to humans via the bite of sandflies; results in skin lesions that may ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... he cried with a gesture of horror. 'It is more painful to me than I can express. If I were to see my father in one of these dreadful seizures I am convinced that I should never survive it. My own nervous system is an exceptionally sensitive one. With your permission, I will remain in the waiting-room while you go into my ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... was beginning to tell upon us sadly, and our sunken cheeks and wasted forms were visible tokens of what we were enduring. With most of us hunger seemed to attack the entire nervous system, and the con- striction of the stomach produced an acute sensation of pain. A narcotic, such as opium or tobacco, might have availed to soothe, if not to cure, the gnawing agony; but of sedatives we had none, so ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... per centum of cases of neurasthenia are curable," responded the specialist. "Neurasthenia is not, as is usually supposed, an equally diffused general exhaustion of the nervous system. In my opinion, it is rather an unequally distributed multiple fatigue. Certain more vulnerable portions of the nervous system are affected, while the remainder is normal. In the brain we have an overworked area which, irritated, gives rise to an apprehension or imperative idea. By concentration ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... with such uniform fortitude and endurance. Suffice it to say that he recovered, and that his face bore no traces of the frightful ordeal through which he had passed. I don't think he was ever quite the same man as before his accident. I think his nervous system received a shock which eventually tended to shorten his life. But he was still known as incomparably the strongest man in Peoria, and continued to perform the work of two men at the moulding-shop on casting days. In every other respect he was apparently the same; not a whit ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... supernatural gift which he much valued was that of inditing 'signs or verses, which appear to have produced a similar thrilling effect to those of the great Arabian Prophet. But in the second rank he must have valued a power to soothe and strengthen the nervous system which we may well assign to him, and we can easily believe that the lower animals were within the range of this beneficent faculty. Let me mention one of the horse-stories which have gathered round the gentle form of the Bāb. [Footnote: AMB, ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... are the roofs in which one has sojourned, which are quitted without some feeling of depression. The sudden cessation of all those sources of excitement which pervade a gay and well arranged mansion in the country, unstrings the nervous system. For a week or so, we have done nothing which was not agreeable, and heard nothing which was not pleasant. Our self-love has been respected; there has been a total cessation of petty cares; all the enjoyment of ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... when he was already under the shadow of his seizure. I had directed his removal, and grudged him no professional attention that it was in my power to bestow. But afterwards, locked into my room, my whole nervous system broke up like a trodden ant-hill, leaving me conscious of nothing but an aimless scurrying terror and the black swarm of thoughts, so that I verily fancied my reason ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... with the telltale cough and the stooping shoulders. The poisons of the tobacco and whiskey were doing their fatal work. His entire system was heavily charged with nicotine and alcohol; and the effect of these poisons constantly operating upon his nervous system and digestive organs had made him but a wreck of his former self. It is true that in stature he was as large as the man his father had desired him to be; but he was far from being of the strong manly type that that parent would have had him to ...
— How John Became a Man • Isabel C. Byrum
... of the imagination, and in most instances proceed from external sensations. They take place only when our sleep is unsound, in which case the brain and nervous system are capable of performing certain motions. We seldom dream during the first hours of sleep; perhaps because the nervous fluid is then too much exhausted; but dreams mostly occur towards the morning, when this fluid has been, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... the atmosphere, and affect in a similar manner all organised bodies through the medium of a subtile and mobile fluid, which pervades the universe, and associates all things together in mutual intercourse and harmony." This influence, he said, was particularly exercised on the nervous system, and produced two states, which he called intension and remission, which seemed to him to account for the different periodical revolutions observable in several maladies. When in after-life he met with Father Hell, he was confirmed ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... or consciously organic; it is a condition of the whole frame, not of a part only. Like the state of sensation produced by a fine climate, or indeed like all strongly pleasurable or painful sensations in an impassioned nature, it pervades the entire nervous system. States of feeling, whether sensuous or spiritual, which thus possess the whole being, are the fountains of that which we have called the poetry of poets; and which is little else than a pouring forth of the thoughts and images that pass across the mind while some permanent state of feeling ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... degeneration on her posterity. "Periods of moral decadence in the life of a people are always contemporaneous with times of effeminacy, sensuality, and luxury. These conditions can only be conceived as occurring with increased demands on the nervous system, which must meet these requirements. As a result of increase of nervousness there is increase of sensuality, and since this leads to excess among the masses it undermines the foundations of society—the morality and purity ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... the world out from your front-door, or receive visitors only when you are ready for them; but those of your own flesh and blood, or of certain grades of intimacy, can come in at the side-door, if they will, at any hour and in any mood. Some of them have a scale of your whole nervous system, and can play all the gamut of your sensibilities in semitones, —touching the naked nerve-pulps as a pianist strikes the keys of his instrument. I am satisfied that there are as great masters of this nerve-playing ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in drops according to age. It invariably relieves pain of whatever kind; creates a calm, refreshing sleep; allays irritation of the nervous system when all other remedies fail; leaving no bad effects, like opium or laudanum, and can be taken when none other can be tolerated. Its value in saving life in infancy is not easily estimated; a few drops will subdue the ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
... returned only a dull stare. It was evident that this man of stone was as clay in the hands of Phil Abingdon. He deprecated the strain which she was imposing upon her nervous system, already overwrought to the danger point, but he was helpless for all his dour obstinacy. Harley, looking down at the girl's profile, read a new meaning into the firm line of her chin. He was conscious of an insane desire to put his arms around this new acquaintance who seemed ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... the term 'shell-shock.' It was a bad word, and should be wiped out of the vocabulary of every scientific man. It was really molecular abnormality of the nervous system, characterised by abnormal reactions to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... where my will had to capitulate to Unreason—that unscrupulous usurper. My previous five years as a neurasthenic had led me to believe that I had experienced all the disagreeable sensations an overworked and unstrung nervous system could suffer. But on this day several new and terrifying sensations seized me and rendered me all but helpless. My condition, however, was not apparent even to those who worked with me at the same desk. I remember trying to speak and at times finding myself unable to give ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... that had been thus powerfully excited. One object alone possessed her imagination—the image of her grandfather dying—dead; his grim features, his ghastly visage, his convulsive grasp, were ever present, by day and by night. Her nervous system had received a shock too powerful for all the strength of her understanding to contend with. Mrs. Douglas sought by every means to soothe her feelings and divert her attention; and flattered herself that a short time would allay the ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... structure and functions of the nervous system are given as a basis for important suggestions regarding its care from infancy to womanhood. Explicit teaching is given regarding the care girls need to give themselves during high school and college ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... other curious movements-jerky with the men, undulatory with the women—as impossible to describe as water in motion. These are decidedly complex, yet so regular that five hundred pairs of feet and hands mark the measure of the song as truly as if they were under the control of a single nervous system. ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... man upon his back. A while he lay still. His breathing was labored and he twitched convulsively. The entire nervous system was suddenly depressed. Mex stood motionless beside the pallet, her eyes riveted upon him. Presently his livid lips opened, and he spoke gaspingly, ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... nervous system had been a terrible one, and a breakdown, closely bordering upon brain fever, had followed. The girl's condition had demanded the utmost care, and, in this matter, Sarah Gurridge had proved herself a ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... initial draft as though he were attaching the muscles and tendons to the bones of a skeleton; then one set of proofs followed another, while he imparted to his story a network of veins and arteries and a nervous system, infused blood into its veins and breathed into it his powerful breath of life,—and all of a sudden there it was, a living, pulsating creation, within that envelope of words into which he had infused the best ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... been the remote cause, the immediate one is some irritation of the nervous system, causing convulsions, or an effusion to the head, inducing coma. In the first instance, the infant cries out with a quick, short scream, rolls up its eyes, arches its body backwards, its arms become bent and fixed, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... said Stedman, "I'm afraid to go near that cable. It's like playing with a live wire. My nervous system won't stand many more such shocks as those they gave ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... work without satisfaction to myself and lasting benefit to Sir Graham. You now let in a strange light upon the case, and I have little doubt what course would be the best to pursue in regard to the future. Sir Graham's nervous system has broken down so completely that, as often happens in nervous cases, his very nature seems to have changed. The energy, the remarkable self-confidence, the hopefulness and power of looking forward, and of working ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... capacity sufficient to oxygenate the life-currents as they pass upward; large arteries through which the blood may have full course, run, and be glorified; a brain healthy and balanced with a compact nervous system, and you have the basis for computing what will be a man's value to society. Men differ, of course, in ways many—they differ in the number and range of their affections, in the scope of conscience, in taste and imagination, and in moral energy. But the original ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... from the effects of a journey so long sustained, and travelling at such a pace. Moreover, he is not even yet quite recovered from the damage done him by the gymnoti; their electricity still acting on his nervous system, and producing ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... that he did not feel at all nervous when the Sepoys rushed in at the gate firing when he was walking off with you, and it struck me that possibly the sudden shock and the jump into the water when they attacked the boats, and that rap on the head with a musket ball, might have affected his nervous system, and that he was altogether cured, so he was determined on ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... has been inferred from these circumstances that he has not thought it desirable to carry out his threat of separating himself from his wife,—at least in the present (presumed) condition of that lady's sensitive nervous system. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... Lawrence he wrote to his father, "Health, that greatest of blessings, is what I never truly enjoyed until I saw Fair Canada. The change it has wrought, I am convinced, is truly wonderful." This happy result had been due, in part at least, to surroundings that told favorably upon his sensitive nervous system, and not to the bracing climate alone. He had been actively occupied afloat, and had fallen desperately in love with a fair Canadian, around whom his ardent imagination threw that glamour of exaggerated charm in which he ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... the wrongly fed, insufficiently rested child that most readily develops physical deformity. The fatigued nervous system is expressed in general bodily slackness. There is deficient muscular and ligamentous tone. The typical faulty posture is thus acquired, with drooping head, flat chest, wing shoulders, prominent abdomen. Vitality is depressed and the bodily mechanism out of ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... find that people have "tastes" in regard to form, colour, flavour, scent, sound, fabric and texture. The experience is too general to need illustration, but we may gather thence that, in relation to the nervous system of man, every material body and state of matter has a variable effect. These remarks will clear the ground for a statement of my views upon the probable effect a crystal may have ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... manifestations of cholera show that it has lost none of its former virulence and fatality. The symptoms are now regarded as the effects of the toxic action of the poison formed by the micro-organisms upon the tissues and especially upon the nervous system. But this theory has not led to any effective treatment. Drugs in great variety were tried in the continental hospitals in 1892, but without any distinct success. The old controversy between the aperient and the astringent treatment reappeared. In Russia the former, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... "The Oregon Trail." Unfortunately, the book was not the only outcome. The illness incurred during his journey from fatigue and exposure was followed by other disorders. The light of the sun became insupportable, and his nervous system was entirely deranged. His sight was now so impaired that he was almost blind, and could neither read nor write. It was a terrible prospect for a brilliant and ambitious man, but Parkman faced it unflinchingly. He devised a frame by which he could write with closed eyes, and books ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... Pilgrimages, the Convulsionaires, the Revival epilepsies and swoons, which have so often accompanied fits of religious devotion worked up into frenzy; these diseases being merely the result of excitement of the senses, which convulse the mind and powerfully affect the whole nervous system. ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... of being excluded from use and service, and having their moral life stunted or disordered by this stoppage of the natural play of the faculties. There are kinds of illness, especially those of the nervous system, which seem to invade the seat of the will and soul itself, to irritate the temper and sap the resolve and foster a self-centring egotism, by a power that is literally irresistible. Before such experiences as this one thought rises: it is part of mankind's business to lessen, ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... were brought under treatment before the spasmodic habit became established, his cure would be much easier than after the malady has become rooted in his muscular and nervous system." ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... Helen that morning at breakfast. He descended at half-past seven, as usual, full of a diplomatic intention to talk to Helen. She was wholly sensible; she was a person to whom you could talk. Still, tact would be needed. Lack of sleep had rendered his nervous system such that he would have preferred to receive tact rather than to give it. But, happily, ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... were peculiarly frank and playful; the consciousness that her life was spent in the discharge of active duty, gave the same energy to her mind, which bodily exertion did to her nervous system. She never acted under the influence of motives which required disguise; the simplicity of her habits, her ignorance of the world, and innocence of intention, gave such an undesigning engaging character ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... good appetite, and if in milk a strong inclination to drink, which a large secretion of milk almost invariably stimulates. In such a cow the digestive organs are active and energetic, and they make an abundance of good blood, which in turn stimulates the activity of the nervous system, and furnishes the milky glands with the means of abundant secretion. Such a cow, when dry, readily takes on fat. When activity of the milk-glands is found united with close ribs, small and feeble lungs, and a slow appetite, often attended by great thirst, ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... insect, distended in the larva with an abundant orange-coloured pulp; in both the same gall-bladders, four in number, connected with the rectum by one of their extremities. Like the perfect insect, the larva is devoid of salivary glands or any other similar apparatus. Its nervous system comprises eleven ganglia, not counting the oesophageal collar, whereas in the perfect insect there are only seven: three for the thorax, of which the last two are contiguous, and ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... has a highly decentralized nervous system," nodded Hendricks, who was, as I have said, something of a practical scientific man, although no laboratory worker or sniveling scientist. "And instinct is directing him back toward the sea from which, all unwillingly, he came. Look—he's almost in ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... all day and half the night. If you expect me to teach you, you'll have to do something for me, to make up for running away. You might put on pretty things for dinner, don't you think? Your nervous system could ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... and then only yielding to the indications of appetite, and administering the food slowly, in small quantities at a time. This is the only way effectually to prevent indigestion, and bowel complaints, and the irritable condition of the nervous system, so common in infancy, and secure to the infant healthy nutrition, and consequent strength of constitution. As has been well observed, "Nature never intended the infant's stomach to be converted into a receptacle for laxatives, carminatives, antacids, ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... nourishing food, they themselves produce, temporarily at least, some of the more disagreeable consequences incident to the use of ardent spirits. In general, however, none but persons possessing great mobility of the nervous system, or enfeebled or effeminate constitutions, are injuriously affected by the moderate use of tea and coffee in ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... was straightway despatched on horseback to Castle Boterel, and the gentleman known as Dr. Granson came in the course of the afternoon. He pronounced her nervous system to be in a decided state of disorder; forwarded some soothing draught, and gave orders that on no account whatever was she to play ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... acquaintance of the Syrian "butcher," viz., Djezzar, the Pacha of Acre. I record this little trait of Sir Sidney's constitutional temperament, and the little service through which I and my two comrades contributed materially to his relief, as an illustration of that infirmity which besieges the nervous system of our nation. It is a sensitiveness which sometimes amounts to lunacy, and sometimes even tempts to suicide. It is a mistake, however, to suppose this morbid affection unknown to Frenchmen, or unknown to men of the world. I have myself known it to exist in both, and particularly ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... a paralytic, as Haskin proclaimed. He could not even be called an invalid. His attention to vexatious litigation evidenced unimpaired mental power, and his open life at Greystone proved that his physical condition did not hide him from men. He undoubtedly required regular rest and sleep. His nervous system did not resist excitement as readily as in the days of his battle with Tweed and the Canal ring. It is possible, too, that early symptoms of a confirmed disease had then appeared, and that prudence dictated hygienic precautions. Once, in December, 1879, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... one, in conversation, related to him something which he disapproved, he used to start from his chair, and rush up and down the apartment, furiously flapping his hands together, till he had thus blown off the steam produced by the irritation of his nervous system. That prince was a good man: and so aware was he of his infirmity, that, when in these fits of passion, he never suffered himself to say a single word: being aware that he might say what he would afterwards regret. And though he could not wholly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... to dawn on me what it all meant. The acting, I saw, was too much for my delicately-strung nervous system. I have always, I know, been too amenable to the suggestions of my circumstances. Night after night of concentrated attention to the conventional attitudes and intonation of the English stage was gradually affecting my speech and carriage. I was giving ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... in the foremost rank of the battle, and yet shrinks in mortal fear or antipathy from a mouse, is not an unknown spectacle. It is clear that his fear of the little animal is based not upon reason, but upon an uncontrollable sensitiveness in his nervous system acquired by inheritance or otherwise. It does not follow from this that conscious will is not able to affect emotion. As already pointed out, it can arouse emotion by using the proper means, and it undoubtedly can, to a greater or less extent, directly subdue emotion. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... that at this period of his life, young Otis gave strong evidence of the excitable temperament with which he was endowed. In the intervals of his study his nervous system, under the stimulus of games or controversial dispute, would become so tense with excitement as to provoke remark. Nor may we in the retrospect fail to discover in this quality of mind and temper the premonitions of that malady which finally prevailed over ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... from the burden of years and natural decay, but from the touch of disease in the period of life's full vigor in its midway course, that mental activity was restrained. When, besides the inflictions of a racked nervous system, the author suffered in addition a malady of the eyes, which limited him, as he says, to intervals of five minutes for reading or writing, when it did not wholly preclude them, we may well marvel at what he has accomplished. And the reader will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... of Canada and demanded a Court Martial, but he had a judge within himself, from whom he could not escape, and whose judgment weighed upon "a mind diseased," in the broad noonday and at the midnight hour, with such overpowering weight that the nervous system became relaxed, and death at last relieved a man, who, only that he wanted decision of purpose, was amiable, kind, well intentioned, and honest, of a load of grief, before even the sentence of a Court Martial ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... of us,—a separate, sensitive envelope, extending some little distance from our visible persons. I am persuaded that this is the case, and that when my individual atmosphere is invaded by any one, it affects my whole nervous system. The proximity of any bodies but those I love best is unendurable ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... is our chief good, not our friends, nor our children; he shuts them up in silence from us, to see if we can say, "Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee." The painful effect upon our feelings, and upon our nervous system, of separations from departed friends, is involuntary and natural; but to cherish our griefs, to spend much time in melancholy moods, or in poring over the memorials of the departed, so as to excite and indulge morbid feelings, is not Christian ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... sensation,—for all other feelings, both of pleasure or pain, had become overpowered by this one. On food they no longer reflected, though still hungry; but the appetite of hunger, even when keenest, is far less painful than that of thirst. The former weakens the frame, so that the nervous system becomes dulled, and less sensible of the affliction it is enduring; whereas the latter may exist to its extremest degree, while the body is in full strength and vigour, and therefore more capable ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... which the nervous system of our worthy friend Monkbarns received when the exclamation of Edie Ochiltree fell upon his ear, of 'Pretorium here, pretorium there, I mind the biggin' o't,' was not greater than that which mine sustained on receiving this death-blow to all ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... Hindoo, who by some instinctive knowledge is able to gauge the charging moment, drops the stick and scuttles out of the way, and the bear dashes headlong from the cave to be killed, or to make good his escape, as the case may be. Poking a bear out of a cave is rather a severe trial of one's nervous system, and if anyone doubts that he has only to try it for himself, as it will perhaps show the individual that we seldom rightly estimate the amount of nerve which we often expect natives to show. I think I was never more startled in my life than I was one day when I put my ramrod (it was of course ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... which Wundt calls external, is simple and homogeneous. It reproduces the order and connection of things; it reduces itself to habits contracted by our nervous system. ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot |
