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Contagion   /kəntˈeɪdʒən/   Listen
Contagion

noun
1.
Any disease easily transmitted by contact.  Synonym: contagious disease.
2.
An incident in which an infectious disease is transmitted.  Synonyms: infection, transmission.
3.
The communication of an attitude or emotional state among a number of people.  Synonym: infection.  "The infection of his enthusiasm for poetry"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Contagion" Quotes from Famous Books



... love, since it is learned Only when one heart from another takes The sweet contagion; but, my bride and I May humbly teach thee other human lore. Thou say'st thou hast no soul. This cannot be, Since reason and all mental gifts are thine; Within the lovely calyx sleeps the germ,— A flower as yet ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown

... take refuge in any house that was silent, and for three whole nights cannon were fired from the court-house, and every human creature used the utmost powers nature or art afforded for producing a din. The mission party were uninfected by the contagion, but it was a time of terrible anxiety, for nothing had been heard of Mr. Judson or his ship for months; there were reports of ill-feeling between the Burmese and British Governments, no arrivals of English at Rangoon, ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... Union. Minnesota has over thirty civic clubs doing specific work. Is it entirely the work for women? No. Is it entirely the work for men? No. It is a work for both. It is a work that is very contagious and a contagion that needs ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... disclose aught of the one unto the other, but what might tend to their reconcilement. A small good this might appear to me, did I not to my grief know numberless persons, who through some horrible and wide-spreading contagion of sin, not only disclose to persons mutually angered things said in anger, but add withal things never spoken, whereas to humane humanity, it ought to seem a light thing not to toment or increase ill will by ill words, unless one study withal by good words to quench ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... was perhaps but a wizened little elf, gray and decrepit, with nothing genuine about him save the wicked expression of his grin. The fantasy of his spectral character so wrought upon me, together with the contagion of his strange mirth on my sympathies, that I soon began to ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... friendship he had solicited, and shrank from the sense of the obligation he had incurred he—quitted his companion. Wearied, at length, with travel, he was journeying homeward, when he was seized with a sudden and virulent fever, mistaken for plague: all fled from the contagion of the supposed pestilence—he was left to die. One man discovered his condition—watched, tended, and, skilled in the deeper secrets of the healing art, restored him to life and health: it was the same Jew who had preserved him ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... worthiest works misinterpreted, the clearest actions obscured, the innocentest life traduced: and in such a licence of lying, a field so fruitful of slanders, how can there be matter wanting to his laughter? Hence comes the epidemical infection; for how can they escape the contagion of the writings, whom the virulency of the calumnies hath ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... mutterings, and an air of peevish discontent began to be manifested in various childish ways. And it was all caused by the fact that Hopalong Cassidy had a grouch, and a big one. It was two months old and growing worse daily, and the signs threatened contagion. His foreman, tired and sick of the snarling, fidgety, petulant atmosphere that Hopalong had created on the ranch, and driven to desperation, eagerly sought some chance to get rid of the "sore-thumb" temporarily and give ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... general will not recognize him at the club. It is in the middle and lower classes that the most perfect pictures of the true Spanish family are to be found. The aristocracy is more or less infected with the contagion of Continental manners and morals. You will find there the usual proportion of wives who despise their husbands, and men who neglect their wives, and children who do not honor their parents. The smartness of American "pickles" has even made its appearance among the little countesses of Madrid. A ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... head was turned for a time by the success of Goetz. During the months that followed its publication, at all events, he was possessed with a wanton humour which spared neither friends nor foes, nor the society of which he had apparently caught the contagion as completely as any of its members. At a later date, Goethe speaks of his "considerate levity" and his "warm coolness";[136] and in a succession of pieces which he threw off at this time we have an interesting commentary on this characterisation of himself. In these pieces we have an old vein ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown

... country, particularly the opposite shore, is chiefly inhabited by the vilest characters, who have an interest in debauching the soldier from his duty; since roads are opened into the interior of the States, which facilitate desertion, it is impossible to avoid the contagion. A total change must be effected in the minds and views of those who may hereafter be sent on this duty, before the evil can ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... some short prose tales, which were published in various papers. But it was in 1896, when the "Russkoe Bogatsvo," the large St. Petersburg review, had published his two important stories, "Astray" and "The Contagion," that renown came to him. It came so suddenly that it troubled him and was almost a blow to his modesty, which is one of the sympathetic traits of ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... such as rheumatism, bronchitis, kicked by a horse, knocked down by despatch rider, dysentery, and so on—a paltry, stupid lot of ailments and minor accidents, demanding a few days' treatment. It was a dull service, this medical service, yet one had to be always on guard against contagion, so the service was a responsible one. But the Major worked quickly, sorted them out hastily, and then one by one they disappeared behind a hanging sheet, where the orderlies took off their old uniforms, washed ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte

... children from an unsound parent, in the first case, and unsound children from two apparently sound parents in the second case, is exactly the opposite of what one would expect if the child gets his unsoundness merely by imitation or "contagion." The difference can not reasonably be explained by any difference in environment or external stimuli. Heredity offers a satisfactory explanation, for some forms of feeble-mindedness and epilepsy, and some of the diseases known as insanity, behave as recessives and segregate in just ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... partners during their marriage, and from which they recover; but we mean inherent diseases, which are permanent. The science of pathology teaches what these are. They are manifold, such as diseases whereby the whole body is so far infected that the contagion may prove fatal; of this nature are malignant and pestilential fevers, leprosies, the venereal disease, gangrenes, cancers, and the like; also diseases whereby the whole body is so far weighed down, as to admit of no consociability, and from which exhale dangerous effluvia and noxious vapors, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... That severe lady had dropped her book and, seized by the contagion, was shaking with ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... portion of the Jewish quarter; a third to visit the families into which the scourge had already forced an entrance, and inculcate such lessons of cleanliness as would materially lessen the chances of further contagion. ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith

... conscious fraud (which is a rarer thing than is often supposed), people, whose mythopoeic faculty is once stirred, are capable of saying the thing that is not, and of acting as they should not, to an extent which is hardly imaginable by persons who are not so easily affected by the contagion of blind faith. There is no falsity so gross that honest men and, still more, virtuous women, anxious to promote a good cause, will not lend themselves to it without any clear consciousness of the moral bearings of what ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... one who daily preached in the cathedral,— bent over the beds of the sick, giving them food and medicine, hearing their confessions, and administering the last rites of the Church,—and then braving the contagion after death, rather than let the corpses go forth unblest to their common grave. Nay, so far was he from seeking to save his own life, that, kneeling before the altar in the cathedral, he solemnly offered himself, like Moses, as a sacrifice for his people. ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... are the chief virtues, and if China is ever overthrown it will be not because, as the Americans put it, she is behind the times, but because the fever of unrest and the craze for riches has become a contagion which will react upon her. The development of China is normal, that of America hysterical. Our growth has been along the line of peace; that of other nations has been entirely opposed to their own religious teaching, showing it to be ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous

... unbelievable. There I stood in a pillory, raised up from earth; and a great crowd had gathered to look at me. I can only describe it as a primrose crowd. The disease infected all, but not so badly as it did me. The yellow contagion spread everywhere; from all the streets around, the botanical deluge continued to flow in upon me. I felt a pressure at my back; a man had placed a ladder against it; he mounted and hung a large wreath of primroses about my ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman

... fight of men-at-arms in the Middle Ages,—derived from the graphic description of Froissart, in whose narrative there always runs an undercurrent of sly humor when portraying the military extravagances of the age. And it is impossible to avoid the contagion; for who can picture in any more serious style a hurly-burly of huge, iron-clad, suffocating, perspiring warriors, half blinded with helmet and visor and scarce able to stir beneath the metallic pots encompassing them around; belaboring and hustling each other ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... Sturges, an English physician, whooping cough is not always to be escaped by preventing contagion, for at a certain age the disposition toward this disease is so great that the child will originate it. He says: "Whooping cough is a nervous disease of immature life, due immediately, like nervous ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... a letter had seemingly failed to reach her, once her children had had scarlet fever and the orders of the physicians in attendance had been stringent in regard to visitors, even relatives who did not fear contagion. ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... haircut our hair is still growing, never stopping, never at rest, never in a hurry: it grows while we sleep, as was proved by Rip Van Winkle. And yet perhaps sometimes it is in a hurry; perhaps that is why it falls out. In rare cases the contagion of speed spreads; the last hair hurries after all the others; the man is emancipated from dependence on barbers. I know a barber who is in this independent condition himself (for the barber can no more cut his own hair than the rest of us) and yet sells his customers a preparation ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren

... is increased rather than decreased by being preyed upon. Like all other creatures, birds are subject to sickness and disease, but by the laws of nature it appears that they are not designed to suffer long. Their quick removal is advisable if they are to be prevented from spreading contagion among their fellows, or breeding and passing on their weakness to their offspring. Sometimes the Hawk, dashing at a covey of game birds, may capture one of its strongest and healthiest members, but the chances are that the afflicted member, which is not so quick on the rise or is a little slower ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson

... they have a cask of beer,' said Trent, 'they are all right. We will have bread and cheese, and oh, may Heaven our simple lives prevent from luxury's contagion, weak and vile! Till then, goodbye.' He strode off to recover his hat from the veranda, waved it to Mr. Cupples, and ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... during the summer of 1786. Coming to Greenock in the autumn, she found her brother sick of a malignant fever at the house of her aunt; bravely disregarding danger of contagion, she devoted herself to nursing him, and brought him to a safe convalescense only to be herself stricken by his malady and to rapidly sink and die, a sacrifice to her sisterly affection. By this time the success of his poems had determined Burns to remain in Scotland, and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... away by circumstances, by vanity, and by fickleness, than actuated by premeditated treachery, and it is quite possible that these protestations were sincerely uttered when Ney left Paris, but, infected by the ardour of his troops, he was unable to resist a contagion so much in harmony with all his antecedents, and to attack not only his leader in many a time of peril, but also the sovereign who had forwarded his career through every ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... to be of any real assistance to my poor friend Maltravers, I must know as far as possible every circumstance connected with his malady. As it was, I felt myself breathing an atmosphere of moral contagion during the perusal of the manuscript, and certain passages have since returned at times to haunt me in spite of all efforts to dislodge them from my memory. When I came to Worth at Miss Maltravers's urgent invitation, I found my friend Sir John terribly altered. It was not only ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner

... great numbers necessarily required to people the colonies: another was, the infecting the world with a disease, which was before unknown only in the new world and particularly in the island of Hispaniola. Several of the companions of Christopher Columbus returned home infected with this contagion, which afterwards spread over Europe. It is certain that this poison, which taints the springs of life, was peculiar to America, as the plague and small-pox, were diseases originally endemial to the southern parts ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... barbarians of the East. She desired to know whether his constitution was not impaired by inhaling the unrefined atmosphere of those remote and barbarous regions. For her part, the mere thought of it made her faint in her innermost citadel; nor went she ever abroad with the wind at East, dreading the contagion which might lurk ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... company of the meaner servants, who may set him bad examples. For thus he says, "Here is another great inconvenience, which children receive from the ill examples which they meet with from the meaner servants. They are wholly, if possible, to be kept from such conversation: for the contagion of these ill precedents, both in civility and virtue, horribly infects children, as often as they come within the reach of it. They frequently learn from unbred or debauched servants, such language, untowardly ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... aware of the contagion of example, that is to say the action of the imagination, when, to avenge himself upon a merchant on board the same boat, he bought his biggest sheep and threw it into the sea, certain beforehand that the entire flock would follow, ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue

... of mind, either by Miss Chandos' continued attentions or the contagion of No. 6's docility, the youth was now all submission. He walked up and down any number of times like a tame animal at the Zoological Gardens, and now quite agreed that his name was Mary Jones. He sang "Tom Bowling" at command, and No. 6, not to be outdone, warbled a ditty ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... incurable sterility. The impaired reason accepted the coarsest superstitions, the most extreme asceticism and most extravagant theurgy. It resembled an organism incapable of defending itself against contagion. All this is partly true; but the theories summarized proceed from an incorrect conception of things; in reality they are based on the illusion that Asia, under the empire, was inferior to Europe. While the triumph of the Oriental ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... Peggy as Harriet closed the door, "how this terrible contagion of domesticity, as General Washington puts it, hath seized everybody! Here Betty hath married her Frenchman and gone to France; Clifford is to come for Sally before he sails for England; and now there is Robert and Harriet. What does thee think ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison

... his "cousin" as though he had been shot, and, turning round, regarded the two young ladies for some minutes in silence, while Mrs. Russell sat rigid with horror at this shocking irreverence. But in the royal eye, as it rested on Katie, there was a merry twinkle, until at length the contagion seized upon "His Majesty" himself, and he too burst forth into peals of laughter. After this even Mrs. Russell joined in, and so it happened that the King and the three ladies enjoyed ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... human vapor, even after ventilation. But here, alas! I found nine of the negroes infected by the disease. We took counsel as to the use of laudanum in ridding ourselves speedily of the sufferers,—a remedy that is seldom and secretly used in desperate cases to preserve the living from contagion. But it was quickly resolved that it had already gone too far, when nine were prostrated, to save the rest by depriving them of life. Accordingly, these wretched beings were at once sent to the forecastle as a hospital, and given in charge to the vaccinated or innoculated as nurses. ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... historian Bailyn, they had worked "a substantial alteration in the order of society as it was known" in 1775. They had unloosened a "contagion of liberty" which could not be restrained.[37] Ultimately Virginians and Americans came to believe the rhetoric of the Declaration of Rights and the Declaration of Independence when they read the words "all men are created equal" to mean "all ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education

... Bela, slowly and frankly, "because our race knows no sickness and we feared contagion, as your race has not yet learned to control ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... which shot from the burning veins of Lady mar, when she would have polluted with her unchaste lips this shrine of a beloved wife, this bosom consecrated to her sacred image! Wallace had shrunk from her, as from the touch of some hideous contagion, but with Lady Helen it was soul meeting soul, it was innocence resting on the bosom of virtue. No thought that saints would not have approved was there, no emotion which angels might not have shared, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... because they have been accessories in an unlucky ceremony, that of the marriage of a widow. On this point Dr. Jevons writes [395] that the peculiar characteristic of taboo is this transmissibility of its infection or contagion. In ancient Greece the offerings used for the purification of the murderer became themselves polluted during the process and had to be buried. A similar reasoning applies to the articles employed in the marriage of a widow. The wood of the tendu or ebony tree [396] is ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... corrupted with the smell {of them}. I am relating strange events. The dogs, and the ravenous birds, and the hoary wolves, touch them not; falling away, they rot, and, by their exhalations, produce baneful effects, and spread the contagion far and wide. With more dreadful destruction the pestilence reaches the wretched husbandmen, and riots within the walls of the extensive city. At first, the bowels are scorched,[102] and a redness, and the breath drawn with difficulty, is ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... deepe-diuorcing vow? I know thou canst, and therefore see thou doe it. I am possest with an adulterate blot, My bloud is mingled with the crime of lust: For if we two be one, and thou play false, I doe digest the poison of thy flesh, Being strumpeted by thy contagion: Keepe then faire league and truce with thy true bed, I liue ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... what the war fever is in our young men,—what a devouring passion it becomes in those whom it assails. Patriotism is the fire of it, no doubt, but this is fed with fuel of all sorts. The love of adventure, the contagion of example, the fear of losing the chance of participating in the great events of the time, the desire of personal distinction, all help to produce those singular transformations which we often witness, turning the most peaceful of our youth into the most ardent of our soldiers. But ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... preach their loathsome crusade against the army and the country with open doors and are backed up by our rulers.... And that's only speaking of the capital!... Why, the very provinces haven't escaped the contagion!... Here, have you read ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc

... to proceed quietly, but work was being done in secret. The new ideas were in process of becoming current, the newspapers introduced them into the bosom of the family, and they were uttered from the speaker's platform, or discussed at meal-times in workshop and factory. The contagion ran up staircases and went from door to door. Organizations which more than once had been created and broken up were created afresh—and this time to endure. The employers fought them, but could not defeat them; there was an ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... If a person, dies of cholera, small-pox, or other such infectious or contagious disease, the body is buried, but is dug up again and burnt with all the customary rites when fear of infection or contagion is over. In parts of the district upright stones called maw-umkoi are erected along the line of route when the remains of a person who has met with an accidental death are brought home. This is stated to be the case in the ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon

... the contagion Of my misfortunes had not spread it self Upon my Son Ascanio, though my wants Were centupli'd upon my self, I could be patient: But he is so good, I so miserable, His pious care, his duty, and obedience, ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... Tusculum he was safe from all annoying, free to enjoy the quietness and ease he had earned from the world, the same vandals laid the track through his grounds, not only destroying all their beauty and attraction, but leaving fens from which these summer heats distilled contagion. He has therefore been ill for some weeks, and as he had never a strong constitution, and has preserved his equable but not vigorous health only by the most constant carefulness, his physicians and friends begin to be alarmed ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various

... time got over their recent alarm, and were settling back into their old ways. Even the impatient and discontented Dale seemed to have got over to a great extent his annoyance at the delay which the loss of the masts involved; and, catching the contagion of the good spirits which animated the rest of the party, was actually betrayed into an effort or two to make himself agreeable that evening at the dinner-table. So amiable was this generally irritable ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... these examples of blind devotion to his person were not displeasing, and whose troops had shown him that they were too mature, too experienced, to fear the contagion of this example, let Crastinius and his companions go out ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq

... And break it with a deep-divorcing vow? I know thou canst; and, therefore, see thou do it. I am possess'd with an adulterate blot; My blood is mingled with the crime of lust: For if we two be one, and thou play false, I do digest the poison of thy flesh, Being strumpeted by thy contagion. Keep then fair league and truce with thy true bed; I ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... allowing those in her immediate vicinity to betake themselves to the dismals, or to the produce of wet-blankets, for she was in the very highest spirits, and insisted, as it were, that those around her should catch the contagion of her cheerfulness. And it accordingly happened that Mr. Verdant Green seemed to be as merry as was old King Cole, and laughed and talked as though black care was anywhere else than between himself and ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... West Rome alone satisfied the necessary conditions. And the Bishops of Rome could claim, with some show of reason, that their tradition was derived from a worthier source, and had been better guarded against contagion, than that of any other Apostolic Church. Was it not a well-established fact that Rome had preserved an unwavering front in the face of the heretical Arius, when even Antioch, Jerusalem, and ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... saturated with the tolerating maxims of the Gospel, a preventive persecution, on such principles, might come recommended by strong, and, apparently, no immoral motives of policy, whilst yet the contagion was recent, and had laid hold but on a few persons. The truth is, these politics are rotten and hollow at bottom, as all that are founded upon any however minute a degree of positive injustice must ever ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... "Prayers are made in the loyal university of Oxford, to continue the throne free from the contagion of schism. See Mather's sermon on the 29th of May, 1705." Thus he ridicules the university while he is eating their bread. The whole university comes with the most loyal addresses, yet that goes for nothing. If one indiscreet man drops an ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... Wee are, wee thinke, come out of the contagious citie, but wee are not aduised that we haue sucked the bad aire, that wee carry the plague with vs, that we so participate with it, that through rockes, through desarts, through mountaines, it euer accompanieth vs. Hauing auoyded the contagion of others, yet we haue it in our selues. We haue withdrawen vs out of men: but not withdrawen man out of vs. The tempestuous sea torments vs: we are grieued at the heart, and desirous to vomit: and to be discharged thereof, we remoue out ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay

... waste Of unconcocted air? And how at first didst thou come there? Sure there was once a time when thou wert not, By whom wast thou created? and for what? Art thou a steam from some contagious damp exhal'd? How should contagion be intail'd, On bright seraphic Spirits, and in a place Where all's supreme, and Glory fills the Space? No noxious vapour there could rise, For there no noxious matter lies; Nothing that's evil could appear, Sin never could Seraphic Glory bear; The brightness of the eternal Face, ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... ulcerated, till at length the corrupted flesh broke out into lice. Many, were employed day and night in destroying them, but the work so multiplied under their hands, that not only his clothes, baths, basins, but his very meat was polluted with that flux and contagion, they came swarming out in such numbers. He went frequently by day into the bath to scour and cleanse his body, but all in vain; the evil generated too rapidly and too abundantly for any ablutions to ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... when her red lips parted, showing her teeth of pearl, and she gave the little clap of her hands—a sort of climax to the soft, low, rippling laugh—she made a picture of such exquisite loveliness that it is no wonder men were fools about her, and caught love as one catches a contagion. I had it once, as you already know, and had recovered. All that prevented a daily relapse was my fair, sweet antidote, Jane, whose image rested in ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major

... that, we have no hope at all. Reform, like Charity, O Bobus, must begin at home. Once well at home, how will it radiate outwards, irrepressible, into all that we touch and handle, speak and work; kindling ever new light, by incalculable contagion, spreading in geometric ratio, far and wide,—doing good only, wheresoever it ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... that (to me) memorable Christmas of 1872, a sharp epidemic of typhoid fever broke out in the village of Sibsey. The drainage there was of the most primitive type, and the contagion spread rapidly. Naturally fond of nursing, I found in this epidemic work just fitted to my hand, and I was fortunate enough to be able to lend personal help that made me welcome in the homes of the stricken poor. The mothers who slept exhausted while I watched beside their darlings' bedsides will ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... while others, denied the boon of sleep, tossing in restless wakefulness, drenched with the cold sweat that streamed from every pore, raved like lunatics, as if their suffering had made them mad. And whether they were calm or violent, it mattered not; when the contagion of the fever reached them, then was the end at hand, the poison doing its work, flying from bed to bed, sweeping them all away in one mass ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... man he met for the latest news, while all sorts of rumors filled the air. A feeling of mingled horror and despair appeared to possess everybody. . . . Our soldiers came straggling into the city covered with dust and many of them wounded, while the panic that led to the disaster spread like a contagion through all classes." The President did not share the panic. He "received the news quietly and without any visible sign of perturbation or excitement"'(10) Now appeared in him the quality which led Herndon to ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... Spanish America. Disdaining the hypocritical outcries of those men who prostituted the name of commerce to cover their speculations and their rapine, he exposed himself to scorn and persecution in order to save the remnant of those indigenous American tribes, to protect his flock from the moral contagion which threatened to weigh upon it, and to lead into the right path the young men who were going to ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath

... him aside, and persuaded him that his rival, Madockawando, had put a slight upon him in presuming to make peace without his consent. "The effect was marvellous," says Villieu. Taxous, exasperated, declared that he would have nothing to do with Madockawando's treaty. The fickle multitude caught the contagion, and asked for nothing but English scalps; but, before setting out, they must needs go back to Passadumkeag to ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... labour, others of their own class seduce them away to those who can afford to pay higher for their services. This is not the case in a few remote districts. Where surrounding mountains seem to exclude the contagion of the world, some traces of fidelity and affection among domestics still remain. But it must be remarked, that, in those very districts, it is usual to treat inferiors with courtesy and kindness, and to consider those domestics who marry out of the family as holding a kind of relation ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... taking a royal ring of carved agate from her finger, and placing it on a stand before him, for so great was the terror of contagion from those afflicted with leprosy, that even the affectionate mother of Bladud avoided the touch of her child,—"this ring was wrought by the master-hand of a Druid, a skillful worker in precious stones, within the sacred circle of Stonehenge. ...
— The Children's Portion • Various

... turf. Everybody there walks about armed, but murder is not more rife in proportion than in London. As it happened, a fellow was shot while I was there, but that would not justify one in coming to the conclusion that homicide was a flourishing indigenous product. Still, the natives did not escape the contagion of unrest of their countrymen. For example, the last news I heard before leaving my English friends was that the men in the vineyards had struck work. These lazy scoundrels had the impudence to demand that they should have half an hour ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... it has constantly been suggested to the minds of thoughtful physicians that there was a something astoundingly similar between this phenomena of the propagation of fermentation by infection and contagion, and the phenomena of the propagation of diseases by infection and contagion. Out of this suggestion has grown that remarkable theory of many diseases which has been called the "germ theory of disease," the idea, in fact, ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... excitements of the mediaval period partook of a sort of epidemic character, diffusing and working like a contagion.32 There were numberless throngs of pilgrims to famous shrines, immense crowds about the localities of popular legends, relics, or special grace. In the magnetic sphere of such a fervid and credulous multitude, filled with ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... a representative of that class of diseases which, while being caused by bacteria, can be considered more of a disease of conditions than of contagion. Roup may be caused by a number of different bacteria which are commonly found in the air and soil. When chickens catch cold these germs find lodgment in the nasal passages and roup ensues. The first ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... which all joined vivaciously, and often all at once, was in striking contrast with the silent gloom which would have enshrouded a similar party of English or American travelers. It was impossible to resist the contagion of cheerfulness or to refuse to mingle more or less in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... the contagion, and more than once big wagons driven by smiling, cheery-faced men drove up to the door and unloaded their contents. And when the evening fell and a great sleigh with six seats and four horses, and ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page

... "for the shepherd is a feeble man, who knows no remedy against contagion; but the Lord, who calls all His people, will suffer no harm to arise from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... what most injures them, and prevents propagation, is the venereal disease, which most of them have very strongly, clearly proving that their humours are analogous to receiving the impressions of this contagion. From this reason may be deduced the enormous differences between the births and deaths, which, without doubt, is one-tenth per year in favour of the latter; but the missionaries do all in their power to prevent this, with respect to the ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant

... sat up, her small round face puckered into such lines of pain that the student turned his head away, feeling dangerously near tears. He had always been taught, by his father and by his mother who feared contagion, that of all people in the world, the squatters must be most avoided; they had no hearts; they killed men and broke the laws simply for their own gain. But here was a girl magnetically drawing him toward her. Dirty? Yes, and barefooted, wild-eyed and untaught, but suffering—and such suffering! ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... one of these letters runs, "but the scope of our operations will widen as the frost comes out of the ground. We're now confined to the psychical field. Subjectively speaking, though, the plot thickens. Captain Tolliver is in the secondary stages of real-estate dementia, and spreads the contagion daily. There's no quarantine regulation to cover the case, and Lattimore seems doomed to the acme of prosperity. This is the age of great cities, saith the Captain, and that Lattimore is not already a town of 150,000 people ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... his success. Whatever lay in the road he had to encounter it. The most splendid lives may progress and end through what we call tragedy; but it is better to die in the very stress of achievement than to stretch a poor existence through a century. The contagion of his hardihood stole out like the Christmas incense ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... the plague broke out in these mountains, Chainitza had distributed infected garments among gipsies, who scattered contagion wherever ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... has not a trace; his only values are spiritual and ideal; his only standards are the essential and the enduring. What Matthew Arnold called the Anglo-Saxon contagion, the bourgeois spirit, the worldly and sordid ideal, is entirely corrected in Whitman by the ascendant of the ethic and the universal. His democracy ends in universal brotherhood, his patriotism in the solidarity of nations, his glorification ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... classicism. Luckily, Young, in stating the case against the classicists, has at the same time stated perfectly the case for familiarity with the classics. "It is," he declares, "but a sort of noble contagion, from a general familiarity with their writings, and not by any particular sordid theft, that we can be the better for those who went before us," However we may deride a servile classicism, we should always set out assuming the necessity of the "noble contagion ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... tribunal, and were instructed to act their part in this extraordinary scene, confessed the irresistible power of reason and eloquence, by saluting the emperor Constantius as their lawful sovereign. The contagion of loyalty and repentance was communicated from rank to rank; till the plain of Sardica resounded with the universal acclamation of "Away with these upstart usurpers! Long life and victory to the son of Constantine! Under his banners alone we will fight and conquer." The shout of thousands, their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... politics alone until 1830. Descoings's shop was not a hundred yards from Robespierre's lodging. His successor was scarcely more fortunate than himself. Cesar Birotteau, the celebrated perfumer of the "Queen of Roses," bought the premises; but, as if the scaffold had left some inexplicable contagion behind it, the inventor of the "Paste of Sultans" and the "Carminative Balm" came to his ruin in that very shop. The solution of the problem here suggested belongs to ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... King George III. was never satisfied with the repeal of the Stamp Act of 1765. He declared that it had wounded the Majesty of England. It fretted him, and the irritation that he felt extended like a contagion to his cabinet. When the Earl of Chatham died, there was no statesman to take his place. The mantle of his office fell on Charles Townshend, who was more anxious to please the King than to secure good government to the people of the Colonies. He was anxious for ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris

... legions, and storm not only Parnassus but the ballot-box, the bench, and the forum. That this should occur in a country where a woman nominally rules, and certainly reigns, is not so surprising, but I dread the contagion of such an ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... observation and collecting of the dreary statistics would bring to light a curious proof of the extent and certainty of this sort of contagion. ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... a dwelling becomes choked, what is the consequence? The noxious and pestilent gases generated by the accumulated filth having no outlet, are forced back into the building, poisoning the atmosphere, and breeding contagion among the inhabitants. Deodorizing and disinfecting will simply be a waste of time and material, until the drain is cleared. The colon is the main drain of the human body, and if it be necessary, ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell

... scriptures, leaven is figuratively mentioned as representing evil, thus, "the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees" (Matt. 16:6, see also Luke 12:1), "the leaven of Herod" (Mark 8:15). These instances, and others (1 Cor. 5:7, 8) are illustrative of the contagion of evil. In the incident of the woman using leaven in the ordinary process of bread-making, the spreading, penetrating vital effect of truth is symbolized by the leaven. The same thing in different aspects may very properly be used to represent good in one instance and ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... procession of horsemen and wagons. Those who could travel no other way filled syrup cans with water and started for the Tecolotes on foot. A railroad! Well, why had they never thought of that in the long, wasted days before? Even L. W., the scoffer, caught the sudden contagion; but Andrew McBain did not stir. He was a cautious man and good friends had told him that Rimrock Jones had threatened his life. He stayed in town—and Rimrock stayed also—and soon the procession came back. It was led by L. W. in his cactus-proof automobile, and he reported ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... Asian skies of blue, Where sports an elf, mayhap a hare, We fain would haste, each soul, and die, Unfurl all dreams and pinioned sails, And sleep unmourned in haunts we knew, Now wracks and domes stare at each soul, Giant goddards leak a rubic foam; Blind forges hold Contagion's breath; A Morgan longs for earthly home. 'Tis so with hell's eternal shoal Where skinks eat flesh from wenches' bone; 'Tis thus with us purloined by Death, Infernal doom that spells a moan. Ten thousand years was Doom crown'd King; Sporadic prayers each gnarl'd ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque

... much care. And I had awful trouble to steal enough money to get about with. Why, I had to pick ever so many pockets, and I do hate touching people; you never can tell what germs they may have." She shook out her rusty black skirt as if to detach any possible contagion. ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... escaped the contagion, seems little less than miraculous. I, who have known him so long and so well, attribute it to the state of his mind, which was so wholly occupied by anxiety for his friend as to leave no room for any thought ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... They are sensible that religious instruction is of more consequence to them than to any others: from the greatness of the temptation to which they are exposed; from the important consequences that attend their faults; from the contagion of their ill example; from the necessity of bowing down the stubborn neck of their pride and ambition to the yoke of moderation and virtue; from a consideration of the fat stupidity and gross ignorance concerning what imports men most ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... in a duel—strewed rue, fennel, and other herbs on the ledge of the dock, in the faith that the odor of the herbage would act as a barrier to the poisonous exhalations from prisoners sick of gaol distemper, and would protect the assembly in the body of the court from the contagion of ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... twilight we had already seen red-trousered soldiers, vivid as poppies against the grass, digging trenches along the line, and at one point a group of sappers improvising a wire footbridge across the river. The contagion of suspense was in the air,—you seemed to catch it in the faint ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... applications are most of them broadly "human" applications. They bear on daily living, exercise, fresh air, personal cleanliness, diet, sleep, the avoidance of contagion, methods of fighting off disease, general physical efficiency. They all amount to what Mrs. Ellen H. Richards calls Right Living. She would have four R's instead of three: Reading, Riting, Rithmetic, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... they had ever such a number of sick persons, they could lodge them conveniently, and at such a distance that such of them as are sick of infectious diseases may be kept so far from the rest that there can be no danger of contagion. The hospitals are furnished and stored with all things that are convenient for the ease and recovery of the sick; and those that are put in them are looked after with such tender and watchful care, and are so constantly attended by their skilful physicians, ...
— Utopia • Thomas More

... from riot, and free from diseases; to qualify and make us as those poor naked Indians are generally at this day; and those about Brazil (as a late [1326]writer observes), in the Isle of Maragnan, free from all hereditary diseases, or other contagion, whereas without help of physic they live commonly 120 years or more, as in the Orcades and many other places. Such are the common effects of temperance and intemperance, but I will descend to particular, and show by what means, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... the acquittal of the seven bishops at Westminster in 1688. At present there was more than passionate enthusiasm. The frenzied movement of mixed horror and exultation—the ululation of vengeance which ascended instantaneously from the individual street, and then by a sublime sort of magnetic contagion from all the adjacent streets, can be adequately expressed only by ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... Danny; the contagion soon spread and first Nora and then Celia Jane were running with all their ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell

... spread with slow but sure contagion. There were some who understood the teacher. His words went home and far with them, even to their graves, and how much farther who can say? They went over the hills, indeed, to other neighbourhoods, and here they are, still travelling, and going ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... use for him afterward," Harding broke in. "We want sane, normal men on this continent. Neurotics, hoodoos and fakirs are worse than the plague; there's contagion in their fooling." ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss

... daring to be somewhat more than half in earnest, and she flushed so prettily that the son of the Bishop caught her hand boyishly under the little table. He had hitherto been considered a hopeless old bachelor, so it may readily be seen that, now the contagion had caught him, his was quite ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond

... fever of renown, Spreads from the strong contagion of the gown; O'er Bodley's dome his future labours spread, And Bacon's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... debauchery and profligacy, or to have laid detestable schemes for the ruin of their country, took a road wide of that which led to the assembly of the Gods: but they who had preserved themselves upright and chaste, and free from the slightest contagion of the body, and had always kept themselves as far as possible at a distance from it, and whilst on earth, had proposed to themselves as a model the life of the Gods, found the return to those beings from whom they had come an easy one." Therefore he argues, that all good and wise men should ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... theories about the authority and inspiration of the Scriptures in the air it was almost impossible that the Catholic exegetists could escape the contagion. One of the ablest Catholic writers at the time, the French Oratorian /Richard Simon/ (1638-1712), was accused by his contemporaries of having approached too closely to the rationalist system in his scriptural theories. He was a man well- versed in the Oriental ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... more susceptible to the climate of the torrid zone, began to frequent La Guayra. The yellow fever broke out. North Americans, seized with the typhus, were received in the Spanish hospitals; and it was affirmed that they had imported the contagion, and that the disease had appeared on board a brig from Philadelphia, even before the vessel had entered the roads of La Guayra. The captain of the brig denied the fact; and asserted that, far from having introduced the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... that against which the allies had combined in the person of Napoleon. "Revolution" appeared to him and his conservative sympathizers as heresy appeared to Philip II,—it was a fearful disease that not only destroyed those whom it attacked directly, but spread contagion wherever it appeared and justified prompt and sharp measures of quarantine and even violent intervention with a view of stamping ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... however, before society accommodates itself to these new notions. The newly divorced, be it man or woman, comes into the world like a patient after the smallpox—you are not quite certain whether the period of contagion is past, or if it be perfectly safe to go up and talk to him. In fact, you delay doing so till some strong-minded friend or other goes boldly forward and shakes the convalescent by the hand. Even still there ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... his bearing, and the purity of his life. He was unspoiled by fortune and applause; uncorrupted by the tempting chances of his time; stainless in the use of gifts which in the hands of a man less true would have caught the contagion of Pope's malice or of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... eyes during his greatest speech literally emitted sparks. Had we tests fine enough we would doubtless find each man's personality the center of outreaching influences. He himself may be utterly unconscious of this exhalation of moral forces, as he is of the contagion of disease from his body. But if light is in him he shines; if darkness rules he shades, if his heart glows with love he warms; if frozen with selfishness he chills; if corrupt he poisons; if pure-hearted he cleanses. We watch with ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... sides, or hats cocked after a military fashion on their heads. As the strength of Samson of old was in his locks, so the degenerate nobles of this period guarded with especial care these masculine ornaments of the person; and so great was the contagion for wigs and hair-powder, that twelve hundred shops existed in Paris to furnish this aristocratic luxury. The muses of Rome in the days of her decline condescended to sing on the arts of cookery and the sublime occupations of hunting and fishing; so in the heroic times ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... it is true, a few classes that have escaped this contagion, shepherds living in the hills, drovers, sailors, fishermen and such like. I remember the first time I went into the English country-side being struck with the clean, honest look in the people's faces. I realised exactly ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock

... brilliant enough to attract numbers of men from other colleges, became gradually mere dry, ingenious skeletons, without life or feeling. It was possible to learn a great deal from him; it was not possible to catch from him any contagion of that amor intellectualis which had flamed at one moment so high within him. He ceased to compose; but as the intellectual faculty must have some employment, he became a translator, a contributor to dictionaries, a microscopic student of texts, not in the interest of anything ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... was all expended and sleep weighed their eyelids down. For themselves they had little of any thing to say, because the Landers were pretty nearly as ignorant of their language, as they were of theirs, and interpretation is unfavourable to the contagion of social felicity. Nevertheless, it was highly diverting to watch the influence of the palm wine on their looks, language, and ideas. The flushed countenance is invisible in a black lady, but then she has the liquid ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... admiration. It was, indeed, playfully said, that no tradesman who applauded Charles could possibly have the face to dun the author afterwards. In looking, however, to the race of rakes that had previously held possession of the stage, we cannot help considering our release from the contagion of so much coarseness and selfishness to be worth even the increased risk of seduction that may have succeeded to it; and the remark of Burke, however questionable in strict ethics, is, at least, true on the stage,—that "vice loses half its evil ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore



Words linked to "Contagion" :   venereal disease, Venus's curse, contagious, influenza, scarlet fever, measles, social disease, venereal infection, STD, Vincent's infection, diphtheria, Cupid's disease, VD, grippe, Cupid's itch, Vincent's angina, incident, communication, morbilli, pox, sexually transmitted disease, dose, trench mouth, scarlatina, rubeola, communicable disease, flu



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