"Congenital" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... five acts of blank verse. The language and metre are scrupulously correct. But one cannot credit the play with any touch of poetry or imagination. It presents a trite theme tamely and prosaically. Congenital inability of the most inveterate toughness to appreciate dramatic poetry could alone account for a mention of the Adventures of Five Hours in the ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... needs to be informed that the victims captured by quack advertisements are not among the wiser portion of the community. Many of them, however, lie open to be allured into the quack's net, not by mere congenital and absolute folly, but because of the inexperience of youth or lack of knowledge of the world, or perhaps in some cases from a natural deficiency in the faculty of deciphering characteristic expression. There are some who fail to recognize a quack advertisement when it meets ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... was never bought. The library remained as it was, and so did the contention between Halidon and myself, as to whether this inconsistent acceptance of his surroundings was due, on our friend's part, to a congenital inability to put his hand in his pocket, or to a real unconsciousness of the ugliness that happened to fall ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... the doctors call a congenital infirmity, my dear. No use lamenting over what you can't help. Worship me as much as you like; it keeps you out of mischief. But you might change the tune now and then, and give me some of your ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... to the outskirts of the town in a line as nearly straight as the congenital deviousness of Sialpore's ancient architects allowed. There was not a street but turned a dozen times to the mile. At one point she bade Dick stop, and begged Tess to let Tom Tripe take her home, promising to see her again within the hour. ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... claimed the identification not complete as he doubted whether, strictly speaking, I could be classified as a congenital idiot. Windy pointed out that evidently I had traded Tiger for the gyasticutus. Wooden admitted that this proved me an idiot, but not necessarily a ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... a congenital absence of some faculty which I ought to possess which withholds me from adopting this summary procedure. But I am not ashamed to share David Hume's want of ability to discover that polytheism is, in itself, altogether absurd. If we are bound, or permitted, ...
— Hasisadra's Adventure - Essay #7 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... say two words even when I saw them." As Miss Alida S. Williams, principal of Public School 33 in New York City, has in many articles and addresses freely illustrated from school experience, the art of seeing is acquired, not congenital, and every human being who possesses ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... free-thinker a term of reproach in England? The same idea in the soul of an Englishman who struggled up to it and still holds it antagonistically, and in the soul of an American to whom it is congenital and spontaneous, and often unrecognized, except as an element blended with all his thoughts, a natural movement, like the drawing of his breath or the beating of his heart, is a very different thing. You may teach a quadruped to walk on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... coat betrayed the deplorable habit of sleeping in coal-holes and subsisting on an innutritious diet. In addition to these physical disadvantages, its shrinking and inconsequent movements revealed a congenital weakness of character which, even under more favourable conditions, would hardly have qualified it to become a useful member of society; and Millner was not sorry to notice that it moved with a limp of the hind leg that probably doomed ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... minister, and before he changed and took up the law. But making light of a cause so high and noble seemed to show a want of earnestness at the core of his being. Not but that she felt herself able to cope with a congenital defect of that sort, and make his love for her save him from himself. Now perhaps the miracle was already wrought in him, In the presence of the tremendous fact that he announced, all triviality seemed to have gone out of him; she began to feel that. He sank down on the top ...
— Different Girls • Various
... BRIDEGROOM): I require and charge both of you, as ye will answer in the dreadful hour of autopsy, when the secrets of all lives shall be disclosed, that if either of you know of any lesion, infection, malaise, congenital defect, hereditary taint or other impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in eugenic matrimony, ye do now confess it. For be ye well assured that if any persons are joined together otherwise ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... family resemblances. According to Piderit, physiognomy is to be considered as a mimetic expression which has become habitual. The criminal type of face, so conspicuous in old offenders, is in many cases merely a prison type; it is not congenital; men who do not originally have it almost always acquire it after a prolonged period of ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... could not account for his complete and easy competence. One had only to look at him, from the slant of his bald forehead and the curve of his beautiful fair moustache to the long patent-leather feet at the other end of his lean and elegant person, to feel that the knowledge of "form" must be congenital in any one who knew how to wear such good clothes so carelessly and carry such height with so much lounging grace. As a young admirer had once said of him: "If anybody can tell a fellow just when to wear a black tie with evening clothes and when not to, it's Larry Lefferts." ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... the social order which so long prevailed in Japan. This is a study of Japanese psychogenesis. The question to which we shall continually return is whether or not the characteristic under consideration is inherent and congenital and therefore inevitable. Not only our interpretation of Japanese evolution, past, present, and future, but also our understanding of the essential nature of social evolution in general, depends upon the answer ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... chaos. These we shall dismiss, with a passing remark that if moral disorder naturally induces Atheism, some very eminent Christians have been marvellous hypocrites. Lack of reverence is the next cause of Atheism, and is indeed its "natural soil." But as Professor Blackie thinks this may be "congenital, like a lack of taste for music, or an incapacity of understanding a mathematical problem," we are obliged to consider this third class of Atheists as hopeless as the first. Having admitted that their malady may be congenital, our author inflicts upon these unfortunates a great deal of superfluous ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... gladly fed on green figs between Bethany and Jerusalem, his religion walks abroad at eight, and leaves his kind entertainer in the shop, trading all day without his religion." This is a startling passage. We should have pronounced hitherto that Milton's one hopeless, congenital, irremediable want, alike in literature and in life, was humour. And now, surely as ever Saul was among the prophets, behold ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... very young man, began to ask questions about Helen. Was she normal? Was there anything congenital or hereditary? Had anything occurred that was likely to alienate her from ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... is imperfectly understood. Various factors, acting either singly or in combination, may be concerned in their development. Certain tumours, for example, are the result of some congenital malformation of the particular tissue from which they take origin. This would appear to be the case in many tumours of blood vessels (angioma), of cartilage (chondroma), of bone (osteoma), and of secreting gland tissue (adenoma). The theory that tumours ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... prejudice, and all the sacred delicacy of natural morality. Besides, he was not a man made for resistance. He did not like contending against any one, least of all against himself, so he resigned himself at once; and by instinctive tendency, a congenital love of peace, and of easy and tranquil life, he began to anticipate the agitations which must surge up around him and at once be his ruin. He foresaw that they were inevitable, and to avert them he made up his mind to superhuman efforts of energy and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... passage resulting from injury, disease, or a congenital disorder that connects an abscess, cavity, or hollow organ to the body surface ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... to a diploma from the police court. But they only illustrate the working of the same tendency in mankind at large which has been occasionally noticed in the sons of ministers and other eminently worthy people, by many ascribed to that intense congenital hatred for goodness which distinguishes human nature from that of the brute, but perhaps as readily accounted for by considering it as the yawning and stretching of a young soul cramped too ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... in this case, however, it would be the exertions, or use and disuse, that would be the main agents in the modification. But it is not often that Mr. Wallace thus backslides. His present position is that acquired (as distinguished from congenital) modifications are not inherited at all. He does not indeed put his faith prominently forward and pin himself to it as plainly as could be wished, but under the heading, "The Non-Heredity of Acquired Characters," he writes as follows on p. 440 of ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... religion of "Nicer Ways," a quiet setter of a good example. I can assure you this is no exaggeration, but a portrait. It seems to me that the thing must be pathological, that he and this goodness of his have exactly the same claim upon Lombroso, let us say, as the born criminal. He is born good, a congenital good example, a sufferer from atrophy of his original sin. The only hope I can see for Bagarrow, short of murder, is forcible trepanning. He ought to have the seat of his ideals lanced, and all this wash about doing good to people by stealth taken away. It may ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... principle of utility and selection, but made it the only principle, rejecting entirely the action of external conditions as a cause of congenital modifications, i.e. of characters whose development is predetermined in the fertilised ovum. It is to Weismann that we owe precise and definite conceptions, if not of the nature of heredity, at least of the details of the process. From him we learned to ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... furtively underlying my philosophy, a latent ambition to be regarded as a final authority on things in general. Hitherto this aspiration had fallen short, partly owing to the clinging sediment of my congenital ignorance, but more especially because I lacked, and knew I lacked, what is known as a 'presence.' Now, however, the high, drab belltopper and long alpaca coat, happily seconded by large, round glasses and a vast and ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... or a couple of club-feet, that I sometimes feel as if we ought to love the crippled souls, if I may use this expression, with a certain tenderness which we need not waste on noble natures. One who is born with such congenital incapacity that nothing can make a gentleman of him is entitled, not to our wrath, but to our profoundest sympathy. But as we cannot help hating the sight of these people, just as we do that of physical deformities, we gradually eliminate them from our society,—we love them, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... on the Blind is an inquiry how far a modification of the five senses, such as the congenital absence of one of them, would involve a corresponding modification of the ordinary notions acquired by men who are normally endowed in their capacity for sensation. It considers the Intellect in a case where it is deprived of ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... Death was inevitable. Of this there could be no doubt, but to die beneath the rending fangs of the carnivore, congenital terror of her kind—it was unthinkable. But there was an alternative. The lion was almost upon her—another instant and he would seize her. Pan-at-lee turned sharply to her left. Just a few steps she took in the new direction before she disappeared over the rim of Kor-ul-lul. The baffled ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and overcame the reluctance of the manager to let me see it. He said I had no idea what tricks were played by other makers to find out any new processes and steal them; but this was after I had pleaded my innocent trade of novelist, and assured him of my congenital incapability of understanding, much less conveying from the premises, the image of the simplest and oldest process. Then he gave me for guide an intelligent man who was a penknife-maker by trade, but was presently out of work, and glad to earn ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... Each congenital idiot whom the ax-grinders name for the office of Tnediserp has upon the "ticket" with him a dead man, who stands or falls with his leader. There is no way of voting for the idiot without voting for ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... was due to the fact that, like Old Sledge in the Kentucky Court, its exponents established it to be, not a game of chance, but skill, and such, indeed, it proved to every Yankee who put up his money against the bank. With an apparently congenital gift of sleight of hand, developed by years of practice at pitch penny from toddling babyhood to cock-fighting adolescence, the native could so manipulate the tools of his game that no outsider had the faintest "show for his money," while, as against each other, as when ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... collected pieces, that the journal was killed by the growing popularity of the Gentleman's Magazine, which is accused of living by plunder. But in truth the reader will infer that, if the selection includes the best pieces, the journal may well have died from congenital weakness. ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... enlightened state." The enlightened state simply did not know how many children were born dead, how many died the first month or year of life, how many went to school later on, how many were not able to profit by instruction because of congenital defectiveness, how many needed special care and training by reason of some special handicap, and how many ran away from such public institutions as gave poor harbor to those without family protection. One of the fundamental rights, surely, of every child is to be counted, to have the community ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... The Newspaper Man, a cheerful, affable young man who is disabled for ordinary business pursuits by a congenital erroneousness which renders him incapable of describing accurately anything he sees, or understanding or reporting accurately anything he hears. As the only employment in which these defects do ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... was perplexed and worried for a moment, and I found it in my heart to pity the wretched little creature. Then he began to whine. I do believe his whine was congenital. He was a man beaten at birth. He whined about the testimony. The witnesses had given only the evidence that helped the other side. Not one word could he get out of them that would have helped Jackson. They ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... groans, these broken and unintelligible words become distinct and take a meaning? A nothing, an accident, since his real cerebral tendency placed him up to a certain point in a somnambulistic state. Was this tendency congenital with him or acquired? He did not know. Before the agitated nights after Madame Dammauville's death and Florentin's condemnation, the idea had never occurred to him that he might talk in his sleep. But now he had the proof that the vague fears which had tormented him on this ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... had listened to Bartley's proposal, Hope's answer, and all that followed. Then he put this and Colonel Clifford's communication together, and saw the terrible importance of the two things combined. Thus, as a congenital worm grew with Jonah's gourd, and was sure to destroy it, Bartley's bold and elaborate scheme was furnished from the outset with ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... appreciate this melancholy condition, save those who have been in danger of such a fate, or have had actual experience of it, though only temporarily? Such a misfortune is universally allowed to be worse, by far, than congenital blindness. And this is not difficult to understand. The eyes that have been permitted to drink in the varied hues of the landscape, and to gaze with such delight upon the celestial revelations spread out nightly above and around them, are indeed in double darkness when all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... Just as a congenital dislocation of the hipbone suggests the name of Doctor Lorenz, so the slightest dislocation of the cloak and suit business immediately calls for Henry D. Feldman. No cloak and suit bankruptcy would be ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... just as Patricia's mother had done, in their first maternal essay. There were many hideous histories the colonel could have told you of, unmeet to be set down, and he was familiar with this talk of pelvic anomalies which were congenital. But he had never thought of Patricia, till this, as being his kinswoman, and in ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... Among those able to give skillful nursing and to obtain good medical aid the number of cases resulting in deafness is reduced to a minimum. Accidents, too, causing deafness, occur more frequently among those unable to give their children proper care. Congenital deafness is also probably greater among the laboring classes, and is undoubtedly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... or defects, from the slightest misconduct to the most flagitious crime, Pantocyclus attributed to some deviation from perfect Regularity in the bodily figure, caused perhaps (if not congenital) by some collision in a crowd; by neglect to take exercise, or by taking too much of it; or even by a sudden change of temperature, resulting in a shrinkage or expansion in some too susceptible part of the frame. Therefore, concluded that illustrious ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... study of criminals for years, and I think that it is safe to say that in most cases that have come under my observation there were either congenital or hereditary deformities to which the special obliquity could be traced. Such has been the history of crimes in all eras, and one only has to turn to the medical history of the world to see that scientific men have even given greater cognizance to these causes ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... the activities of the groups) tends to be morally forbidden and intellectually suspect. It seems almost incredible to us, for example, that things which we know very well could have escaped recognition in past ages. We incline to account for it by attributing congenital stupidity to our forerunners and by assuming superior native intelligence on our own part. But the explanation is that their modes of life did not call for attention to such facts, but held their minds riveted to other things. Just as the senses require sensible ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... be truculence and incivility. Neither the influence of politics nor of religion sufficiently accounts for these differences in character. They seem to rest rather upon obscure and remote causes, such as racial and congenital tendencies. All this is especially observable in the South of France, where the present population has been formed from the blood of so many races, which is very unequally ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... During the early years of Elizabeth Barrett's life, the family had lived in the country, and for that brief period she had known a more wholesome life than she was destined ever to know again until her marriage long afterwards. She was not, as is the general popular idea, absolutely a congenital invalid, weak, and almost moribund from the cradle. In early girlhood she was slight and sensitive indeed, but perfectly active and courageous. She was a good horsewoman, and the accident which handicapped her for so many years ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... Lawrence, therefore, says, that "we are guilty for the sinfulness with which we are born, because it is really ours," he utters a moral absurdity, and strikes at the root of all moral distinctions. He says, "The sinfulness with which we are born is really ours;" but in what sense ours? Only as any congenital disease may be called ours. If a man is born with a tendency to consumption, blindness, lameness, he may say, "my lameness, my near-sightedness." But no one would suppose that he meant thereby to hold himself responsible for them, or to ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... this rampant spirit; and, urged by it, the gold-seekers, chiefly aliens from the United States, plunged into the wilderness of Athabasca without hesitation, and without as much as "by your leave" to the native. Some of these marauders, as was to be expected, exhibited on the way a congenital contempt for the Indian's rights. At various places his horses were killed, his dogs shot, his bear-traps broken up. An outcry arose in consequence, which inevitably would have led to reprisals and bloodshed had not the Government stepped ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... ever packs a bowie or wins the beef at a shootin' match in old Kaintucky. Yes, sir,' says the Colonel, an thar's a pensive look in his eyes like he's countin' up that ancestor's merits in his mem'ry; 'pol'tics with me that-away is shore congenital.' ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... they are right they are right almost by accident, because of the blood in their veins. The common detective story of mystery and murder seems to the intelligent reader to be little except a strange glimpse of a planet peopled by congenital idiots, who cannot find the end of their own noses or the character of their own wives. The common pantomime seems like some horrible satiric picture of a world without cause or effect, a mass of 'jarring atoms,' a prolonged mental torture of irrelevancy. The ordinary farce ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... from time to time, required their intervention. He now wore a simple costume of shirt and trousers, the latter terminated by a pair of broken shoes, and sustained by what he called a single gallows; his broad-brimmed straw hat scooped down upon his shoulders behind, and in front added to his congenital difficulty of getting people in focus. "How do you do, this ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... congenital] or those very slowly acquired of all kinds [decidedly evince a tendency to become hereditary], when not so become simple variety, when it does a race. Each{41} parent transmits its peculiarities, therefore if varieties allowed freely to cross, except ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... half his waking hours with self-analysis, and to grit his teeth at his own impotence. But there was no strength, no virile grip to take his fate in his own hands and mould it like a man. He only mourned his disadvantages, and sometimes blamed destiny, sometimes a congenital infirmity of purpose, for the dreary course of his life. Nature alone could charm his sullen moods, and that not always. Now and again she spread over the face of his existence a transitory contentment and a larger hope; but the first contact with facts swept it away again. His higher aspirations ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Bjerregrav's congenital club-foot—he had received his own injury at Heligoland, at the hands of an honorable bullet. "If one's sound of limb," he said, spitting on ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... little congenital urge that kept Lilly on her feet for two weeks after the malady had hold of her. With a stoicism that taxed her cruelly, she would march smilingly off to school, a bombardment of pains shooting through her head, her hands and tongue dry, a ball and chain of inertia ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... were! I mention all my inspirations to show that I really did cover the ground pretty thoroughly in that blessed island. It is true that the conduct of my oil-skinned acquaintance was scarcely that of a congenital idiot; still, I was resolved to leave ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... act on an organism producing the changes which are necessary for disease are manifold. Lack of resistance to injury, incapacity for adaptation, whether it be due to a congenital defect or to an acquired condition, is not in itself a disease, but the disease is produced by the action on such an individual of external conditions which may be nothing more than those to which the individuals of the species are constantly ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... our laws should contain so much social injustice towards woman, so much exasperating discrimination, all based upon the theory of the servile dependency of woman upon man, resulting from her congenital mental and physical inferiority? Moebius is incarnated in our Codes, governs our policy, and influences all the customs and usages of our social and political life, to such a point that we ought to be ashamed that in the midst of this era of vindication, when all classes have secured their right ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... properly qualified. The lack of proper training deprives many of the workers, in all branches, of the best protection against functional nervous diseases which any person can have, namely, a well-trained nervous system. This struggle for existence by the congenital neuropath or the educationally unfit forces many to the use, and then to the abuse, of stimulants and excitants, and herein we have another important exciting cause. This early and excessive use of coffee, tea, alcohol, and tobacco is especially deleterious in its action upon the nervous ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... attained a mental and moral orientation which could be of inestimable service to his fellow men, and to civilization in general. What you call crankiness in old people, so trying to the younger generations, does not arise from natural hatefulness of disposition and a released congenital selfishness, but from atrophying glands, and, no doubt, a subtle rebellion against nature for consigning men to ineptitude when they should be entering upon their best period of usefulness, and philosophical as well as ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... take over the actual population of the world with only such moral and mental and physical improvements as lie within their inherent possibilities, and it is our business to ask what Utopia will do with its congenital invalids, its idiots and madmen, its drunkards and men of vicious mind, its cruel and furtive souls, its stupid people, too stupid to be of use to the community, its lumpish, unteachable and unimaginative people? And what will it do with the man who is "poor" all ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... plantaris (symmetric keratodermia), as regards the local condition, is a somewhat similar affection. It consists of hypertrophy of the corneous layer of the palm and soles, usually of a more or less horny and plate-like character, but is congenital or hereditary, and not necessarily dependent upon local friction ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... stare at me in her amazement and the confusion that was congenital with it, and if there was not time for her to withdraw, at least the possibility I had suggested acted ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... quoted freely from Bemiss),[8] and enlarged greatly upon its fallacies. He also collected statistics of the deaf-mutes in Paris, and, by an amazing manipulation of figures, "demonstrated" that consanguinity of the parents was the cause of nearly one-third of the cases of congenital deafness. The savants of the Societe d'Anthropologie took sides and the debate became very entertaining. Finally M. Dally came to the rescue, and published some very sane and logical articles which avoided both extremes, and first ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... of his family used to faint at the least glimpse of blood. There was a tradition to account for it, not old or thin enough to cast no shadow, therefore seldom alluded to. It was not, therefore, an ordinary childish dismay, but a deep-seated congenital terror, that made Vixen give one wavering scream, and drop on the floor. Richard thought she was pretending a faint in mockery of what she had done, but when he took her up, he saw that she was insensible. He laid her on a couch, rang the bell, and asked the man to take the child to ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... don't know. There are such things, no doubt, as cynics by temperament; congenital cynics. Then, indeed, you may cry: The eye of the beholder. But others become cynics, are driven into cynicism, by sad experience. I started in life with the rosiest faith in my fellow-man. If I've lost it, it's because he's always behaved ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... probably recognised that children are very delicate and succumb easily to disease, and they could scarcely fail to have done so when statistics show that about a quarter of all the babies born in India die in the first year of age. But they do not attribute the mortality to its real causes of congenital weakness arising from the immaturity of the parents, insanitary treatment at and after birth, unsuitable food, and the general frailty of the undeveloped organism. They ascribe the loss of their offspring solely to the machinations ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... figures showed that women living in comfort and luxury did not want to be bothered with confinements. It had been said that the degree of sterility could be regarded as an index to the morals of a race. Congenital sterility was rare, but the number of children born in England was decreasing. It had been estimated that one-third of the pregnancies in several great cities abroad aborted. Dr. Gibbons then quoted figures given by Douglas Wight and Amand ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... and others, "Temporary Mechanical Substitution for the Left Ventricle in Man," pp. 642-644, and "Pulmonary Volvuloplasty under Direct Vision using the Mechanical Heart for a Complete Bypass of the Right Heart in a Patient with Congenital ...
— History of the Division of Medical Sciences • Sami Khalaf Hamarneh
... with the spirit of society is eminently, therefore, a community with the spirit of equality. A nation with a genius for society, like the French or the Athenians, is irresistibly drawn towards equality. From the first moment when the French people, with its congenital sense for the power of social intercourse and manners, came into existence, it was on the road to equality. When it had once got a high standard of social manners abundantly established, and at the same time the natural, material necessity for the feudal inequality ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... experience-complex are comprised data which in psychological analysis are grouped under the headings of cognition, affective tone and conation. But the complex is probably experienced as an unanalysed whole. If then we use the term "instinctive" so as to comprise all congenital modes of behaviour which contribute to experience, we are in a position to grasp the view that the net result in consciousness constitutes what we may term the primary tissue of experience. To the development of this experience ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... having frequent piquant scenes with such tempting subjects; while, on the other hand, the subjects are often led by mere vanity into exhibiting themselves as something peculiar. Altogether, I believe that where there is no deeply seated hereditary or congenital defect, or no displacement or injury from violence or disease, there is always a cure to be hoped for, or at least possible; but this cure depends in many cases so very much upon the wisdom and patience of friends and physicians, that it is only remarkable that we find so many recoveries as we do. ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... "appreciable trace is left of such high civilization" is due to several reasons. One of these may be traced chiefly to the inability, and partially to the unwillingness (or shall we say congenital spiritual blindness of this our age!) of the modern archeologist to distinguish between excavations and ruins 50,000 and 4,000 years old, and to assign to many a grand archaic ruin its proper age and place in prehistoric times. For the latter the archeologist is not responsible—for ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... reason act on individual reason, our best self on our ordinary self, we seek to give it more power of doing so by giving it public recognition and authority, and embodying it, so far as we can, in the State. It seems too much to ask of Providence, that while we, on our part, leave our congenital taste for the bathos to its natural operation and its infinite variety of experiments, Providence should mysteriously guide it into the true track, and compel it to relish the sublime. At any rate, great men and great institutions have hitherto seemed ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... they became useless. Each shrine, like a mineral spring, has its own especial virtue. A Santiago medal was better than quinine for ague. St. Veronica's handkerchief is sovereign for sore eyes. A bone of St. Magin supersedes the use of mercury. A finger-nail of San Frutos cured at Segovia a case of congenital idiocy. The Virgin of Ona acted as a vermifuge on royal infantas, and her girdle at Tortosa smooths their passage into this world. In this age of unfaith relics have lost much of their power. They turn out their score or so of miracles every feast-day, ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... I managed to pull through the afternoon without notably disgracing my distinguished host and patron; and, too, without referring even to 'secretarial work.' I might have been heir to a dukedom, a distinguished remittance man, or even a congenital idiot, for all the company was allowed to gather from me as to my ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... being is only one, that salvation consists in the identification of these two, and is attained by knowledge, the intuition of their identity, and that the phenomenal universe or manifold of experience is simply an illusion (maya) conjured up in Brahma by his congenital nature, but really alien to him—in fact, a kind of disease in Brahma. This was not new: it had been taught by some ancient schools of Aupanishadas, and was very like the doctrine of some of the Buddhist idealists; but the vigour and skill with which Samkara propagated his doctrines ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... weeks before the young birds of the same year. By the way, I have just used the forbidden word "nature," which, after reading your essay, I almost determined never to use again. There are very few remarks in your book to which I demur, but when you back up Asa Gray in saying that all instincts are congenital ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... his birth. He was born (as he himself informs the Lord Chief Justice) about three o'clock in the afternoon, with a white head and something a round belly. Falstaffs corpulence, therefore, as well as his thirst, was congenital. Let those who are not born with his comfortable figure sigh in vain to attain his stately proportions. This is a thing which Nature gives us at our birth as much as the Scandinavian thirst or the ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... and not made. I was a born "infidel;" if ever there was a congenital agnostic, one agnostically constituted from his very birth, it was I. Not that I had ever heard such an expression as agnosticism; it is an ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... and its disputed head, and end in the Catarrhine or Old World monkey. No a priori induction will ever extend this line or plexus to man. The developmental chain, if indeed there be one, has no congenital link that will either drag man down to the "beast of the earth," or lift the latter up to the transcendent plane of humanity. Each must remain specifically in his own type, whatever may be their vertical tendencies, upwards or downwards.[8] And this word "type" implies a fundamental ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... he roared. 'Young man, I have no wish to be hard on a congenital idiot who is not responsible for his actions, but I must insist on an explanation. I understand that you are in charge of the correspondence in this office. Well, during the last week you have three times sent unstamped letters to ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... one, may be made by animals brought under the control of man. It is said, for instance, that a young pointer dog will sometimes point at game without any training. But in this case the acquired knowledge is congenital, and is therefore to be regarded as a development brought about by superintended selection. But with man none of the acquired knowledge is innate. It is a treasure entirely external to himself until he has appropriated it by study of some kind or other. ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... reason of their closeness or remoteness, but because he sympathizes with men who live them, and the majority do. "The private store of reason is not great—would that there were a public store for man," cries Pascal, but there is, says Emerson, it is the universal mind, an institution congenital with the common or over-soul. Pascal is discouraged, for he lets himself be influenced by surface political and religious history which shows the struggle of the group, led by an individual, rather than that of the individual led by himself—a struggle as much privately caused ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... individual peculiarities going beyond a certain point, is necessary to the general welfare. If, for instance, a man is born hasty and awkward, is always having accidents and hurting himself or his neighbors, no doubt his congenital defects will be allowed for in the courts of Heaven, but his slips are no less troublesome to his neighbors than if they sprang from guilty neglect. His neighbors accordingly require him, at his proper peril, to come up ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... thing who had been through so much, and before he knew it he found himself, without the responsibility of choice, in submissive receipt of Mrs. Bundy's version of this experience. It was an interesting picture, though it had its infirmities, one of them congenital and consisting of the fact that it had sprung essentially from the virginal brain of Miss Teagle. Amplified, edited, embellished by the richer genius of Mrs. Bundy, who had incorporated with it and now liberally introduced ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... Dean, they would not care to bring their daughters to hear the opera, and might possibly discontinue their subscriptions." Everybody will agree that "expert opinion" can hardly go further, yet the folly which this "expert" was betrayed into did not arise from any congenital stupidity; it is the mistake that you and I, every one of us, would make when we seek the truth in our casual experience instead of in ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... have what is called the "perfect" instinct. To be perfect, an instinct must be carried out successfully by the animal when his organism is ready, without any instruction, any model to imitate, any experience to go upon. The "perfect" instincts are entirely congenital or inborn; the nervous apparatus only needs to reach the proper stage of maturity or growth, and forthwith the instinctive action is performed as soon as the external conditions of life are such as to make ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... said cautiously. "Well, I should have said that crime is almost nonexistent. I suppose there will always be a few congenital criminal types, easily recognizable as such. But I'm told they don't amount to more than ten or twelve individuals a year out of a population of nearly two billion." He smiled broadly. "My chances of meeting ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... undifferentiated cell. In some way it already contains the characters of the adult, and when we remember that the characters of the adult which are to be developed from the egg are already determined, even to many minute details—such, for instance, as the inheritance of a congenital mark—it becomes evident that the egg is a body of extraordinary complexity. And yet the egg is nothing more than a single cell agreeing with other cells in all its general characters. It is clear, then, that we must look upon organization as ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... comparatively few who do believe it will hardly venture to assert that present justice can be determined by future happiness. Even if we positively knew that eternal bliss awaited everybody after the close of this physical life how could that make it just that one person shall be born a congenital criminal and another shall be born a poet and philosopher? How could it make it right that one is born to life-long illness, suffering and poverty, while another inherits both wealth and a sound physical body? Not even the certainty of future happiness would be compensation for present inequalities. ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... appears in all the administrative forms of the country, and can be studied only on the spot; but he will not take the trouble to inquire into the relation which the separate States bear to the Federal government; and he seems prevented by some congenital deficiency from understanding how the latter is the direct result of the independence of the former. The question he asks most frequently is, "Why has not an independent State the right to secede?" He is infected by nature ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... my arms and shoulders. The result of my observation and experience was, that Ling's system of physical education is undoubtedly the best in the world, and that, as a remedial agent in all cases of congenital weakness or deformity, as well as in those diseases which arise from a deranged circulation, its value can scarcely be over-estimated. It may even afford indirect assistance in more serious organic diseases, but I do not believe that it is of much service in those cases ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... inheritance of physical and mental defects. Indirectly, therefore, there is such a thing as hereditary pauperism. Now we know from the labors of Weismann that acquired characteristics are not inherited, but only congenital, or inborn characteristics. It is not the characteristics, in other words, which are acquired from the influence of environment that are transmitted to offspring, but the characteristics that arise through variations in the germ, caused by forces ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... with us then? Will Daniel Lambert, the mammoth of men, appear weighing half a ton? Will the Siamese twins then be again joined by the living ligament of their congenital band? Shall "infants be not raised in the smallness of body in which they died, but increase by the wondrous and most swift work ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... natural selection, as well as sexual selection, has been favorable to the development of the blush. It is scarcely an accident that, as has been often observed, criminals, or the antisocial element of the community—whether by the habits of their lives or by congenital abnormality—blush less easily than normal persons. Kroner (Das koerperliche Gefuehl, 1887, p. 130) remarks: "The origin of a specific connection between shame and blushing is the work of a social selection. It is certainly an immediate ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... parliament. Unlike the first two Georges, the third George could not achieve the political stability which Robert Walpole and the Duke of Newcastle had imposed on parliament from 1720 to 1754. It is well known that George had a congenital disease which pushed him into periods of apparent insanity during his long reign (he died in 1820). Present day medical scholars now believe that this illness was perhaps porphyria or some type of metabolic illness, which could now be treated and controlled by diet and medication. Such ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... an uplift of his fine black brows and a satirical smile, once diagnosed the case of Great-Aunt Sophronisba Scarlett as "congenital Hyndsitis"; Doctor Richard Geddes said you'd only to take a glance at her house to see that she was predestined to be damned. I know that she was so hidebound in her prejudices, so virulently conservative, so constitutionally ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... actually known men to hesitate, to ponder, to dodder for weeks, nay, months over the purchase of a book; not because they did not want it, nor because they deemed the price exorbitant, nor yet because they were not abundantly able to pay that price. Their hesitancy was due to an innate, congenital lack of determination—that same hideous curse of vacillation which is responsible for so much misery in ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... of life, the mysterious secret of things, the awful moment when the whisper of the will to live is heard in matter, the will which there is no denying, the surrender of matter, the awaking of consciousness in things. And united to the eternal idea of generation, he perceived the congenital idea which in remotest time seems to have sprung from it—that life is sin and must be atoned for by prayer. Evelyn's interpretation revealed his deepest ideas to himself, and at last he seemed to stand at the heart ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... difference between his brain and that of a highly intelligent and cultivated person. The dumbness might be the result of a defective structure of the mouth, or of the tongue, or a mere defective innervation of these parts; or it might result from congenital deafness, caused by some minute defect of the internal ear, which only ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... every species of mutilated limb, unequaled in mechanism and utility. Hands and Arms of superior excellence for mutilations and congenital defects. Feet and appurtenances, for limbs shortened by hip disease. Dr. HUDSON, by appointment of the Surgeon General of the U. S. Army, furnishes limbs to mutilated Soldiers and Marines. References.—Valentine Mett, M. D., Willard Parker, M. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... and terrible element besides her congenital and conjugal inferiority which contributes to make the figure arid and gloomy; to reduce it, narrow it, distort it fatally. Is not one of the most flattering unctions a woman can lay to her soul the assurance of being something in the ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." The disciples' question implied their belief in a state of moral agency and choice antedating mortality; else, how could they have thought of the man having sinned so as to bring upon himself congenital blindness? We are expressly told that he was born blind. That he might have been a sufferer from the sins of his parents was conceivable.[869] The disciples evidently had been taught the great truth of an antemortal ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... of the skin is often altered in disease. It is yellow in jaundice, and is bluish, especially over the face, in congenital heart disease. There is a purplish tint around the eyes and mouth, with a prominence of the veins of the face, in weakly children or in those with disordered digestion. A pale circle around the mouth accompanies nausea. The skin frequently acquires an earthy hue in ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... round the empty platform and smoked a cigarette. Milk-cans clanked in a shed mournfully. Gourlay had a congenital horror of eerie sounds—he was his mother's son for that—and he fled to the waiting room, to avoid the hollow clang. It was a June afternoon, of brooding heat, and a band of yellow sunshine was lying on the glazed table, ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... moment I was supposed to be a great magician. Also Bausi made a blood brotherhood with me, transfusing some of his blood into my veins and some of mine into his. I only hope he has not inoculated me with his tumours, which are congenital. So I became Bausi and Bausi became me. In other words, I was as much chief of the Mazitu as he was, and shall ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... REPORTS OF HOSPITALS.—The reports of hospitals for lunatics almost universally assign intemperance as one of the causes which predispose a man's offspring to insanity. This is even more strikingly manifested in the case of congenital idiocy. They come generally from a class of families which seem to have degenerated physically to a low degree. They are ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... no light or perfunctory one. Artistic as his temperament undoubtedly was, and conscientious as his writing appears down to its minutest detail, Gissing yet managed to turn out rather more than a novel per annum. The desire to excel acted as a spur which conquered his congenital inclination to dreamy historical reverie. The reward which he propounded to himself remained steadfast from boyhood; it was a kind of Childe Harold pilgrimage to the lands ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... passing that "sick headache," or migraine, though long and painfully familiar to us, is still a puzzle as to its cause. But the view which seems to come nearest to explaining its many eccentricities is that it is usually due to a congenital defect, not so much of the nervous system as of the entire body, by which the poisons normally produced in its processes fail to be neutralized and got rid of, and gradually accumulate until they saturate the system to such a degree as to produce a furious ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... as the scorch of a sunbeam. And there is no sin existent that a man may not repent of! And there is no honest repentance, Eve, that a wise woman cannot make over into a basic foundation for happiness! But a trait? A congenital tendency? A yellow streak bred in the bone? Why, Eve! If a man loves, I tell you, not woman, but the pursuit of woman? So that—wherever he wins—he wastes again? So that indeed at last, he wins only to waste? Moving eternally—on—on—on ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... impunity. Carlyle, for example, complains of having veal set before him,—a meat he could not endure. There is a whole family connection in New England, and that a very famous one, to many of whose members, in different generations, all the products of the dairy are the subjects of a congenital antipathy. Montaigne says there are persons who dread the smell of apples more than they would dread being exposed to a fire of musketry. The readers of the charming story "A Week in a French Country-House" will remember poor Monsieur Jacque's piteous cry in the ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the habits of thought which characterize the predatory master somewhat precarious in the case of a line of descent in which but one or two of the latest steps have lain within the leisure-class discipline. The chances of occurrence of a strong congenital or acquired bent towards the exercise of the cognitive aptitudes are apparently best in those members of the leisure class who are of lower class or middle class antecedents—that is to say, those who have inherited the complement of aptitudes proper to the industrious classes, ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... youth, to the imperfect state of surrounding culture, to want of time for perfecting his work, and so forth. He is the "Begue de Vilaines," the heroic Stammerer of English literature—a man who evidently had some congenital defect which all his fire and force, all his care and curiosity, could not overcome. Yet are his doings great, and it is at least probable that if he had felt less difficulty in original work, he would not have been prompted to set about and finish the noble work of translation ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... up so excessively and swiftly that their smoke was not all converted into flame, while Browning was a man whose radically prim and conventional ideas, heavily overladen with emotion, acquired the semblance of profundity because they struggled into expression through the medium of a congenital stutter—a stutter which was no doubt one of the great assets of his fame. But neither Chapman's obscurity nor Browning's obscurity seems to be intrinsically admirable. There was too much pedantry in both of them and too little artistry. ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... furnish any possible opportunity for circumcision. Such a case is reported in Virchow's Archives, vol. cxxi, No. 3; also in the British Medical Journal of December 6, 1890, and in the Satellite for January, 1891. It is one of congenital absence of penis. "Dr. Rauber records very briefly the case of a shoe-maker, aged 38, who complained of pain and trouble in the anus. On examining him, Rauber found a well-formed scrotum containing ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... perceived to be legion. You are duly introduced to the following: genus, generic, genre, gender, genitive, genius, general, Gentile, gentle, gentry, gentleman, genteel, generous, genuine, genial, congeniality, congener, genital, congenital, engender, generation, progeny, progenitor, genesis, genetics, eugenics, pathogenesis, biogenesis, ethnogeny, palingenesis, unregenerate, degenerate, monogeny, indigenous, exogenous, homogeneous, heterogeneous, genealogy, ingenuous, ingenious, ingenue, engine, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... a moving sermon did she deliver, "how God doth make his enemies his friends." And sometimes she baptized me, the bath-tub being her Jordan, in the name of duty, love, and patience. In truth, Aunt Judy took as much prophylactic pains with my soul as if it had been tainted with a congenital sulphuric diathesis; and if I had sunk under a complication of profane disorders, no postmortem statement of my spiritual pathology would have been complete and exact which failed to take note of her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... have said that the human spectacle goes on for Mr. Abbey have been a county of old England which is not to be found in any geography, though it borders, as I have hinted, on the Worcestershire Broadway. Few artistic phenomena are more curious than the congenital acquaintance of this perverse young Philadelphian with that mysterious locality. It is there that he finds them all—the nooks, the corners, the people, the clothes, the arbors and gardens and teahouses, the queer courts of old inns, the sun-warmed angles of old parapets. I ought to have mentioned ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... with such industry, learning, and eloquence to convince a nation that its sympathies for half a century at least have have been misplaced .... The thesis which he only partly set out for the night—that the misfortunes of Ireland are rather due to the congenital qualities of the race than to wrongs inflicted by their conquerors—will excite earnest and perhaps bitter controversy." This prediction was abundantly fulfilled, and the controversy spoiled the tour. A friendly and sympathetic journalist questioned Froude's ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... can be made to burst by tying all the venous outlets from it. I have seen very high intra-ocular tension develop in a few hours after general thrombosis of the orbital veins. The absence of the canal of Schlemm is noted in congenital buphthalmos. The enlargement of the anterior perforating veins is an old symptom of chronic glaucoma. Obstruction to outflow of blood through the vorticose veins, by the increased intra-ocular pressure, ...
— Glaucoma - A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago - Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 • Various
... Foster had been a man worthy the steel of Mr. Darrow. Not that Prof. Foster was an unscrupulous optimist. He was merely an intellectual whose congenital tendencies were idealistic, just as Mr. Darrow's psychic and subconscious tendencies were anti-idealistic. And apart from this divergence of congenital tendencies Mr. Darrow and Prof. Foster had a great deal in common. They both loved argument. They both doted upon seizing an idea ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... Extremely different races people the earth—on the one hand, unintelligent and cannibal negroes; on the other, the proud, handsome, and intelligent, though selfish and cruel white race. Again, from a moral standpoint, who can explain congenital tendencies to crime, the vicious by birth, the wicked by nature, the persons with uncontrollable passions? Wherefore are thrift and foresight lacking in so many men, who are consequently condemned to lifelong poverty and wretchedness? ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... no awful hold of early teaching to loosen and throw off; there were no old landmarks in her mind to remove; no tenacious, clinging effect of early associations to neutralize. And, perhaps most important of all, the child had seemed to enter the world utterly devoid of fear, and with a congenital faith, amounting to absolute knowledge, in the immanence of an omnipotent God of love. This, added to her eagerness and mental receptivity, had made his task one of constant rejoicing in the realization of his ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... being confined to Ireland, is as old as the human race itself. Of all human passions, that for political domination is the last to yield to reason. Men are naturally inclined to attribute admitted social evils to every cause—religion, climate, race, congenital defects of character, the inscrutable decrees of Divine Providence—rather than to the form of political institutions; in other words, to the organic structure of the community, and to rest the security ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... on the superior portion of the external lip. Laxness of the muscles and ligaments in young animals is a predisposing factor. Hard work that tires the muscles and causes them to become relaxed, strains, unusual movements, as kicking in the stable and slipping, may cause this accident. Congenital displacement results from imperfect development of the external lip of the trochlea. Such a deformity subjects the ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... Jurgis was looking for work occurred the death of little Kristoforas, one of the children of Teta Elzbieta. Both Kristoforas and his brother, Juozapas, were cripples, the latter having lost one leg by having it run over, and Kristoforas having congenital dislocation of the hip, which made it impossible for him ever to walk. He was the last of Teta Elzbieta's children, and perhaps he had been intended by nature to let her know that she had had enough. At any rate he was wretchedly sick and undersized; he had the rickets, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... kind, having a phantasmal resemblance to higher animals when seen by ignorant minds in the twilight, dabbling or hobbling in first one element and then the other, without parts or organs suited to either, in fact one of Nature's impostors who could not be said to have any artful pretences, since a congenital incompetence to all precision of aim and movement made their every action a pretence—just as a being born in doeskin gloves would necessarily pass a judgment on surfaces, but we all know what his judgment would be worth. ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... told her," exploded Diana, with more than her congenital exasperation. "I have told her, and she doesn't seem to mind. She still says she's going away with Smith ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... reverence resulted from her husband's vacillating viewpoint, the doctor could not fathom. More than a little, he surmised. Had Brenton never wavered in his theology, Kathryn would have clung like a limpet to the bed-rock of her congenital Baptist faith. And yet, the doctor could not hold Brenton altogether responsible for Kathryn's development. The germs of mental cheapness were in Kathryn's nature, as were the germs of more or less illogical doubtings just as surely inherent in Scott Brenton's brain. ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... of stricture or complete occlusion of the vagina, congenital or acquired from cicatricial contraction, obstructing delivery, and in some the impregnation seems more marvelous than cases in which the obstruction is only a thin membranous hymen. Often the obstruction is so dense as to require a large bistoury to divide it, and even that is not ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... frequent cause of female celibacy and divorce. This view was upheld by such authorities as Dr. Constance Long of England, and other prominent women physicians. Although a certain percentage of female homosexuality is congenital, it is probable that by far the largest part is due to a conditioning of the sexual impulse by the substitution of members of the same sex as the erotic stimulus in place of the normal response to ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... an authority on the fertilization of orchids. He had held at one time the family living at Borlsover Conyers, until a congenital weakness of the lungs obliged him to seek a less rigorous climate in the sunny south coast watering-place where I had seen him. Occasionally he would relieve one or other of the local clergy. My father described him as a fine preacher, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... English and the Hindoo. But the further we inquire, the more reason there appears to be for believing that peculiarities of race are themselves originally formed by the influence of external circumstances on the primitive tribe; that, however marked and ingrained they may be, they are not congenital and perhaps not indelible. Englishmen and Frenchmen are closely assimilated by education; and the weaknesses of character supposed to be inherent in the Irish gradually disappear under the more benign influences of the New World. Thus, by ascribing the achievements of the Romans ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... I wish," he exclaimed, "that for the honour of our name, and for the sake of those who love us, I could prove you had congenital, hereditary tendencies that made you not responsible! Why could not I have watched over your upbringing? Why has fate decreed that I should only see my son three times at most in eighteen years, and come home to find him—a criminal? Oh, if science ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... to abnormal growths and structural changes in chronic endocarditis or as a result of acute endocarditis. Sometimes valves are torn by sudden, extreme muscular effort or a congenital abnormality. Cases are also reported in which ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... of generations, inherited. Nevertheless, a few cases of apparent inheritance of mutilations have been recorded,[215] and these, if trustworthy, are difficulties in the way of the theory. The undoubted inheritance of disease is hardly a difficulty, because the predisposition to disease is a congenital, not an acquired character, and as such would be the subject of inheritance. The often-quoted case of a disease induced by mutilation being inherited (Brown-Sequard's epileptic guinea-pigs) has ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... I did not meet with in Sahalin. There is very little congenital syphilis, but I saw blind children, filthy, covered with eruptions—all diseases that are evidence of neglect. Of course I am not going to settle the problem of the children. I don't know what ought to be done. But it seems to me that one will do nothing by means of philanthropy ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... Having, as a rule, little or no opportunity of closely examining or experimenting with it, they are eager to "read it up," as they might any other machine. That is the case of the average aspirant, who has neither the instinct of the theatre fully developed in his blood, nor such a congenital lack of that instinct as to be wholly inapprehensive of any technical difficulties or problems. The intelligent novice, standing between these extremes, tends, as a rule, to overrate the efficacy of theoretical instruction, and to expect of analytic ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... decides this, of course, for himself, by the introspective method alone. He (with M. Cousin and other philosophers who take the same view) does not apply the analytical method to inquire whether his necessity of belief may not be a purely acquired necessity and nowise congenital. It is, indeed, remarkable that these philosophers do not even seek to apply the introspective method as far as that method will really go. They are satisfied with introspection of their own present minds; without collecting results ...
— Review of the Work of Mr John Stuart Mill Entitled, 'Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy.' • George Grote
... Phil's a degen'rate,' declar's Peets, explanatory, 'he's easy an' soon to loco. His mind as well as his moral nacher is onbalanced congenital. Any triflin' jolt, much less than what that Silver Phil runs up on, an' his fretful wits is shore to leave ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... alcoholic inheritance which have been traced by careful observers are: Morbid changes in the nerve centers, consisting of inflammatory lesions, which vary according to the age in which they occur; alcoholic insanity; congenital malformations; and a much higher infant death rate, owing to lack of vitality, than among the children ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... of New England. This is the harmless, inoffensive, untitled aristocracy referred to, and which many readers will at once acknowledge. There are races of scholars among us, in which aptitude for learning, and all these marks of it I have spoken of, are congenital and hereditary. Their names are always on some college catalogue or other. They break out every generation or two in some learned labor which calls them up after they seem to have died out. At last some newer name takes their place, it maybe,—but you ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... conduct. conejo rabbit. conferencia conference. confesar to confess. confianza confidence. confiar to confide. confin m. confine, boundary, limit. conforme in agreement, agreed. confundir to confound. congenito congenital, innate. conjuro conjuration, exorcism. conmigo with me, with myself. conmover to move. conocer to know, recognize. conocimiento knowledge, consciousness. conque ( con que) so then, so. conquista ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... task of preventive medicine is the inauguration of universal periodic medical examinations as an indispensable means for the control of all diseases, whether arising from injurious personal habits, from congenital or constitutional weakness, or from social and vocational conditions." That this declaration by the Commissioner of Health of the city of New York is not the mere expression of an individual opinion, there is abundant ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... question that in all cases of animals under natural conditions such behavior has an instinctive basis. Though the effect may be to establish a means of communication, such is not their conscious purpose at the outset. They are presumably congenital and hereditary modes of emotional expression which serve to evoke responsive behavior in another animal—the reciprocal action being generally in its primary origin between mate and mate, between parent and offspring, or between members of the same family group. And it is this reciprocal action ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... probable, however, that it may be due either to some want of harmony between different organs, some faulty formation or combination of parts, or to some peculiar physical or chemical condition of the blood or tissues; and that this altered state, constituting the inherent congenital tendency to the disease, is duly transmitted from parent to offspring like any other quality ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... he has a right to marry his first cousin, the daughter of his father's brother, and if any win her from him a death and a blood-feud may result. It was the same in a modified form amongst the Jews and in both races the consanguineous marriage was not attended by the evil results (idiotcy, congenital deafness, etc.) observed in mixed races like the English and the Anglo-American. When a Badawi speaks of "the daughter of my uncle" he means wife; and the former is the dearer title, as a wife can be divorced, but blood is ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... movement of the umbrella, or ran away, as Herbert Spencer tells us, from the stick which had hurt him while he was playing with it, it was because an unusual movement or pain produced by an object to which habit had rendered him indifferent, aroused in the animal the congenital sense of the intentional subjectivity of phenomena, and this is really the first stage of myth, and not of ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... beloved predilection. And no spectacles will correct the mental astigmatism of the multitude, a fact that is often a cause of considerable annoyance to the possessors of normal sight. That defect of vision, whether congenital or induced by the confinements of early training, persists and increases throughout life, like other forms of myopia. The man who sees a ball as slightly flattened, like a tangerine orange too tightly packed (an "oblate spheroid" would be the physicist's brief description), ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... passion for regarding their elders as senile, which was only in part warranted in this instance by observing that Russell's generation were mostly senile from youth. They had never got beyond 1815 Both Palmerston and Russell were in this case. Their senility was congenital, like Gladstone's Oxford training and High Church illusions, which caused wild eccentricities in his judgment. Russell could not conceive that he had misunderstood and mismanaged Minister Adams from the start, and when after November 12 he found himself ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... contemporary times, and from savages tribes to the most highly civilized nations, we find the plebeian bowing before the patrician, the poor man serving the wealthy. The conception of human equality before the law is not a congenital endowment, but an accomplishment, arduously acquired and easily forfeited. The first impulse of weakness in the presence of strength is to bow down before it; it is the impulse of the animal, and of the unspiritual, the unregenerate nature ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... reinforced capitalistic accumulation. Liverpool waxed fat on the slave trade. The child-slavery in the European manufactories needed for its pedestal the slavery, pure and simple, of the negroes imported into America. If money, according to Marie Augier, "comes into the world with a congenital bloodstain on one cheek," capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... depths and run up to Town to breathe the sweet original atmosphere for just one night before we leave old England," put in Trooper Punch Peerson (son of a noble lord) who would at that moment have been in the Officers' Mess but for a congenital weakness in spelling and a dislike of mathematics. "Pity we can't get 'leaf,' and do ourselves glorious at the Carlton, and 'afterwards'. We could change at my Governor's place into borrowed, stolen, and hired evening-kit, ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... this. He declared the King of Portugal to be impotent, after what the Queen had expressly stated. The Pope annulled the marriage, and the Queen courageously wedded her husband's brother, who had no congenital weakness of any sort, and who was, as every one knew, of ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... different from her own friends. She, like Wilbur, had heard all her life of these interesting and inspiring beings; intense, marvellously capable, peerless, free-born creatures panoplied in chastity and endowed with congenital mental power and bodily charms, who were able to cook, educate children, control society and write literature in the course of the day's employment. The newspapers and popular opinion had given her to understand that these were the true Americans, ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... at least five sixths ready-made as soon as he can control his hands intelligently, we are forced to suspect either that keyboards and shorthand are older inventions than we suppose, or else that acquirements can be assimilated and stored as congenital qualifications in a shorter time than we think; so that, as between Lyell and Archbishop Ussher, the laugh may not be with Lyell quite so uproariously as it seemed ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... prepare for every unfavorable eventuality that Taine had been chosen as weapons officer of the Niccola. His choice had been deliberate, because he was a xenophobe. He had been a problem personality all his life. He had a seemingly congenital fear and hatred of strangers—which in mild cases is common enough, but Taine could not be cured without a complete breakdown of personality. He could not serve on a ship with a multiracial crew, because he was invincibly suspicious of and ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... number of variations seem to be due to the so-called congenital causes, which are sharply contrasted with the influences of the first and second classes. It is quite true that the influences of the third class cannot be surely and directly demonstrated like the others, but however remote and vague they themselves may appear to be, their effects ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... parents has presented it.[16] Secondly, myopia, or short-sight, in which the eye is egg-shaped, and too long from front to back; the retina in this case lies behind the focus, and is therefore fitted to see distinctly only very near objects. This condition is not commonly congenital, but comes on in youth, the liability to it being well known to be transmissible from parent to child. The change from the spherical to the ovoidal shape seems the immediate {9} consequence of something like inflammation of the coats, under which they yield, and there ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... prettiest of them all, and a cross-eyed man with congenital astigmatism could see that you're a good fellow. Do! My controls tell me that you're about to be ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin |
