"Decomposition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Commonwealth, the Princess Elizabeth died at Carisbrook, it was loudly asserted that Cromwell had stooped to the senseless and dastardly wickedness of mixing noxious drugs with the food of a young girl whom he had no conceivable motive to injure. [221] A few years later, the rapid decomposition of Cromwell's own corpse was ascribed by many to a deadly potion administered in his medicine. The death of Charles the Second could scarcely fail to occasion similar rumours. The public ear had been repeatedly abused by stories of Popish plots against ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... OF THE SCEPTICS, who conduct the higher Analysis of Ethical Philosophy.—Pyrrho demonstrates the Uncertainty of Knowledge.—Inevitable Passage into tranquil Indifference, Quietude, and Irreligion, as recommended by Epicurus.—Decomposition of the Socratic and Platonic Systems in the later Academies.—Their Errors and Duplicities.—End of the Greek Age of ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... into the captured laager. It was an extraordinary, interesting, and loathsome sight. Dead bodies of horses and men lay in all directions in various stages of decomposition, and the reeking smell was something quite indescribable. I fancied, even after leaving the place, that I carried the smell about with me, and that it had got into my clothes. The steep river banks were honeycombed with little holes and tunnels, and deep, ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... is a new business in this country and our chief reliance so far has been the coke ovens. When coal is heated in retorts or ovens for making coke or gas a lot of ammonia comes off with the other products of decomposition and is caught in the sulfuric acid used to wash the gas as ammonium sulfate. Our American coke-makers have been in the habit of letting this escape into the air and consequently we have been losing some 700,000 tons of ammonium salts every year, enough ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... strange that so many men who are morally in a state of decomposition should be, or at least can be, sweet and charming in manner. During these three days Coronado was delightful; and not merely in this, that he watched over Clara's comfort, rode a great deal by her side, gathered wild flowers for her, talked much and agreeably; but also in that he poured oil ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... ceaseless action of minute forms of plant life, in bringing about the decomposition of the elaborated products of organized plant or animal structures, will be described in more detail ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... an orifice twice the size of the other, communicate between these receptacles and a fourth one, which is called the mixture reservoir, since in it the two gases obtained by the decomposition of the water do really commingle. The capacity of this fourth tank is ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... the internal administration was guaranteed. Caesar, too, whatever may have been his motive, showed favor to the Jews throughout his Empire. Mommsen thinks that he saw in them an effective leaven of cosmopolitanism and national decomposition, and to that intent gave them special privileges; but this seems a perverse reason to assign for the grant of the right to maintain in all its thoroughness their national life, and for their exemption from all Imperial ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... authority of both kings, having been originally peopled by settlers from each of their towns. At the ebb of the tide, the basin is left perfectly dry, with the exception of small gutters, and presents a smooth and almost unvaried surface of black mud, which emits an intolerable odour, owing to the decomposition of vegetable substances, and the quantity of filth and nastiness which is thrown into the basin by the inhabitants of both towns. Notwithstanding this nuisance, both children and grown-up persons may be seen ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... the least important of all the senses, yet it is of great value to the blind. Through this avenue to the mind come many pleasurable sensations. By it we are aided in the selection of our food, in choosing ripe and healthful fruits, in detecting decomposition, dirt and filth, and in ascertaining much that eyes discover to those who have them. Without it flowers would have no attraction for us, and life would lack many of its pleasures. At the risk of being classed among dogs and vultures. I acknowledge that ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... fifty or sixty feet, and are hewn out of the solid rock. They are reached through narrow openings in the stone floors of the fortresses, and when one of these horrible holes is opened the foul odor of filth and decomposition is utterly overpowering. Some of these dungeons contain as many as thirty or forty men. I was placed in a cell reserved for solitary confinement. I have never been a man who regarded life seriously, or feared to risk it upon sufficient occasion, but my ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... use in war, the neglect of the mechanical application of this class of substance being largely due to the fact, that chemists are not as a rule engineers, nor engineers chemists. But an easily portable substance, the decomposition of which would evolve energy, or—what is, from the practical point of view, much the same thing—an easily portable substance, which could be decomposed electrically by wind or water power, and which would then recombine and supply force, either in intermittent thrusts at a ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... to the expired light, so was the thing that sat there in human form to the Noah Skinner they had come to seek. Dead this many a day of charcoal fumes, but preserved from decomposition by those very fumes, sat Noah Skinner, dried into bones and leather waiting for them with his own Hard Cash, and with theirs; for, creeping awestruck round that mummified figure seated dead on his pool of sovereigns, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... was discouraging. All the vats not filled with plants seemed to have corpses in them, in varying stages of decomposition. ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... acid. These chemicals not only arrest decay, but partially restore to old and bad meat the appearance of freshness; in this way unscrupulous dealers are able to sell to the public in one form or other meats which may have undergone partial decomposition; sausage frequently contains partially decomposed meat, restored as it ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... been laboriously trying to reproduce; but contrasted with this mild old monarch their prancing horsemen suggest a succession of riding-masters taking out young ladies' schools. The admirably human character of the figure survives the rusty decomposition of the bronze and the slight "debasement" of the art; and one may call it singular that in the capital of Christendom the portrait most suggestive of a Christian conscience is that ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... sunrise, three hours after death; and so virulent is the poison of the picakholu that, ere the body was deposited in the grave, it was already in a state of decomposition! ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... their impetuous rush, so that their force raises them in the middle, and hurls them up some feet in the air. Their fury is resistless, and the bodies of those who are carried over the falls are whirled round here in a horrible dance, frequently till decomposition takes place. There is nothing to excite admiration about the whirlpool; the impression which it leaves on ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... and cremation during the period mentioned, not only disturb the passing spirit mentally, but are productive of a certain amount of pain, for there is still a slight connection with the discarded vehicle. If sanitary laws require us to prevent decomposition while thus keeping the body for cremation, it may be packed in ice till the three and one-half days have passed. After that time the spirit will not suffer, no matter what happens to ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... temporarily placed, such as ash pits and manure pits, should never be below the level of the ground. If a deep pit is dug in the ground, into which the refuse is thrown in the intervals between times of removal, rain and surface water will mix with the refuse and hasten its decomposition, and generally the lowest part of the filth will not be removed, but will be left to fester and produce malaria. In all places where the occupation is permanent the following conditions ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... any number of decayed branches. The trees may be growing so far apart that their trunks will be covered with suckers as far down as the ground, or there may be large, open gaps with no trees at all. Here the sun, striking with full force, may be drying up the soil and preventing the decomposition of the leaves. Grass soon starts to grow in these open spaces and the whole character of the woodland changes as shown in Figs. 140 ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... their families, without a single communication of the disease. It is certainly, therefore, an epidemic, not a contagious disease; and calls on the chemists for some mode of purifying the vessel by a decomposition of its atmosphere, if ventilation be found insufficient. In the long scale of bilious fevers, graduated by many shades, this is probably the last and most mortal term. It seizes the native of the place equally with strangers. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... So again the lines in a crag which mark its stratification, and how it has been washed and rounded by water, or twisted and drawn out in fire, are more important, because they tell more than the stains of the lichens which change year by year, and the accidental fissures of frost or decomposition; not but that both of these are historical, but historical in a less distinct manner, and ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... irregulierement situees sont disseminees dans toute la masse; il ne fait aucune effervescence avec les acides, et n'affecte pas sensiblement le barreau aimante; sa partie exterieure a eprouve une espece d'alteration produite par les molecules ferrugineuses: cette decomposition n'atteint pas ordinairement au dela de 3 ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... woods, they found the bodies of the whole of their companions. All were headless, the Malays having carried off these coveted trophies. They did not attempt to bury the bodies for, in such a climate, decomposition sets in rapidly, and swarms of insects complete the work. In the grass near the hut they found one treasure—the mate's ax—which had evidently fallen from his belt, in his flight, and had ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... phenomena of what is called spontaneous generation. Our forefathers, down to the seventeenth century, or thereabouts, all imagined, in perfectly good faith, that certain vegetable and animal forms gave birth, in the process of their decomposition, to insect life. Thus, if you put a piece of meat in the sun, and allowed it to putrefy, they conceived that the grubs which soon began to appear were the result of the action of a power of spontaneous generation which the meat contained. ...
— The Method By Which The Causes Of The Present And Past Conditions Of Organic Nature Are To Be Discovered.—The Origination Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley
... when the fetichistic tendency led the Greek again to personify the powers of nature, he had recourse to new names formed from his own language. Thus, beside Apollo we have Helios; Selene beside Artemis and Persephone; Eos beside Athene; Gaia beside Demeter. As a further consequence of this decomposition and new development of the old Aryan mythology, we find, as might be expected, that the Homeric poems are not always consistent in their use of their mythic materials. Thus, Paris, the night-demon, is—to Max Muller's perplexity—invested with many ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... at the Vicar of Bray tap, Palace Yard; and the jury, considering the neighbourhood, was tolerably respectable. The remains of the deceased were in a dreadful state of decomposition; and although chloride of lime and other antiseptic fluids were plentifully scattered in the room, it was felt to be a service of danger to approach too closely to the defunct. Many members of Parliament were in attendance, and all of them, to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... my theory.... My assertion was simply, that air (i.e., dephlogisticated air, or oxygen, which was also commonly called vital air, pure air, or simple air) was water deprived of its phlogiston, and united to heat, which I grounded on the decomposition of air by inflammation with inflammable air, the residuum, or product of which, is only water ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... with no very positive suggestion, with no hint of heroism, none of heroic action, little even of heroic passion; just death, helpless, hopeless, pointing to nothing but decomposition, decay, disappearance, aneantissement, reduction of the fair frame of life to nothingness. That is the peculiar horror of this war. Were the picture, as it well might be, even more hideous, and did it suggest something more definite, ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... left the village we passed near the mangrove trees, which were growing not only near the water but in it, and like to spread their roots among the thick black slime which accumulates so fast in this country of rapid vegetable growth, and as rapid decomposition. In Cuba, the mangoe is the abomination of the planters, for they supply the runaway slaves with food, upon which they have been known to subsist for months, whilst the mangroves give them shelter. A little further inland we found the guava, a ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... yet, as usual, the conclusion was wrong. The years of Palmerston's last Cabinet, 1859 to 1865, were avowedly years of truce — of arrested development. The British system like the French, was in its last stage of decomposition. Never had the British mind shown itself so decousu — so unravelled, at sea, floundering in every sort of historical shipwreck. Eccentricities had a free field. Contradictions swarmed in State and Church. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... out the spot where the man had been destroyed, and where the buffaloes had been dragged in by the crocodile. One buffalo had been entirely devoured, but the other had merely lost his head, and his carcass was floating in a horrible state of decomposition near the bank. It was nearly dark, so I engaged a small canoe to be in readiness by ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... of encrusted painted prejudices we warn not to go too close to an impressionistic canvas—any more than he would go near a red-hot stove or a keg of gunpowder. And let him forget those toothsome critical terms, decomposition, recomposition. His eyes, if permitted, will act for themselves; there is no denying that the principles of impressionism soundly applied, especially to landscape, catch the fleeting, many-hued charm of nature. It is a system ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... shot the bull hippopotamus; in this still pool, close to the bank, they almost immediately discovered the girl floating slightly beneath the surface. No crocodile had injured the body, but the fish had destroyed a portion of the face; it was already so far advanced in decomposition, that it was necessary to bury it upon the margin of the river, at the spot where it was discovered. The people came to thank me for having originated the idea, and the very agreeable sheik spent the evening with us with a number of his people; this was ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... houses, which had been originally built of wood, had severally disappeared. Some had been taken to pieces and removed to Halifax or St John; others had been converted into fuel, and the rest had fallen a prey to neglect and decomposition. The chimneys stood up erect, and marked the spot around which the social circle had assembled; and the blackened fireplaces, ranged one above another, bespoke the size of the tenement and the means of its owner. In some ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... state of moral decomposition, Schomberg, master as he was of the art of hotel-keeping, and careful of giving no occasion for criticism to the powers regulating that branch of human activity, let things take their course; though he saw very well where that course was tending. It began ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... death there is no stillness, there is but a change in the form of activity. The body is no longer alive as an organised community, but in its individual cells: the activity is the liveliness of decomposition. Thus all the world expresses life, and expresses it in a rhythm in which law and order reign supreme, and in which a sweet and sane regularity is ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... matter, which is everywhere deposited in consequence of the escape of carbonic acid, likewise proceed, giving a constant milkiness to what, from its tint, would otherwise be a blue fluid. So rapid is the vegetation, owing to the decomposition of the carbonic acid, that, even in winter, masses of confervae and lichens, mixed with deposited travertine, are constantly detached by the currents of water from the bank and float down the stream, which ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... testified that, having put to a test the specifications in all the patents involved, he had found it necessary in no case to inject live steam into the mixtures of acid and rubber scrap in order to effect the decomposition and removal of either woolen or cotton fiber. The use of the acids specified was sufficient for this, and the various high temperatures called for were not essential for the destruction of the fibers. He neglected to mention, however, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... series of substances of ever-increasing minuteness, are capable of dissolution, until the highest cause (Brahman) is reached. Earth—which is, in comparison with a binary compound, the grossest thing of all—undergoes decomposition; so do the substances following next which belong to the same class as earth; so does the binary compound; and so does, finally, the atom which (although the minutest thing of all) still belongs to the same ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... when charged with essential oil, as it exudes from nature's laboratory, it imparts a pungent and unpleasant taste. A considerable quantity of gas bubbles up through these bituminous springs, showing that decomposition is still active amongst the materials whence it exudes. Some of the recent bitumen has an odour resembling vegetable gum. Mr. Johnson, the very obliging proprietor of a neighbouring estate, had the goodness to cause ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... when in a peculiar stage of decomposition, has the appearance and consistency of yellow brick, speckled with plumbago. It exists in this state in immense masses, and forms a valuable buildingstone, as it can be cut with ease to any shape required, and, ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... do you prefer, Captain Lawton?" said the surgeon, as they separated from the little procession. "In some countries the body is exposed to be devoured by wild beasts; in others it is suspended in the air to exhale its substance in the manner of decomposition; in other regions it is consumed on the funeral pile, and, again, it is inhumed in the bowels of the earth; every people have their own particular fashion, and to which ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... Marxian orthodoxy from within. Syndicalism represents an attack against it from without, from the standpoint of a doctrine which professes to be even more radical and more revolutionary than that of Marx and Engels. The attitude of Syndicalists to Marx may be seen in Sorel's little book, "La Decomposition du Marxisme,'' and in his larger work, "Reflections on Violence,'' authorized translation by T. E. Hulme (Allen & Unwin, 1915). After quoting Bernstein, with approval in so far as he criticises Marx, Sorel proceeds ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... Reptilia can exist for any length of time after injury to the brain; to any of the smaller mammalia such a process as that adopted by the Pole-cat, would have resulted in instant death and speedy decomposition. ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... content up as high relatively as in most commercial fertilizers, but it helps. The total amount in the eight tons manure may be sufficient, and the greater part of the total has sufficiently immediate availability, while the manure must undergo decomposition, and some of the nitrogen and potash does not become available ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... a method, not quite so learned, to convey an idea of the generation of colors, and the decomposition of the solar ray. Instead of examining them in a prism of glass, we shall consider them in the heavens, and there we shall behold the five primordial colours unfold themselves in the order ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... proceeded towards it. Suddenly John, who was ahead, started back with an exclamation of fear, and the horses began to snort, for there, stark and stiff in death, already swollen and discoloured by decomposition—as is sometimes the case with people killed by lightning—the rifles in their hands twisted and fused, their clothes cut and blown from their bandoliers—lay the two Boer murderers. It was a terrifying sight, and, taken in conjunction with their ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... quantities, in the gneiss rocks that upon their decomposition it is seen in bright specks ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... dried to prevent decomposition, which takes place very rapidly after they have thawed out. . . ." The oven should be heated as for baking bread. Then, when it has reached the necessary temperature, which is easily recognized, the potatoes are ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... illustrated by the exhausted feeling that invites the after-dinner nap for rest, which, however, does not rest overfilled stomachs, overfilled brains. The brain gets no rest while getting rid of food-masses with more of decomposition than of digestion. ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... killed, the carapace is removed and placed over a gentle fire, and then the plates are eased off with a knife. But that method is not generally approved. Professional tortoiseshell-getters either trust to the heat of the sun or bury the shell in clean sand, and when decomposition sets in, the valuable plates are detached freely. Exposure to fire deteriorates the quality of the product unless ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... sea-island cotton would do well; a single plant of it, reared by Major Sicard, flourished and produced the long staple and peculiar tinge of this celebrated variety, though planted only in the street at Tette; and there also a salt efflorescence appears, probably from decomposition of the rock, off which the people scrape it ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... similar results. These results also agree with observations made by various other German and American bacteriologists. Decomposition of animal flesh begins immediately after the animal dies. Within twenty-four hours after killing, even though the carcass is kept in an ice box or refrigerater, the whole mass is permeated with putrefactive bacteria. Refrigeration even to a point close to freezing delays but does ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various
... clay-slate or gray-wacke, as it is shattered by frost, and carried down by torrents, of course forms itself into irregular flattish masses. The splintery edges of these are in some degree worn off by the action of water; and, slight decomposition taking place on the surface of the clay-slate, furnishes an aluminous soil, which is immediately taken advantage of by innumerable lichens, which change the dark gray of the original substance into an infinite variety of pale and warm colors. These ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... daily life which is a mere drapery of civilisation, and has nothing to do with the primitive reality of nature. The realistic drama begins with Euripides; and Euripides, the casuist, the friend of Socrates (whom Nietzsche qualifies as the true decadent, an "instrument of decomposition," the slayer of art, the father of modern science), brings tragedy to an end, as he substitutes pathos for action, thought for contemplation, and passionate sentiments for the primitive ecstasy. "Armed with the scourge of its syllogisms, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... Chaucer's Reeve, in summer it must have been all 'yshadowed with greene trees,' the cedar, the cottonwood, the liveoak, fig, mulberry, and magnolia, growing in the sand or light soil accruing from vegetable decomposition; and as the evergreens predominated, its winter aspect was yet pleasant and rural, notwithstanding a certain air of dilapidation and decay, so common in Southern dwellings that the inhabitants seem ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... genuine erratic boulders I have seen in the whole length of the Amazonian Valley, from Para to the frontier of Peru, though there are many detached masses of rock, as, for instance, at Pedreira, near the junction of the Rio Negro and Rio Branco, which might be mistaken for them, but are due to the decomposition of the rocks in place. The boulders of Errere are entirely distinct from the rock of the Serra, and consist of masses of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... an equality between the heat disengaged or absorbed in the acts, respectively, of chemical combination or decomposition of the same elements, so that the heat evolved during the combination of two simple or com-pound substances is equal to the heat absorbed at the time of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... this offensive place. Let us get into the woods where we can enjoy ourselves. You have never witnessed what I have lately, and I trust in God you never will. I have seen within this month two hundred dead bodies on a beach in every possible shape of disfiguration and decomposition—mangled, mutilated, and dismembered corpses; male and female, old and young, the prey of fishes, birds, beasts, and, what is worse, of human beings. The wrecker had been there—whether he was of your country ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... antelope, Joe," said Dyke, as he ground away at the biltong, that popular South African delicacy, formed by cutting fresh meat into long strips, and drying them in the sun before the flesh has time to go bad—a capital plan in a torrid country, where decomposition is rapid and salt none too plentiful; but it has its drawbacks, and is best suited to the taste of those who appreciate the chewing of leather with a superlatively ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... most, opened a horizonal vein of moderate depth. They were equally deficient in the knowledge of the best means of detaching the precious metal from the dross with which it was united, and had no idea of the virtues of quicksilver,—a mineral not rare in Peru, as an amalgam to effect this decomposition.22 Their method of smelting the ore was by means of furnaces built in elevated and exposed situations, where they might be fanned by the strong breezes of the mountains. The subjects of the Incas, in short, with all their patient perseverance, did little more than penetrate below ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... are, but what do you say to that?" cried the pedlar in a triumphant voice, as he held close to the negro's nose a piece of linen rag on which he had smeared a green greasy substance bearing a strong resemblance to paste-blacking in a state of decomposition. Then, taking up the box which contained this precious compound, he put it in close proximity to the obtuse snout of the blackamoor, who made a grimace as if his olfactories were but moderately regaled by the odour ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... method is gradually increasing in popularity, and of course, when time and circumstances permit, it is the ideal method of treatment. The cause of death in the case of intestinal obstruction is usually due to the blood being poisoned by the absorption of the products of decomposition of the fluid contents of the bowel above the obstruction. It is now the custom, therefore, for the surgeon to complete his operation for the relief of obstruction by drawing out a loop of the distended bowel, incising and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... opportunity of getting rid of the vast number of dead animals; burial was impossible, and the low state of the river prevented them from sending them down stream for several days; all they could do was to drag them to leeward of their camp. Meanwhile decomposition set in, and the absolute need of clean air caused a serious rebellion in the camp, most of the 4,000 men demanding that surrender should be made at once. When on Sunday, the 25th, the flood brought down past our lines an unending series of dead animals that cannot ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... is such as generation is, a mystery of nature; composition out of the same elements, and a decomposition into the same; and altogether not a thing of which any man should be ashamed, for it is not contrary to [the nature of] a reasonable animal, and not contrary to ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... of Tuesday was the fate of my Christmas pudding, which I had received from my Mater. Having handled and examined it carefully for some time, I thought I could detect signs of decomposition about it. I communicated my fears to my comrades, who shared them, and said they didn't think it would last till Christmas. It didn't; for we ate it that evening. It was good, and I suppose we ought to feel ashamed of ourselves for eating it out of season, ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... We passed over a ridge which borders or constitutes the river hills of the Platte, consisting of huge blocks, sixty or eighty feet cube, of decomposing granite. The cement which united them was probably of easier decomposition, and has disappeared and left them isolate, and separated by small spaces. Numerous horns of the mountain-goat were lying among the rocks; and in the ravines were cedars, whose trunks were of extraordinary size. From this ridge we descended to a small open plain, at the mouth ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... little trifles they were not in want of, into the road: which not only made it rank and sloppy, but untidy too, on account of the cabbage-leaves. The refuse was not wholly vegetable either, for I myself saw a shoe, a doubled-up saucepan, a black bonnet, and an umbrella, in various stages of decomposition, as I was looking out for ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... and decomposition of the vegetation during long ages must have produced beds like the peat-deposits of America and Great Britain. In the Dismal Swamp of Virginia there is said to be a mass of vegetable matter 40 feet in thickness, and on the banks of ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... is attended with distinct alteration of the blood, as in influenza, and at the end of two or three days in severe cases of pneumonia or other extensive inflammatory troubles the mucous membranes are tinged with yellow, which may even become a deep ocher in color, the result of the decomposition of the blood corpuscles and the freeing of their coloring matter, which acts as a stain. At the outset of a fever the various glands are checked in their secretions, the salivary glands fail to secrete ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... an insulated and anomalous affection of certain salts of silver or gold, but one which, doubtless, in a greater or less degree, pervades all nature, and connects itself intimately with the mechanism by which chemical combination and decomposition is operated. The general instability of organic combinations might lead us to expect the occurrence of numerous and remarkable cases of this affection among bodies of that class, but among metallic and other ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois
... acuteness, and the contemplation of the deserted buildings and neglected wharves around him harmonized with his own gloomy thoughts. Pursuing his walk along the side of the river, he was checked by a horrible smell, and looking downward, he perceived a carcass in the last stage of decomposition lying in the mud. It had been washed ashore by the tide, and a large bird of prey was contending for the possession of it with a legion of water-rats. Sickened by the sight, he turned up a narrow thoroughfare near Baynard's Castle, and crossing Thames-street, was about to ascend ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... offensive odor. The sweat production may be normal in quantity or more or less excessive, usually the latter. The condition may be local or general, commonly the former. It is closely allied to hyperidrosis, and may often be considered identical, the odor resulting from rapid decomposition of the sweat secretion. The decomposition and resulting odor have been thought due to the presence ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... mineral regions, and that which we excite upon the surface of the earth, consists in this; that nature applies heat under circumstances which we are not able to imitate, that is, under such compression as shall prevent the decomposition of the constituent substances, by the separation of the more volatile from the more fixed parts. This is a circumstance which, so far as I know, no chemist or naturalist has hitherto considered; and it is that by which the operations of the mineral regions must certainly be ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... element and water. The analysis was looked over by Davy, who then and there suggested to Faraday to heat the hydrate in a closed glass tube. This was done, the substance was decomposed, and one of the products of decomposition was proved by Faraday to be chlorine liquefied by its own pressure. On the day of its discovery he communicated this result to Dr. Paris. Davy, on being informed of it, instantly liquefied another gas in the same way. Having struck thus into Faraday's enquiry, ought he not to have ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... the other appearances follow naturally from the situation of this place, which is a summit, and does not allow of such a collection of water as might travel or transport the loose gravel, although it has been sufficient for carrying away the sand. This decomposition of the sand stone we shall find also explained from what follows of the description of ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... grumbled Smilash. "I bargained for ninepence, and what with the roller, and opening the soda water, and shoving them heavy tables about, there was a decomposition of tissue in me to the tune of two shillings. But all I ask is the ninepence, and let the lady keep the one and threppence as the reward of abstinence. Exploitation of labor at the rate of a hundred and twenty-five per cent., that is. Come, give ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... stood is there yet, a majestic tree. The selection of a site for the little cemetery is most judicious, several little streams from the heights in the rear filter through the ground, producing a moisture calculated to prevent decomposition and explanatory of the singular appearance of the bodies disinterred there in 1855. Every visitor will be struck with the beauty, healthiness and shelter which this sequestered nook at Sillery presents for a settlement, and with its adaptability for the purposes for which it was chosen, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... a meal, and the rest of the day was spent in preparing the deer meat to keep in store; the effect of the hot sun being wonderful, the heat drying up the juices and checking the decomposition that might have been expected to succeed its exposure. But it in no case improved the appearance ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... element that now encompassed me. I felt as if I had inhaled a poisonous and subtle fluid, whose power instantly bereft my stomach of all vigour. Some fatal influence appeared to seize upon my vitals, and the work of corrosion and decomposition to ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... was hailed can hardly be imagined now. Not only men of the highest rank—men of science, men of letters, and men of trade—but women of fashion and blue-stockings, old and young, pressed into the theatre of the Institution to cover him with applause. His greatest labors were his discovery of the decomposition of the fixed alkalies, and the re-establishment of the simple nature of chlorine; his other researches were the investigation of astringent vegetables in connection with the art of tanning; the analysis of rocks and minerals in connection with geology; the comprehensive subject ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... until recent years it was generally thought that the oxygen of the air caused the decomposition of food. Appert's theory was that the things essential to the preservation of food in this manner were the exclusion of air and the application of gentle heat, as in the water bath, which caused a fusion of the principal constituents and ferments ...
— Canned Fruit, Preserves, and Jellies: Household Methods of Preparation - U.S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 203 • Maria Parloa
... Buda-Pest had been less flagrant one would write of Hungary's decomposition with a certain sympathy. It is conceivable that in the British Empire there are anti-British elements whose aims would commonly be classed by the authorities as "mad ambitions," which is what Count ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... breeds creatures for its own devouring. At one end of this row of viands was a large game pie with a triangular gap in the pastry; at the other, on two oval dishes, lay four cold partridges in various stages of decomposition. Behind them a silver basket of openwork design was occupied by three bunches of black, one bunch of white grapes, and a silver grape-cutter, which performed no function (it was so blunt), but had once belonged to a Totteridge and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the same fashion, sustained by a natural sense of formal harmony; but all that follows is decadent,—an admixture of romance and realism, the exaggerations of Hugo and the homeliness of Trollope; a litter of ancient elements in a state of decomposition. ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... gulls and sandpipers, of which many were shot. The water was found to be perfectly salt and from the circumstance of its rising and falling with the tide it must have some communication with the sea. The rocks of the island are principally calcareous and in a very advanced state of decomposition. The beaches were covered with dead shells of the genera buccinum, bulla, murex, trochus, and haliotis; but we found none with the living animal in them. Of the feathered tribe a hawk and a pigeon were the only land-birds ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... Comte has gone to have a horse put to. They're sending for Dr. Jouet, who will make the usual examination. In my opinion, death must have taken place a week ago, at least. The state of decomposition of the corpse—but you ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... causes of abrasion. In characteristic localities the loose materials deposited by glaciers may readily be recognized at first sight, and distinguished from water-worn pebbles; nor is it difficult to distinguish both from loose materials resulting from the decomposition of rocks on the spot,—the latter always agreeing with the rocks on which they rest, while the decomposition to which they owe their separation from the solid rock is often still going on. Such debris are found everywhere about disintegrating rocks, and they constantly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... land by its side, but which has not been manured, is dried up. Hard coarse soils dry up very quickly, while soft, mellow, and friable ones will endure a long drought. The gases and moisture generated by the decomposition of manures produce this mellow state. Hence the necessity of having that decomposition take place under the soil, or of plowing ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... only, however, consider my own trifles unworthy of such a dignity, but am inclined to strip it from other productions which might appear to have a more appropriate claim to it. No doubt, the ductile inflections and wonderful facilities for decomposition and reconstruction make Greek an excellent vehicle of scientific precision, and the use of a dead language saves your nomenclature from being confounded with your common talk. The use of a Greek derivative gives notice that you are scientific. If you speak of an acanthopterygian, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... whether by peaceful persuasion, or hostile compulsion, or other mode of absorbing disunions, would be indifferent; if they were not all improbable, as unworthy of the God. Perpetuity of discord is a thing impossible; every thing short of unity tends to decomposition. Any how then, given the element of eternity to work in, a one great Supreme Being was, in the created beginning, an a priori probability. That all other assumptions than that of His true and eternal Oneness are as false in themselves as they are derogatory to the rational views of deity, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... them of that possibility and rendered it not only difficult but impossible for the Russians to stop this movement, to which the French were directing all their energies. Beyond a certain limit no mechanical disruption of the body could hasten the process of decomposition. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... that these inferior powers come into full play upon the tree. So, again, the animal functions control chemical laws—take digestion, for example: a vegetable cut up by the root and exposed to the air, passes through a course of chemical decomposition, and is finally converted into gas; but when an animal consumes a vegetable, it is not decomposed according to the chemical laws, but is digested, becomes chyle, and is assimilated to the body of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... both seen alive and well last night—the latter, indeed, this morning—could possibly be the man. And thus comforting himself, he met old Major Jackson on the green, and that gentleman's statement ended with the words; 'and in an advanced stage of decomposition.' ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... discarded the formerly supposed fluids of electricity and magnetism. Of electricity the "Century Dictionary" says: "A name denoting the cause of an important class of phenomena of attraction and repulsion, chemical decomposition, and so on, or, collectively, these phenomena themselves." The true nature of electricity is as yet not all understood, but it is not, as it was formerly supposed to be, of the nature of a fluid. Similarly we may define hypnotism as the collection of peculiar ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... I will see anybody or do anything—even to the calling together of the actors—if you should ever deem it desirable. My opinion is that our respected and valued friend Mr. —— will stagger through another season, if he don't rot first. I understand he is in a partial state of decomposition at this minute. He was very ill, but got better. How is it that —— always do get better, and strong hearts ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... which have one constituent in common, may be combined together straight away. This is very important for triple staining, which can only be attained by mixing together two simple neutral mixtures, each consisting of two components. A chemical decomposition need not be feared. We thus get mixtures containing three and more colours. Theoretically there are two possibilities ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... the earth, as far as it has been exposed to our view in mines or mountains, countenances this opinion; since these have evidently for the most part had their origin from the shells of fishes, the decomposition of vegetables, and the recrements of other animal materials, and must therefore have been formed progressively from small beginnings. There are likewise some apparently useless or incomplete appendages to plants and animals, which seem to shew they have gradually undergone changes from ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... is manufactured from coal tar. It was discovered about six years ago in the laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, by Prof. Remsen and a student named Fahlberg, who has since taken out patents upon it. It is greatly superior to sugar, as it is free from fermentation and decomposition. A small quantity added to starch or glucose will make a compound equal to sugar in sweetness. It is a valuable antiseptic and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... left the camp and followed the river downwards on a general course 250 degrees; at 7.40 crossed to the left bank, the valley opening out and the soil improving, being formed by the decomposition of soft shales, which contain much gypsum in fine crystals. Oat and rye grasses were abundant, with plenty of saltbush; at 9.10 crossed to the right bank, and steered 220 degrees to an abrupt headland on the north side of the valley, which was here about two miles wide; the soil a stiff brown loam, ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... To-day we came upon three Lowans' or native pheasants' nests. These birds, which somewhat resemble guinea-fowl in appearance, build extraordinarily large nests of sand, in which they deposit small sticks and leaves; here the female lays about a dozen eggs, the decomposition of the vegetable matter providing the warmth necessary to hatch them. These nests are found only in thick scrubs. I have known them five to six feet high, of a circular conical shape, and a hundred feet round the base. The ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... obscurity of scientific publications and made objects of general and crowning interest. It was Pasteur who first successfully combated the chemical theory of fermentation by showing that albuminous matter had no inherent tendency to decomposition. It was Pasteur who first clearly demonstrated that these little bodies, like all larger animals and plants, come into existence only by ordinary methods of reproduction, and not by any spontaneous generation, as had been earlier claimed. It was Pasteur who first proved that such ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... kind undergoing a slow decomposition and possessing little volatility, it, when mixed with other very fleeting scents, gives permanence to them on the handkerchief, and for this quality ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... had ceased. For three days the body was preserved unburied, during which it had acquired a stony rigidity. The funeral, in short, was hastened, on account of the rapid advance of what was supposed to be decomposition. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe |
