"Excitability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the tightly closed lids, the pupils of the eyes are convulsively turned upward. The body is almost entirely without sensation or power of thought. Especially characteristic of lethargy is the hyper-excitability of the nerves and muscles (hyperexcitabilite neuromusculaire), which manifests itself at the slightest touch of any object. For instance, if the extensor muscles of the arm are lightly touched, the arm stiffens immediately, and is only made flexible again by a hard rubbing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... climate, the power of the sun, the then excessive use of stimulants, and the excitability of the people,—whose pulsation is more rapid than yours,—all tended formerly to augment the ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... not. Don't say a word of this to him. I shall find Harry, and ask about these disturbed nights, and then watch him, trusting it may not have gone too far; but there must be dreadful excitability of brain!" ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... see how it is possible that I can leave her," said Waife, when the two men had adjourned to the sitting-room. "I am sure," quoth the Mayor, seriously, "that it is the best thing for her: her pulse has much nervous excitability; she wants a complete rest; she ought not to move about with you on any account. But come: though I must not know, it seems, who and what you are, Mr. Chapman, I don't think you will run off with my cow; and if you like to stay ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "I am led to infer that there is really something extraordinary in the mental or physical organization of this young girl, as she alternates between a dormant state, resembling magnetic sleep, and a strong degree of hysterical or nervous excitability; but whatever may be the real cause of the second sight or preternatural knowledge which she has, according to public rumor, so frequently displayed, it is certain that many persons of this city, including ecclesiastics of high rank, have profited ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... soul, but soul has commonly a fuller and more determinate meaning; we can conceive of spirits as having no moral nature; the fairies, elves, and brownies of mythology might be termed spirits, but not souls. In the figurative sense, spirit denotes animation, excitability, perhaps impatience; as, a lad of spirit; he sang with spirit; he replied with spirit. Soul denotes energy and depth of feeling, as when we speak of soulful eyes; or it may denote the very life of anything; as, "the hidden soul ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... constantly drawing nearer to windward. At length Greenly, himself, reported that the Plantagenet had "turned the hands-to," again. At this intelligence, Sir Gervaise started, as from a reverie, smiled, and spoke. We will here remark, that now, as on the previous day, all the natural excitability of manner had disappeared from the commander-in-chief, and he was quiet, and exceedingly gentle in his deportment. This, all who knew him, understood to denote ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... me—to enrage me, so as to enable you to make your last move, should you catch me in such a mood, but you will not; all your pains will be in vain! But why should he speak in such covert terms? I presume he must be speculating on the excitability of my nervous system. But, dear friend, that won't go down, in spite of your machinations. We will try and find out what you really have been ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... his grounding in technique, was nevertheless a born aviator; a man of a natural and exceptional skill. In energy, courage, and determination he was unexcelled; but such qualities, though of extreme value in a long and trying contest, were marred by an impetuosity and an excitability which Vedrines could not master, and which more than once cost him dear. He had not, besides, as was shown in the Circuit of Britain, that skill in steering by map and compass which aided Lieut. Conneau so ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... politics! (Renewed laughter). I will admit that woman is an excitable creature, and I will admit that politics needs no more excitement; but sometimes, you know, things are homoeopathic. A woman's excitement is apt to put out a man's; and if she should bring her excitability into politics, it is likely that it would neutralize the excitement that is already there, and that there would be a grand peace! (Laughter). But, not to trifle with it, woman is excitable. Woman is yet to be educated. Woman is yet to experience the reactionary influence of being ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... severe jolt to the nervous equilibrium, sexual excitement, an overwhelming anger or grief may leave in their wake a permanent hyperthyroidism. The symptoms are the reverse of cretinism and myxedema. There is an over-excitability of the nerves in place of sluggishness, and an over-reactivity of the whole organism to its environment. The heart's action is too fast, and under the slightest stimulus gets faster to the point of obtruding itself into the ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... with the director of the theatre regarding my new opera. But I soon realised that it was out of the question for me to remain in my native town, and in the disquieting proximity of my family, from which I was restlessly anxious to get away. My excitability and depression were noticed by my relations. My mother entreated me, whatever else I might decide to do, on no account to be drawn into marriage while still so young. To this I made no reply. When I took my leave, Rosalie accompanied me ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... to quit the desk again and ride mournfully home, the remainder of the day being consumed in a rest, which only increased my melancholy feelings, because it made me more than ever conscious of my feebleness and excitability. ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... Englishwoman, she seemed to pride herself on expressing nothing in her face; its serenity defied love; he longed to see her agitated; he accused her of having no feeling, for he believed in the tradition which ascribes to Italian women a feverish excitability. ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... repeatedly observing, through the mingled tone of levity and solemnity with which he rapidly descanted upon matters of little importance, a certain air of trepidation—a degree of nervous unction in action and in speech—an unquiet excitability of manner which appeared to me at all times unaccountable, and upon some occasions even filled me with alarm. Frequently, too, pausing in the middle of a sentence whose commencement he had apparently forgotten, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... now living are some which might have been the model for this picture. It is true that in the interval the white and black Newfoundlands have been coarser, heavier, higher on the legs, with an expression denoting excitability quite foreign to the true breed, but these departures from Newfoundland character are passing away—it is to be hoped for good. The breed is rapidly returning to the type which Landseer's picture represents—a dog of great beauty, dignity, ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... had started forward, half expecting that the complacent and self-confessed spy would be immolated by his infuriated dupes. But to his surprise the shock seemed to have changed their natures, and given them the dignity they had lacked. The excitability, irritation, and recklessness which had previously characterized them had disappeared. The deputy and his posse, who had advanced to the assistance of their revealed chief, met with no resistance. ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... influenced, on account of different external conditions, and contract unequally, and hence the various movements are produced—that the many anomalous effects, hitherto ascribed to 'specific sensibilities,' are due to the 'differential sensibilities'—differential excitability of anisotropic structures and to the opposite effects of external and internal stimuli—that all varieties of plant movements are capable of a consistent mechanical explanation. Dr. Bose's "latest investigations recently communicated to the Royal Society have established the single fundamental ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... time. Again, if we trace back many a conception of menstruating women we learn that the boundary between more delicate sensating and sensibility can not be easily drawn. Here we may see the universal transition from sensibility to acute excitability which is a source of many quarrels. The witness, the wounded, or accused are all, to a considerable degree, under its influence. It is a generally familiar fact that the incomparably larger number of complaints of attacks on women's honor, fall through. It would be interesting ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... excited passion, flung back upon the sensitive brain, turned it from its balance. It had been a brilliant brain, and that very excitability that had lent its brilliance was fatal ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... it was the mistress, and it always dwelt on Madame Dammauville, Caffie, and Florentin. It seemed as if the heat of walking started his brain. When he returned in this state, after many hours of cerebral excitability, how could he find the tranquil and refreshing sleep, complete and profound, of the laboring classes who work ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... who had just returned from stabling our horses, a little aside, and learning that he lodged in a smaller chamber on the farther side of the landing, secured it for the use of mademoiselle and her woman. In spite of a certain excitability which marked him at times, he seemed to be a quick, ready fellow, and he willingly undertook to go out, late as it was, and procure some provisions and a few other things which were sadly needed, as well for my mother's ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... profound influence on practice, particularly in this country, where it had the warm advocacy of Benjamin Rush. Even more widespread became the theories of a pupil of Cullen's, John Brown, who regarded excitability as the fundamental property of all living creatures: too much of this excitability produced what were known as sthenic maladies, too little, asthenic; on which principles practice was plain enough. Few systems ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... endured. The men themselves had long since reached the point of practical exhaustion, but were carried through by the fire of their leader. Work was dogged until he stormed into sight; then it became frenzied. He seemed to impart to those about him a nervous force and excitability as real as that induced by brandy. When he looked at a man from his cavernous, burning eyes, that ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... sinks into the miserable squalor of a dipsomaniac and dies from a drunkard's disease, but her end is shown as the ineluctable consequence of her life, its early greyness and monotony, the sudden shock of a new and strange environment and the resultant weakness of will which a morbid excitability inevitably brought about. The novel, that is to say, deals with a "rhythmical series of events and follows them to their conclusion"; it gets at the roots of things; it tells us of something which we know to be true in life whether we care to read it in fiction ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... evidence of Shelley. Shelley was a young man who seemed to be afflicted with a species of religious mania. Mr. Justice Charles gave great weight to his testimony. He invited the jury to say that "although there was, in his correspondence which had been read, evidence of excitability, to talk of him as a young man who did not know what he was saying was to exaggerate the effect of his letters." He went on to ask with much solemnity: "Why should this young man have invented a tale, which must have been unpleasant to him ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... self-examination and self-torment commonly attributed to the Puritan. His friend Maxime Du Camp, who tried to bring him out and teach him the arts of popularity, he rebuffed with deliberate insult. He developed an aversion to any interruption of his work, and such tension and excitability of nerves that he shunned a day's outing or a chat with an old companion, lest it distract him for a month afterward. His mistress he seems to have estranged by an ill- concealed preference to her of his exacting Muse. To illustrate his ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... heat. It possesses the quality of absorbing water in various quantities, which renders it sometimes extremely soft and nearly liquid, and sometimes hard and firm like leather. Its prominent physical properties are excitability and contractility, which Kuehne and others have especially investigated. The motion of protoplasm in plants was first made known by Bonaventure Corti a century ago in the Charoe plants; but this important fact was forgotten, and it had to be ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... so readily supplied to him, as through the medium of a variety of scenes. His mind is awakened, now; his heart, though full of pain, is no longer benumbed. They should have food and solace. If he linger here much longer, I fear that he may sink back into a lethargy. The extreme excitability, which circumstances have imparted to his moral system, has its dangers and its advantages; it being one of the dangers, that an obdurate scar may supervene upon its very tenderness. Solitude has done what it could for him; now, for ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... conversation had silenced all save the baroness. She had listened even more intently than the others to her friend's eloquence, nodding her head assentingly to all that he said. His philosophic reflections produced as much effect on her vivacious excitability as they might on a ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... important that the temper of an advocate should be always equal. He should most carefully aim to repress everything like excitability or irritability. When passion is allowed to prevail, the judgment is dethroned. Words are spoken, or things done, which the parties afterwards wish could be unsaid or undone. Equanimity and self-possession are qualities of ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... often wondered that both my mother and myself (persons of exceptional impatience of disposition and irritable excitability of temperament) should have taken such delight in so still and monotonous an occupation, especially to the point of spending whole days in an unsuccessful pursuit of it. The fact is that the excitement of hope, keeping the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... on is generally a warning that a period of rest must be taken. An overheated brow is also another indication. If this shows itself in a child during or after school, together with listlessness and excitability, all idea of lessons should at once be laid aside for a time. It is nothing less than cruelty to work an overheated brain in such a case. Let the child go free from school till all the head trouble is removed. Also let the head be ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... battle, together with the drunkenness of troops traversing a rich wine-growing country, have often accounted for an honest, but quite mistaken belief in the minds of German soldiers, without excusing at all the deeds to which it led. Of this abnormal excitability, the old Cure of Senlis gave one or two instances ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... autobiography are important as giving a key to her subsequent life. We see here the intensity of her affections and emotions, the excitability of her temperament, the tendency to wander into regions of spiritual imagination, the liking for strong dramatic expression, which, though not in themselves blamable, yet gave to the outside world, and even to those about her who were open to adverse prepossessions, ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... to expect in him, and with which I had become familiar in my acquaintance with men of wide authority and outstanding ability. What disturbed me was that his blindness, his ill health, and his suffering had united to these traits an intense excitability and a morbid nervousness. ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... to concert-pitch by a dance or other social event. It may well be, then, that it is not the hereditary temperament of the Negro, so much as the habit, which he shares with other peoples at the same level of culture, of living and acting in a crowd, that accounts for his apparent excitability. But after all, "mafficking" is not unknown in civilized countries. Thus the quest for a race-mark of a mental ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... the highest emotions are especially susceptible to bodily sensations. Tears are physical emblems of grief, and fellow-feeling calls forth sympathetic tears. Excessive anxiety of mind produces general excitability of body, which soon results in chronic disease. Pleasurable emotions stimulate the processes of nutrition, and are restorative. This concomitance of mental and bodily states is very remarkable. Joy and Love, as well as jealousy and anger, flash in the eye and mould the features ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... the bad!' This is a bit of Faraday's innermost nature; and as I read these words I am almost constrained to retract what I have said regarding the fire and excitability of his character. But is he not all the more admirable, through his ability to tone down and subdue that fire and that excitability, so as to render himself able to write thus as a little child? I once ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... function of certain nerves as a general function which any part of the nervous system may exert upon other parts under the appropriate conditions. The higher centres, for example, seem to exert a constant inhibitive influence on the excitability of those below. The reflexes of an animal with its hemispheres wholly or in part removed become exaggerated. You all know that common reflex in dogs, whereby, if you scratch the animal's side, the corresponding hind leg will begin to make scratching ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... of his recent attack was a strong nervous excitability, which was induced by very slight causes, and Hazlet had not long returned to Saint Werner's when the dissipation of his life began once more to tell perniciously upon his state of health. It must not be imagined that because he was the easiest possible victim of temptation, ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... the cough depends mainly whether the larger bronchial tubes and the trachea are affected; the more this is the case, the more violent the inclination to cough. Further the strength of the cough depends on the excitability of the patient; the greater this is, the more as a rule will he cough. Sometimes the position of the patient is of influence; if he lies mostly on the diseased side the expectoration becomes more ...
— Prof. Koch's Method to Cure Tuberculosis Popularly Treated • Max Birnbaum
... so much misery is the increasing physical weakness of the female and the increasing nervous weakness of the male, with an increasing sexual excitability, two factors of tragic effect for the wife. Here is seen the unfortunate result of teaching two kinds of morals, one for men ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... women, it was a mortal malady and incompatible with any common show of health under any circumstances. And then came the damnatory clause in his experience ... that he had never known 'a system' approaching mine in 'excitability' ... except Miss Garrow's ... a young lady who wrote verses for Lady Blessington's annuals ... and who was the only other female rhymer he had had the misfortune of attending. And she was to die in two years, though she was dancing quadrilles then (and has lived to do the same by ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... high and rapid culture. There is the nervous temperament associated, with a high muscular development, classified as the "mental-motive" temperament. It is characterized by extreme activity of body and mind, a certain nervous excitability, prominent features, full osseous development, prominent brows, intent gaze, and generally a swarthy complexion. This type represents the positive seers, in whom the mind goes out towards the images of the soul. The other, in whom the passive temperament is ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... lay hold upon life through an exceptional sensibility. Strindberg laid hold on life through an exceptional excitability—even an exceptional irritability. In his plays, novels, and essays alike, he is a specialist in the jars of existence. He magnified even the smallest worries until they assumed mountainous proportions. He was the kind of man who, if something went wrong with the kitchen ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... strange, unbalanced creatures that never reach maturity; he was a child all his short life; he had the generosity, the affection, the impulsiveness of a child, and he had, too, the timidity, the waywardness, the excitability of a child. If a project came into his mind, he flung himself into it with the whole force of his nature; it was imperatively necessary that he should at once execute his design. No considerations of prudence or common-sense availed to ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... simple example which would perhaps seem absurd if it had not been proved true so many times: A man was so annoyed by his friend's state of nervous excitability that in taking a regular morning walk with him, which he might have enjoyed heartily, he always returned fagged out He tried whilst walking beside his friend to put himself in imagination on the other side of the street The nervous irritation lessened, and finally ceased; the walk was delightful, ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... purgative; a decoction of the leaves is similarly used. The bark contains an alkaloid discovered by Rochefontaine and Rey, called erythrin, which acts upon the central nervous system, diminishing its normal functions even to the point of abolishment, without modifying motor excitability or muscular contractility. W. Young isolated a glucoside, migarrhin, similar to saponin, but possessing the additional property ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... the colours of the two sexes are alike; but in the higher animals there appears a tendency to deeper or more intense colouring in the male, due probably to his greater vigour and excitability. In many groups in which this superabundant vitality is at a maximum, the development of dermal appendages and brilliant colours has gone on increasing till it has resulted in a great diversity between the sexes; and in most of these cases there ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... admiration view, observes that "women laugh more than men, and the haughty Turk not at all." But are not these facts referable to comparative excitability and apathy, and also to the multiplicity and variety of female ideas compared with the dulness of the Moslem's apprehension. Jean Paul proceeds to say that the more people laugh at our joke, the better we are pleased, and that this does not seem as though ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... quite by accident, in the course of his researches. He found that certain artificially-produced lesions of the nervous system, so small even as a section of the sciatic nerve, left, after healing, an increasing excitability which ended in liability to epilepsy; and there afterwards came out the unlooked-for result that the offspring of guinea-pigs which had thus acquired an epileptic habit such that a pinch on the neck would produce a fit, inherited an epileptic habit of like kind. It has, indeed, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... to suggest the impropriety of resorting to prayer alone when sexual excitability has arisen from a culpable neglect to remove the physical conditions of local excitement by the means already mentioned. Such physical causes must be well looked after, or every attempt to reform will be fruitless. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... contemporary society. But unless there is, on the part of the members of the group, a deep-seated emotional attachment to the group itself, solidarity will be very precarious. The intensity and solidarity, of feeling exhibited so markedly during war-time is made possible by the intense excitability of this instinct when the group is under conditions of stress or danger. Any scheme for enlisting a great number of individuals in modern society in a scheme of social reform or improvement, must and does, when it is successful, arouse in him a heightened sense of loyalty to a ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... with passion,—the plainness of her features was transformed into momentary beauty. Maryllia was silent. She knew that the aspirations of genius pent up in this elf-like girl were almost too strong for her, and that the very excitability and sensitiveness of her nature were such as to need the greatest care and tenderness in training and controlling. Tactfully she changed the conversation to ordinary subjects, and in a little while Cicely had learned all that Maryllia herself knew about ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... alteration; the quiet reserve she had maintained when in the presence of Mr. Vernor, and the calm frankness displayed during our accidental meeting in Barstone 264 Park, had alike given way to a strange excitability, which at times showed itself in the bursts of wild gaiety which had annoyed my fastidious sensitiveness in the earlier part of the evening, at others in the deep impassioned feeling she threw into her ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... race of boys. Why should the most critical era in the life of those who are to be men, and to govern society, be passed in a sort of outlawry,—a rude warfare with all existing institutions? The years between ten and twenty are full of the nervous excitability which marks the growth and maturing of the manly nature. The boy feels wild impulses, which ought to be vented in legitimate and healthful exercise. He wants to run, shout, wrestle, ride, row, skate; and all these together are often not sufficient to relieve the need he feels of throwing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... debility, its childishness. If the professions of so-called mediums were true, why cannot they exhibit their powers in some open and incontestable way, not surrounding themselves with all the conditions of darkness and excitability, in which the human power of self-delusion finds its ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in December, 1861, expenditures were racing ahead of receipts, and there was a deficit of $143,000,000. It must not be forgotten that this month was a time of intense excitability and of nervous reaction. Fremont had lately been removed, and the attack on Cameron had begun. At this crucial moment the situation was made still more alarming by the action of the New York banks, followed by all other banks, in suspending specie payments. They laid the responsibility ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... calm and reticent character, because he could never be moved to anger and impatient words. Sir Thomas Wade, on the contrary, was a man of exactly the opposite type, and his ch'i, better translated as excitability than anger, often increased his difficulties at a ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... time, I tried not to look at her. I don't imagine Punin's agitation proceeded from any extreme attachment to my person; it was simply that his nature could not stand the slightest unexpected shock. The nervous excitability of these ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... change involved in the withdrawal of this perpetual burden. Just as he was beginning to recover the natural tone of his mind, and to resume his old habits of work, his son sickened and died. The young man had never been strong: he had inherited his mother's delicacy of constitution, and her nervous excitability as well; but he had rare qualities of mind, and gave great promise as a scholar. The news of his death was a blow to every heart that loved his father. "This will kill the Parson," was said by sorrowing voices far and near. On the contrary, it seemed to be the very thing which cleared the atmosphere ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... paradox to point attention to the extraordinary tenacity of this basis of French character, the steady prudence and solidity which in the end always triumph over the light heart and light head, the excitability and often rash and dangerous elan, which are popularly supposed to be the chief distinguishing features of France—at the very moment of beginning such a fairy tale, such a wonderful embodiment of the visionary ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... as if all must be right. No stranger but would believe them lovers; not a servant in the house dreamed but that Miss Annie was still looking forward to her wedding. They had all been forbidden to allude to it, but they supposed it was only on account of her weakness and excitability. ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... through other channels, such as branches from the superior intercostal arteries which enter the anterior spinal artery. While total anaemia of the brain instantaneously abolishes consciousness, partial anaemia is found to raise the excitability of the cortex cerebri. By estimation of the exchange of gases in the blood which enters and leaves the brain, it has been shown that the consumption of oxygen and the production of carbonic acid in that organ is not ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... Xenocles eXhibited eXtraordinary and eXcessive eXcitability Whenever he was not calmed down by books from Cole's ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... and unnatural privation of all light is very trying to all God's creatures, to none more so than to man, and among men it is most dangerous and distressing to those who have imagination and excitability. Now Robinson was a man of this class, a man of rare capacity, full of talent and the courage and energy that vent themselves in action, but not rich in the tough fortitude which does little, feels ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... contrary winds, a mistaken course, or a serious mishap. Kate was so little in the mood for talking that Barracombe in responsive silence could toss the various probabilities about in his mind until he felt a nervous excitability ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... cruelly; but wrongs were inflicted, and avenged by fresh wrongs, and those by fresh again. May the memory of them perish forever! It has been reserved for this age, and for the liberal policy of this age, to see the last ebullitions of Celtic excitability die out harmless and ashamed of itself, and to find that the Irishman, when he is brought as a soldier under the regenerative influence of law, discipline, self-respect, and loyalty, can prove himself a worthy rival of the more stern Norse-Saxon warrior. God ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... exercise of freedom, activity, foresight, daring, independent self- determination, even in a few minutes' burst across country, strengthens me in mind as well as in body. It might not do so to you; but you are of a different constitution, and, from all I see, the power of a man's muscles, the excitability of his nerves, the shape and balance of his brain, make him what he is. Else what is the meaning of physiognomy? Every man's destiny, as the Turks say, stands written on his forehead. One does not need two glances at your face to know ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... countrymen, and revealing with a kindly smile their weaknesses. In this truest, perhaps, of all the portraits that have ever been drawn of the Poles, we see the gallantry and devotion, the generosity and hospitality, the grace and liveliness in social intercourse, but also the excitability and changefulness, the quickly inflamed enthusiasm and sudden depression, the restlessness and turbulence, the love of outward show and of the pleasures of society, the pompous pride, boastfulness, and other little vanities, in short, all the qualities, good and bad, that distinguish his countrymen. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... centres; whilst the vertical and sub-vertical tentacles on the other leaves to which no meat had been given had fully re-expanded. Judging, however, from the subsequent action of a weak solution of carbonate of ammonia on one of these latter leaves, it had not perfectly recovered its excitability and power of movement in 22 hrs.; but another leaf, after an additional 24 hrs., had completely recovered, judging from the manner in which it clasped a ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... loud impudence a twisted resemblance to Walter Babson's erratic excitability, and that won her, for love goes seeking new images of the god ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... fire. severity &c. 739; ferocity, rage, fury; exacerbation, exasperation, malignity; fit, paroxysm; orgasm, climax, aphrodisia[obs3]; force, brute force; outrage; coup de main; strain, shock, shog[obs3]; spasm, convulsion, throe; hysterics, passion &c. (state of excitability) 825. outbreak, outburst; debacle; burst, bounce, dissilience[obs3], discharge, volley, explosion, blow up, blast, detonation, rush, eruption, displosion|, torrent. turmoil &c. (disorder) 59; ferment ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... student, possessing his share of the vivacity and excitability of the south, would stamp, spring from his seat, shout and applaud, calling out in Greek "splendid!" "inimitable!" "capital!" "prettily said!" and so forth. Plutarch writes a little essay on the proper manner of behaving ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... details, as being a rich and comparatively recent illustration of the pretensions, the arguments, the patronage, by means of which windy errors have long been, and will long continue to be, swollen into transient consequence. All display in superfluous abundance the boundless credulity and excitability of mankind upon ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Ramon Hamilton presented himself at Henry Blaine's office in answer to the latter's summons, he found the great detective in a mood more nearly bordering upon excitability than he could remember having witnessed before. Instead of being seated calmly at his desk, his thoughts masked with his usual inscrutable imperturbability, Blaine was pacing restlessly back and forth with the disquietude, not of agitation, but of ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... reception and transmission of stimuli—the Nervous System. But from this specialisation we are not justified in ascribing to the nervous system any monopoly of the function, even when it is as highly developed as in Man. . . . Just as the direct excitability of the nervous system has progressed in the history of the race, so has its capacity for receiving imprints; but neither susceptibility nor retentiveness is its monopoly; and, indeed, retentiveness seems inseparable from susceptibility in ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... and was not lost on Guido, who soon after realized what his master had thus imagined. Perhaps no one ever caught more from others than Raffaelle. I do not allude to his "borrowing," so ingeniously, not soundly, defended by Sir Joshua, but rather to his excitability, (if I may here apply a modern term,)—that inflammable temperament, which took fire, as it were, from the very friction of the atmosphere. For there was scarce an excellence, within his knowledge, of his predecessors or contemporaries, ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... serious evidence have we that America is a fresh force and not a stale one? It has a great many people, like China; it has a great deal of money, like defeated Carthage or dying Venice. It is full of bustle and excitability, like Athens after its ruin, and all the Greek cities in their decline. It is fond of new things; but the old are always fond of new things. Young men read chronicles, but old men read newspapers. It admires strength and good looks; ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... is a man of robust health, both in mind and body. He has an upright and positive disposition, without the least tendency (but quite the contrary) to nervous excitability. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... waistcoated, voluble little men were really very good fellows in spite of their excitability ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... are observed in limbs otherwise paralytic, it is an indication that electric shocks may be employed with advantage, as the excitability of the limb by irritation is not extinct, though it be disobedient both to ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... springtime exhibit restlessness, excitability, perversity, and indisposition to exertion that are not displayed at other times. This condition, sometimes known as "spring fever," has been studied in over a hundred cases, both children and adults, by Kline. The majority of these report a feeling of tiredness, languor, lassitude, sometimes ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... should be clearly recognised. The centralisation of governments and of population may have its advantages; but over against them we must set grave drawbacks; among those of a political kind the worst are the growth of nervousness and excitability, and the craving for sensation—qualities which undoubtedly tend to embitter national jealousies at all times, and in the last case to drive weak dynasties or Cabinets on to war. Certainly Bismarck's clever shifts to bring about a rupture in 1870 would have failed had not the atmosphere both at ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... the study of music, as it is usually pursued. From the tradition of David's soothing Saul by his harp, has, I believe, arisen an idea that music is a thoroughly healthful, refreshing influence, with a wonderful soothing power over the nerves. And yet the nervous excitability, and even irritability, of musicians is proverbial. We must make nice distinctions. The influence of hearing music is one thing, the study of music is another. Unquestionably the power of music to lift the mind into fresh regions of enjoyment, to change the current of thought, to rouse and quicken ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... doctor appeared at my bedside. Meantime a change had come over me. I seemed to have lost the nervous excitability of a girl and to have become a woman, full of courage and hope. Dr. —— regarded me steadily for a moment; then,—"Ah! better this morning? That's my brave girl." Meeting his gaze fully, I replied, "I shall try henceforth to be brave, as befits the wife ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... extravagant excitability of his southern blood, beat his forehead and his breast, bemoaned himself as a betrayed and ruined man, and bewailed his wife and children. Rufinus, however, put an end to his ravings. He had consulted with the abbess, and he put it strongly to the unhappy man that ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and felt the whole extent of the power of sensibility; she had too much prudence, however, at once to wear out the excitability of a husband's heart; she knew that the influence of tears, potent as it is, might in time cease to be irresistible, unless aided by the magic of smiles; she knew the power of contrast even in charms; she believed the poets, who certainly understand these ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... capricious, indifferent, and excitable. Their disposition is irritable; they frequently exhibit fits of great excitability of temper and passion. They cry or weep without cause. They often have hallucinations and while asleep have attacks resembling night terrors. They complain of pains in the joints, and are frequently ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... and minds of all—the determination to conquer. The contagious influence of illusion, scattered broadcast, unbalanced weaker minds; the people were tempted to acts of generous folly by the tension to which they were subjected. Already there was a taint of morbid, nervous excitability in the air, a feverish condition in which men's hopes and fears alike became distorted and exaggerated, arousing the worst passions of humanity at the slightest breath of suspicion. And Maurice was witness to a scene in the Rue des ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... many cases children are slow in development and may have powers quite unsuspected until the time for most skilful cultivation has passed. In many cases parents are so partial that "all their geese are swans." In other cases the nervous excitability may be such that precocity leads to overstimulation and later there is arrest of development, and the promising bud does not develop into the flower of the family. In any case, the parents alone can not, as a rule, attain full comparison and due balance ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... permitted of dallying, even by a popular beauty. His character was becoming defined to Ethelberta as something very differently composed from that of her first imagining. She had set him down to be a man whose external in excitability owed nothing to self-repression, but stood as the natural surface of the mass within. Neigh's urban torpor, she said, might have been in the first instance produced by art, but, were it thus, it had gone ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... whether the wit be great or little, the "thin partition" separating madness from sanity is equally mysterious. It is true that the excitability attendant upon genius approximates so closely to madness, that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between them; but, without the attendant "genius" to hold up the train of madness, and call for ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... is extremely small behind a glass colored with cuprous oxide, and behind a film of a solution of quinine sulphate; while it is not appreciably diminished by a film of a solution of alum. The photo-electric excitability of fluor-spar crystals is increased by a moderate heat ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... cannot, because they exist only in your somewhat—shall we say, lyrical imagination? I laid the circumstances before the woman and she acted as she saw fit to act. Hugh, my dear boy, I wish that you would try to restrain your—your growing tendency to excitability. I know that this is a trying day for ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... antiquity. He thrives very well, like the generality of parsons, and will be a long liver if careful. He has what a phrenological physiologist would call a vitally sanguine constitution—has a good deal of temper, excitability, and determination in his character. You may persuade him, but he will be awkward to drive. He has a somewhat tall, gentlemanly, elastic figure; looks as if he had worn stays at some time; is polished, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... said the doctor. "Look out for his knife. Bah! how absurd!" he added the next moment, calming down from the excitability he had displayed. ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... subsiding. The function of dancing in primitive religious ceremonial has been pointed out in a previous chapter. It is there a common and obvious method of both creating and expressing a high state of nervous excitability. In later times religious dancing becomes more purely hypnotic in character, and suggestion plays a powerful part. During the medieval period the conditions were peculiarly favourable to the prevalence ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... theories, and lastly with himself, questioning and answering, going and coming, busy with a thousand details; at one time bent over the lower glass, at another roosting in the heights of the projectile, and always singing. In this microcosm he represented French loquacity and excitability, and we beg you to believe that they were well represented. The day, or rather (for the expression is not correct) the lapse of twelve hours, which forms a day upon the earth, closed with a plentiful supper carefully prepared. ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... mind all the incidents of the incomprehensible performance. He connected them with the events which had taken place shortly before at Doctor Ox's reception. He tried to discover the causes of the singular excitability which, on two occasions, had betrayed itself in the best citizens ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... his suppressed excitability bursting bounds in an instant, as he took Mrs. Peckover by the arm, and pressed her back into her chair. "Stop!—hear me; I must speak, or I shall go out of my senses! Don't interrupt me, Mrs. Peckover; and don't get up. All I want to say is this: ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... interposition on that subject. A sensibility, morbid in the highest degree, was never more awakened among those who have the largest stake in that species of interest, and the most violent against any governmental movement in relation to it. The excitability at the moment, happened, also, to be not a little augmented by party questions between the South and the North, and the efforts used to make the circumstance common to the former a sympathetic bond of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... conversion, and of the life in The Retreat, had already changed him. His customary keenness and excitability of look had subsided, and had left nothing in their place but an expression of suave and meditative repose. All his troubles were now in the hands of his priest. There was a passive regularity in his bodily movements and a beatific serenity in ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... mysterious information of the utmost importance, putting a finger to their lips, screwing up their eyes to enjoin secrecy. A provincial flavor distinguished them all, with differences of inflection, Southern excitability, the drawling accent of the Centre, Breton sing-song, all blended in the same idiotic, strutting self-sufficiency; frock-coats after the style of Landerneau, mountain shoes, and home-spun linen; the monumental assurance of village ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... though apt to be hasty and headlong, was always likely to come right in the end; but internally, we may perceive, his modesty, self-distrust, anxiety and other unexpected qualities, must have been great. And then his explosiveness, impatience, excitability; his conscious dumb ignorance of all things beyond his own small horizon of personal survey! An Orson capable enough of being coaxed and tickled, by some first-rate conjurer;—first-rate; a second-rate might have failed, and got torn to pieces for his pains. But Seckendorf ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... Degrees of excitability. Health. Comparison with a furnace. Oxidation. Electricity. Hydrogen. Theory of ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... Indians singing their racing songs, for the Indian has a song for every event in life; bodies of United States troops were paraded here and there as a precautionary and impressive measure; the number of Indians assembled, and their excitability, began to cause the authorities ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and character they have remained, even where ancestral physical types are reasserting themselves. The folk of a Celtic type, whether pre-Celtic, Celtic, or Norse, have all spoken a Celtic language and exhibit the same old Celtic characteristics—vanity, loquacity, excitability, fickleness, imagination, love of the romantic, fidelity, attachment to family ties, sentimental love of their country, religiosity passing over easily to superstition, and a comparatively high degree of sexual morality. Some of these traits were ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... pleasure in the possession of his wonderful flowers was exhausted. Their textures and nuances palled on him. Besides, despite the care he lavished on them, most of his plants drooped. He had them removed from his rooms, but in his state of extreme excitability, their very absence exasperated him, for his eyes were pained ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... criterion by which we judge whether it be alive or not. Our notion of the death of a part is based upon nothing more or less than this—that we can no longer detect any irritability in it. If we now proceed with our analysis of what is to be included in the notion of excitability, we at once discover, that the different actions which can be provoked by the influence of any external agency are essentially of three kinds. The result of an excitation or irritation may, according to circumstances, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... sovereigns after months and years of lonely toiling or sharing his last plug of tobacco with a stranger met on the road. His faults she knew as well: his drunkenness often, his looseness of living, his excitability, all born of unnatural surroundings; but his virtues she knew as well, none better, and all her craving for the scent of the gums and to feel again the swaying saddle and to hear again the fathomless noon-day silence and to see again the stock rushing in jumbling haste for the water-hole, ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... every ill, and that was the perilous drug mercury. With it, they rather fed than physicked me; and its deleterious effects on the nervous system were doubly injurious to me, as increasing tenfold the excitability that required every curb. Among all the marvels of my life, the greatest is that of my having grown up to be one of the healthiest of human beings, and with an inexhaustible flow of even mirthful spirits; for certainly I was long kept hovering on the verge ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... diseased after a time, though nourished with the same food which increased their growth from infancy, and afterwards supported them for many years in unimpaired health and strength, must be sought for from the laws of animal excitability, which, though at first increased, is afterwards diminished by frequent repetitions of its adapted stimulus, and at length ceases to ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... my imagination had been before worked upon, even from my earliest childhood, and the great nervous excitability of my temperament, it is a wonder that my mind did not reel, if not succumb— but I now began to combat the approaches of one sort of insanity with the actual presence of another—I wrote verses. That was "tempering the wind to the shorn lamb," ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Schwartz was one to influence all around him. He seems to have had all the quiet German patience and endurance of hardship, without much excitability, and with a steadiness of judgment and intense honesty and integrity, that disposed every one to lean on him and rely on him for their temporal as well as their spiritual matters—great charity and warmth of heart, and a shrewdness of perception ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... approach each other, gravitation, without in the least hinting at its nature; yet, though he knew not what gravitation was, he investigated the laws by which bodies were acted on by it, in the same manner, though we are ignorant of excitability, or the nature of that property which distinguishes living from dead matter, we can investigate the laws by which dead matter acts on living bodies through this medium. We know not what magnetic attraction is, and yet we can investigate its laws; ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... tell her lover of the imprudent anonymous letter she had sent to Quinones. Fearing from her husband's excitability some serious consequence would ensue, she determined to get him off the scent, as it was not possible to restore his tranquillity. The course that seemed to her best to take was to remove his suspicions from Luis and put them on Jaime Moro. He was the only one who, by his position, age, and appearance ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... particular. For jealousy is a vice of the mind, a culpable tendency of the temper, having certain well known and well defined effects and concomitants, all of which are visible in Leontes, and, I boldly say, not one of which marks its presence in Othello;—such as, first, an excitability by the most inadequate causes, and an eagerness to snatch at proofs; secondly, a grossness of conception, and a disposition to degrade the object of the passion by sensual fancies and images; thirdly, a sense of shame of his own feelings exhibited in a solitary moodiness of humour, and yet ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... courteous youth—to whom, of course, I was quite unknown and deaf and dumb—who graciously shifted goods and chattels from the inn's best room to hand it over to me for my occupation. With due tact and some excitability, I protested vigorously against his coming out. He insisted. Smiling upon him with grave benignity, I said that I would take a smaller room, and gave orders to that effect to my man, adding that my whole ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... Mr. Otis was taken by his friend, Colonel Samuel Osgood, to the home of the latter in Andover. There the enfeebled patriot passed the remainder of his life. He became very obese, and his nervous excitability to ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... written for the light reading of tired readers. To do the work in their way, they required to be brooded over, or had at least the aid of tune and of impassioned recitation. Stories which are to be told to children in the age of eagerness and excitability, or sung in banquet halls to assembled warriors, whose daily ideas and feelings supply a flood of comment ready to gush forth on the slightest hint of the poet, cannot fly too swift and straight to the mark. But Mr. Macaulay ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... which were built for just such emergencies as the present. The gradually freshening breeze had now dispersed the mist, and the two vessels were clearly in view from the shore and to each other. The remarkable interest of the scene increased with each moment. Don Herero, with all the excitability of his nationality, could hardly contain himself as he walked rapidly back and forth, always keeping his eyes towards ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... quickened into eagerness, an eagerness deepened by the tender interest that always hangs round the names of those whom we have known in happier and younger days. The happy memories recalled by hearing of his old tutor seemed to blot out his present misfortunes. With French excitability, ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... mistake to call nothing intemperance but that degree of physical excitement which completely overthrows the mental powers. There is a state of nervous excitability, resulting from what is often called moderate stimulation, which often long precedes this, and is, in regard to it, like the premonitory warnings of the fatal cholera—an unsuspected draught on the vital powers, from which, ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... thing is the innate aptitude to perceive things and to form ideas, i. e., the innate intellect. By aptitude (Anlage), however, can be understood nothing else at present than a manner of reacting, a sort of capability or excitability, impressed upon the central organs of the nervous system after repeated association of nervous excitations (through a great many ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... platoon. The risk of either was about equal to that of his being tortured at the stake, on the steps of the Capitol. In spite of all this simple vanity, and flightiness of brain, you could see that the parson had good strong principles, and held to them fast; and I believe that his nervous excitability would not have deterred him from encountering real danger. He appeared thoroughly courteous, generous, and good-natured; and my companion, to whose regiment he had been chaplain, told me that nothing could exceed his ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... fiery speed, according as the affection is of a gentle or violent description; digestion, secretion, and excretion will follow their natural course; the excitable membranes will pliantly play in a gentle vapor-bath, and excitability as well as sensitiveness will increase. Therefore the condition of the greatest momentary mental pleasure is at the same time the condition of the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... though perhaps without examining the cause of an omission which certainly is not fortuitous. The reason lies in the situation and in the feeling of the moment; where confusion, and anxiety, and earnest self-defence predominate, the excitability and play of the imagination would be checked ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... eluded, kept his eager, unquiet mind continually on the strain of speculation and anticipation. "I hope they will come out and let us settle the matter. You know I hate being kept in suspense." The nervous excitability—irritability—that often overlay the usually cordial kindliness and gracious bearing of the man, was an easy prey to such harassment. It breaks out at times in his letters, but was only occasionally visible to those around him. By the first of December he already foresees that he cannot ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... the step. It came prompt, as usual, but with a promptitude, we felt disposed to flatter ourselves, inspired by other feelings than mere excitability of nerve and vehemence of intent. We thought our Professor's "foot-fall" (to speak romantically) had in it a friendly promise this morning; and ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... son," the dying man went on. "I am a great sinner. All my life long, however, I have thought of my death. I was once the friend of the great Pope Julius II.; and that illustrious Pontiff, fearing lest the excessive excitability of my senses should entangle me in mortal sin between the moment of my death and the time of my anointing with the holy oil, gave me a flask that contains a little of the holy water that once issued from the rock in the wilderness. I have kept the secret ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... blood, or it means nothing. Whether there be 'persecution' or no, there will be affliction, 'because of the word,' and all the joyful emotion will ooze out at the man's finger-ends. The same superficial excitability which determined his swift reception of the word will determine his hasty casting of it aside, and immediately he stumbles. All his acts will be done in a hurry, and none of his moods will last. Feeling is in its place down in the engine-room, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... so little. I shall not die of years, but of sheer want of strength.' In begging one of his friends at a distance to visit him once more, he reminds him that, in his present state of health, he must not forget that it might be for the last time. No wonder then if his natural excitability was often morbidly increased. He always looked forward with joy to his leaving this 'wicked world,' but as long as he had to work in it, he exerted all his powers no less for his own immediate task than for the general affairs of the Church, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... is of no great consequence what it was in the composition which set her off into this nervous paroxysm. She was in such a state that almost any slight agitation would have brought on the attack, and it was the accident of her transient excitability, very probably, which made a trifling cause the seeming occasion of so much disturbance. The theme was signed, in the same peculiar, sharp, slender hand, E. Venner, and was, of course, written by that wild-looking girl who had ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... knowledge. At first they were at a loss what measures to take: one thing they thought of the greatest importance, which was to keep Miss Kelly in entire ignorance of what was transpiring on board. Some uncurbed outbreaking of alarm would be almost certain, such was the excitability of her temperament. This, in their present situation, might be attended with the ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... and higher co-ordination of the muscles for their functions, and her knack of quickly sizing up a situation, and finding her way in the midst of a confusion of associations. Woman is furthermore aided in the latter faculty through the greater excitability of her ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... suffering from incipient insanity, connected with an extraordinary excitability of the nervous system, which sometimes occasions, if I may so express myself, the strange phenomenon of sleeping and waking at the same time, as in the case ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... there was a sober light in the dark, steady eyes. In the St. James Club, which he had just left, perhaps the most sedate, certainly the most exclusive club in New York, it had been the one topic of conversation. Elderly gentlemen, not usually given to excitability, had joined with the younger members in a hectic denunciation of the police as criminally inefficient, and had made dire and absurdly vain threats as to what they, electing themselves for the moment a supreme court of last resort, proposed to do under the circumstances. The irony was exquisite, ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... two or three weeks, Arthur had been very quiet and taciturn, but on the morning of this day he had seemed restless and nervous, and his nervousness and excitability increased until a violent headache came on, and Charles, the servant, who attended him, reported to Mrs. Tracy that his midday meal had been untouched and that he really seemed quite ill. Then Frank went to him, and sitting down beside him as he lay upon a couch in the ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... ivory. There was a drawn, wearied look about the usually large, open, brilliant eyes—that rapt and far-off gaze which is always Mr. Gladstone's expression when his mind and heart are full. There are two kinds of excitement and excitability. The man who bursts into laughter, or shouts, or tears, suffers less from his overstrained nerves than he whose face is placid while within are mingled all the rage, and terror, and tumult of great thoughts, and passions, and hopes. It struck me that Mr. ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... of their acknowledged nervous energy and excitability, Americans often show a good deal of a quality that rivals the phlegm of the Dutch. Their above-mentioned patience during railway or other delays is an instance of this. So, in the incident related in Chapter XII. the passengers in the inside coach retained their seats throughout the whole experiment. ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... resulting from infection of a wound by a specific micro-organism, the bacillus tetani, and characterised by increased reflex excitability, hypertonus, and spasm of one or ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... Pisan climate depress the vital force, induce an overwhelming lassitude, and are, in my opinion, most unfavourable elements in a climate so generally recommended for pulmonary consumption. Whatever effect the humid mildness of the air may have in diminishing excitability, and in allaying pulmonary irritation in patients of a nervous temperament, it is decidedly injurious in those of a feeble and lymphatic habit.... The delusion of an Italian climate, as regards the cure or prophylaxis of tubercular ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... were almost free from corporal punishment, which was not by any means the case in the public rooms of the school—Mr. Neil being, I was going to say, a terror to evildoers, but he was in fact a terror to all kinds of doers, from the excitability of his ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... experience, he met with serious accident. He was about to ascend for the ordinary parachute performance with a hot air balloon, which was being held down by about thirty men, one among them being a Chinaman possessed of much excitability and very long finger nails. By means of these latter the man contrived to gouge a considerable hole in the fabric of the balloon. Mr. Spencer, to avoid a disappointment, risked an ascent, and it was not till the balloon had reached 600 feet that the rent developed ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... extreme. The paroxysms of agitation and terror which they sometimes excite, and which are often spontaneously renewed by darkness and solitude, and by other exciting causes, are of the nature of temporary insanity. Indeed, the extreme nervous excitability which they produce sometimes becomes a real insanity, which, though it may, in many cases, be finally outgrown, may probably in many others lead to lasting and most ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... intervals. 5. Last situation of the fibres continues after contraction. 6. Contraction greater than usual induces pleasure or pain. 7. Mobility of the fibres uniform. Quantity of sensorial power fluctuates. Constitutes excitability. II. Of sensorial exertion. 1. Animal motion includes stimulus, sensorial power, and contractile fibres. The sensorial faculties act separately or conjointly. Stimulus of four kinds. Strength and weakness defined. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... consideration, however, based upon deep conviction, which constrains me to forbid the introduction here as far as possible of such music as can powerfully affect any person's mind, and to this I of course am no exception. Know that my wife suffers from a morbid excitability, which will finally destroy all the happiness of her life. Within these strange walls she is never quit of that strained over-excited condition, which at other times occurs but temporarily, and then generally as the forerunner ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... The repressed excitability she had detected made her vaguely nervous (not that she would have so called herself), and as the next day was the blank Sunday, she appeased and worked off her restlessness by walking with the children to Sedhurst church. It was the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to itself emotions, sentiments, intelligence; it plans and it wills, it battles against other desires. I say IT, as if the desire were an entity, a personality, but what I mean is that the somatic and cerebral activities of a desire become so organized as to operate as a unit. A permanent excitability of these nervous centers as a unit is engendered, and these are easily aroused either by a stimulus from the body or from without. Thus the sex impulse arises directly from tensions within the sex organs but is built up and elaborated by approval of and admiration ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... Germany," said Tom, his heavy manner of talking contrasting strangely with Frenchy's excitability. "So you were a German citizen before you got to be an American; and your people over there ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... effect of really interesting the doctor in my present condition, which was indeed one of chronic irritation and extreme excitability, alternating with fits of the very blackest despair. Instead of offending my gentleman I had put him on his mettle, and for half an hour he honored me with the most exhaustive inquisition ever elicited from a medical man. His panacea was somewhat in the nature of an anti-climax, but at least it ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... to take into his calculations the excitability of female nerves. It was all very well for his wife to remember everything and proceed correctly when he was in the verandah of the pagoda, but when she knew that her best-beloved was at the bottom of the sea, and saw the air-bells rising, her courage ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... to the common narcotics, nicotine, morphine, opium, alcohol, etc., and are frequently used as antidotes for these poisons. Binz found that dogs that have been stupified with alcohol could be awakened with coffee. It may thus be prescribed for hard drinkers to counteract the baleful excitability produced by alcohol; in fact, many topers taper off after a long debauch with coffee containing small amounts of alcoholic beverages. Considering its ability to counteract the slow intoxication of tobacco, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... to get sleep is to many persons a matter of high importance. Nervous persons who are troubled with wakefulness and excitability, usually have a strong tendency of blood on the brain, with cold extremities. The pressure of the blood on the brain keeps it in a stimulated or wakeful state, and the pulsations in the head are often painful. Let such rise and chafe the body and ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... of my being able to suffer as acutely as I do without being made either ill or absolutely miserable, is the childish excitability of my temperament, and the sort of ecstacy which any beautiful thing gives me. No day, almost no hour, passes without some enjoyment of the sort this coral-bordered road gave me, which not only charms my senses completely at the time, but returns again and again before my memory, delighting ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... society exclusively if he had chosen. His temperament, no doubt, exposed him to suffering; and the exquisite sensitiveness of a man of genius may demand our sympathy; but in far greater measure is our sympathy demanded for the thousands upon thousands of people who, from illness or nervous excitability, suffer from quite as keen a sensitiveness without the consolation of the ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... retraction of the neck; deep-seated pain in the back, shooting round the body (girdle-pain) and down the limbs; painful cramp-like spasms in the muscles of the back and limbs, with increased reflex excitability, sometimes so marked as to simulate the ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... determine, for instance, the degree of attention with its resistance against distracting stimuli, the power of memory under various conditions and on various material, the mental excitability and power of discrimination, the quickness and correctness of perception, the chains of associations, the rapidity of the associative process for various groups, the types of reaction, the forming of habits and their persistence, ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... her worth one moment's excitability, so he calmly told her she could find another occupant for his room if she was dissatisfied with his conduct, and he would ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... well conceived. "I will pay you good interest, in place of a reference," she said. Upon this, the Jewish excitability, vibrating between the desire of gain and the terror of consequences, assumed a new form. Some of them groaned; some of them twisted their fingers frantically in their hair; some of them called on the Deity worshipped by their fathers to bear witness how they had suffered, by dispensing with ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... OF.—The continuance of a visual impression upon the retina of the eye after the exciting cause is removed. The length of time varies with the intensity of the light and the excitability of the retina, and ordinarily is brief, though the duration may be for hours, or even days. The after image may be either positive or negative, the latter when the bright part appears dark and the colored parts in their corresponding ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... gentlemen trying to kill each other for trifles, or of two Irish-American millionaires trying to ruin each other for trash. But the very pettiness of the pretext and even the purpose illustrates the same conception; which may be called the virtue of excitability. And it is really this, and not any rubbish about iron will-power and masterful mentality, that redeems with romance their clockwork cosmos and its industrial ideals. Being a live wire does not mean that the nerves should be like wires; but ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... intellects, and superior intellects more commonly have normal nervous systems. But the psychopathic temperament, whatever be the intellect with which it finds itself paired, often brings with it ardor and excitability of character. The cranky person has extraordinary emotional susceptibility. He is liable to fixed ideas and obsessions. His conceptions tend to pass immediately into belief and action; and when he gets a new idea, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... quick excitability, and consequent irritability, are the marked ingredients in every strong character; its strength must be employed against itself to produce ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... intended to produce such an effect, the last words aroused the "Bounding" warrior to fury. The same nervous excitability which rendered him so active in his person, made it difficult to repress his feelings, and the words were scarcely past the lips of the speaker than the tomahawk left the hand of the Indian. Nor was it cast without ill-will, and a fierce determination to slay. Had the intention ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper |
