"Irritant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but they have generally served a long apprenticeship to sharp criticism. If they still care for it (and some do after years of experience much more than the world thinks), they care less for it than at first, and have come to regard it as an unavoidable and incessant irritant, of which they shall never be rid. But a bank director undergoes no similar training and hardening. His functions at the Bank fill a very small part of his time; all the rest of his life (unless he be in Parliament) is spent ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... take immediate effect—although this is by no means necessary, as there are numerous substances which accumulate in the system, and when given in small and repeated quantities ultimately prove fatal—notably, antimony. The diagnosis of the effects of irritant poisons is not so difficult as it is in the case of narcotics or other neurotics, where the symptoms are very similar to those produced by apoplexy, epilepsy, tetanus, convulsions, or other forms of disease of the brain. Besides, one of the most difficult facts we have to contend with in such ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... deliberately renewed some years before the agitation on the spread of slavery, by setting forth a doctrine of extreme cleverness. This doctrine, like many others of its kind, seemed at first sight to be the balm it pretended, instead of an irritant, as it really was. It was calculated to deceive all except thinking men, and to silence all save a merciless logician. And this merciless logician, who was heaven-sent in time of need, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... me," said the doctor at last, eyeing me from beneath his bushy black brows. "To tell the truth, I fancy you must have eaten something poisonous at one of the restaurants. They sometimes use tinned food which is not quite good, and it sets up irritant poisoning. I had a case very similar to yours last week. The climate here did not suit him, and ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... such as would have filled any ordinary guide-book. He never dreamed that the world held so many different kinds of stone or half so many saints. As they started off for the hotel he declared that he would be willing to give ten dollars for a good twenty-round fight, as a counter-irritant. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... She was finding a species of salve for her own disappointment in this irritant applied to another. "What does make you wear that hair ring?" ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... were given in our honour. But the conviction grew upon me that Maude had no real liking for the social side of life, that she acquiesced in it only on my account. Thus, at the very outset of our married career, an irritant developed: signs of it, indeed, were apparent from the first, when we were preparing the house we had rented for occupancy. Hurrying away from my office at odd times to furniture and department stores to help decide such momentous questions as curtains, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... be murdering you at the end of the first week just for some excitement. If you need a rest—and you are rather seedy—forget all about this Patterson business and plunge into something new. The best rest in the world is a counter-irritant." ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... case of opium fiends and drunkards, so with habitual cathartic drug-users, should they be suddenly deprived of the accustomed artificial stimulus and irritant they become absolutely miserable, mentally and physically. It is a well-known physiological fact that every artificial stimulation of the intestines is followed by a corresponding loss of vitality and reaction. Now that ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... physicians should bow before the facts which he excels in discovering" (7/19.), he has also been able to make direct application of the marvels of entomology to some of the problems of hygiene and medicine. He has shown that the irritant poison secreted by certain caterpillars, "which sets the fingers which handle them on fire," is nothing but a waste product of the organism, a derivative of uric acid; he does not hesitate to perform painful experiments on himself in order to furnish the proof of his theory; and he ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... is unendurable. The counter-irritant to grief is sanity, not emotion. When a woman is a little frightened the presence of the unafraid is ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... said in other nations, that the poor abuses of the time want countenance, and this moreover in the interests of the uses themselves, for the presence of a small modicum of sincerity acts as a wholesome stimulant and irritant to the prevailing spirit of academicism; moreover, we hold it useful to have a certain number of melancholy examples whose notorious failure shall serve as a warning to those who do not cultivate a power of immoral self-control which shall prevent them ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... on the editorial page and, partly because they were then a novelty, partly because of a quirk of fate—editor-in-chief Charles Dana frequently had them set up in bold type, believing their logic was a fine counter-irritant for heated political campaigns of the day—the attention of subscribers was focused on them more sharply than usual. In fact, readers over the entire country were soon conjecturing about the identity of "the Sun's astronomer." Very few knew that it was Garrett Serviss, who successfully ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... didn't, Henry," replied Mrs. Upton. "But that was only because it takes two to make a quarrel, and I loved you so much that I was really blind to all your possibilities as an irritant." ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... is the political homilies of the editor himself. Not only are they deeply interesting to the hoi polloi, but invaluable from a therapeutical standpoint, being successfully employed in cases of itch, smallpox, etc. as a counter irritant. I opine that one of these read in a loud voice to an Egyptian mummy would result in its immediate resurrection. If it had the faintest conception of humor it would wake up long enough to laugh, and if it hadn't it would come ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... as Lyveden's health of mind was concerned, itself grievously inopportune, the catastrophe could not have happened at a more opportune moment. Trading upon the heels of his encounter with Valerie, it made a terrific counter-irritant to the violent inflammation which that meeting had set up. Yet if the back of the sickness was broken, disorder and corrective, alike so drastic, were bound seriously to lower the patient's tone. His splendid physical condition supported its brother ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... as seen in (a) corrosive poisons; (b) irritant poisons, causing congestion and inflammation of the mucous membranes—e.g., metallic and vegetable irritants; (c) stimulants or sedatives to the nerve ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... think I may say with reasonable certainty that, in order to cure him complete, all that we need to do is a simple and easy surgical operation—namely, to remove these irritant bodies." ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... Reckitt's Blue except that it is not Reckitt's. Blue does not belong to Reckitt, but to the sky; black does not belong to Day and Martin, but to the abyss. Even the finest posters are only very little things on a very large scale. There is something specially irritant in this way about the iteration of advertisements of mustard: a condiment, a small luxury; a thing in its nature not to be taken in quantity. There is a special irony in these starving streets to see such a great ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... her anger when, in full sight of the guides, he swept her up into his arms and kissed her several times. Possibly she would have been really angered, deeply angered, had she realized that these cyclones were due, as a rule, not so much to appreciation of her as to the necessity of a strong counter-irritant to a sudden attack of awe of her as a fine lady and doubt of his own ability to cope with her. "Good-by, Rita," cried he, releasing her as suddenly as he had seized her and rushing toward the landing. "If I don't ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... some biscuits in her bag she took one out and ate it. The dry crumbs choked her, and she hastily swallowed a little brandy from her husband's flask. The burning sensation in her throat acted as a counter-irritant, momentarily relieving the dull ache of her nerves. Then she felt a gently-stealing warmth, as though a soft air fanned her, and the swarming fears relaxed their clutch, receding through the stillness that enclosed ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... Musset, by virtue of his genial, ironical temperament, eminently clear brain, and undying achievements, belongs to the great poets of the ages. We to-day do not approve the timbre of his epoch: that impertinent, somewhat irritant mask, that redundant rhetoric, that occasional disdain for the metre. Yet he remains the greatest poete de l'amour, the most spontaneous, the most sincere, the most emotional singer of the tender passion that modern times ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... Goodwood, which she left with her own hand at his hotel. He never asked her a question about Isabel: hadn't he come five thousand miles to see for himself? He was thus not in the least authorised to think Mrs. Osmond unhappy; but the very absence of authorisation operated as an irritant, ministered to the harsh-ness with which, in spite of his theory that he had ceased to care, he now recognised that, so far as she was concerned, the future had nothing more for him. He had not even the satisfaction of knowing the truth; apparently he could not even ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... The counter-irritant had instant effect. All moisture died out of the rat eyes, leaving them two little horrible beads. The miser shrank, groveled, in mortal ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... the horse coughs is of importance in diagnosis. The cough is a forced expiration, following immediately upon a forcible separation of the vocal cords. The purpose of the cough is to remove some irritant substance from the respiratory passages, and it occurs when irritant gases, such as smoke, ammonia, sulphur vapor, or dust, have been inhaled. It occurs from inhalation of cold air if the respiratory passages ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... invisible gnats that breed in alkali bogs sighted the Major and promptly rose in swarms to settle upon his ears and in the edges of his hair. He fanned them away automatically and without audible comment. Perhaps they served as a counter-irritant; at any rate, the sting of the indignity put upon him by what he termed a "hobo lunch" was finally forgotten in ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... kept for roach poison or in parlor matches, is sometimes eaten by children and has been willfully taken for the purpose of suicide. It is a powerful irritant. The first thing to be done is to give freely of magnesia and water; then to give mucilaginous drinks as flaxseed tea, gum water or sassafras pith and water; and lastly to administer finely powdered bone-charcoal, either in pill or in mixture ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... already taken place. The baby has had so much milk that it is unable to digest all of it. A part of the milk spoils in the digestive tract. This fermented material is partly absorbed and irritates the whole system. A part of it remains in the alimentary tract where it acts as a direct local irritant to the intestines. When these are irritated, the blood-vessels begin to pour out their serum to soothe the bowels and the result is diarrhea. The sick child is fed often. Digestive power is practically absent. The additional food given ferments and more serum has to be thrown out to ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... Whether this new irritant—and everything seemed to annoy her now—had begun to tell on our beautiful Kate, or whether the gayety of the winter both at home and in Washington, where she had spent some weeks during the season, ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... forgotten all that!" said Carrie, working herself up into a defiant rage because she wanted to feel a counter-irritant to a secret uneasiness which lurked at the bottom of her mind. "But spare food and old clothes ought not to buy a girl, body and soul. Anyway, I price myself higher than that. I'm not going to sacrifice a job I fancy, and ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... friends to make her "one of the family." "If," she would say, "you would let me share in any disappointments or troubles, I would feel more worthy of your love—I will tell you some of mine as a counter-irritant!" Many followed her behest with good result. "I'm cross this morning," wrote a young missionary at the beginning of a long letter, "and I know it is all my own fault, but I am sure that writing to you will ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... disease can be transmitted by vaccination. In some infants, whose skin is very delicate, and especially in those, some members of whose family have been liable to eruptions on the skin, vaccination has seemed to act as an irritant, and to give occasion to an eruption, or aggravate an eruption already existing. Such cases, however, are not frequent, and the eruption is not more troublesome than those which often appear in teething children. The occurrence ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... an opening made into the prepuce, the free ends being then welded together. Females were treated likewise, the ring including both labia. In some countries an agglutination of the parts induced by some irritant or a cutting instrument answered the purpose among females. Dunglison mentions that the prepuce was first drawn over the glans, and then that the ring transfixed the prepuce in that position; that the ancients so muzzled the gladiators to prevent them from being ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... she found her a deft, tactful and silent nurse. But the very sight of Brinnaria was to her an irritant tonic. She was entirely fit for duty the next day, not a trace of ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... spirit. Even if impatience were ever, anywhere, a virtue, in India it is always an unmixed evil and should be guarded against. The warning is the more needed because the tropical climate itself is a very bad irritant to the nervous system. Among the Hindus patience is regarded the supreme virtue of God and of man; and it should adorn every missionary who seeks to be ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... sends the particles of dust into the upper and less used lobes of the lungs, and these become a constant irritant, until they finally excite an inflammation, which may end in consumption. All occupations in which ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... is an irritant poison, and that daily indulgence in its use originates dyspepsia, or indigestion, and many other serious complaints. Of all kinds of spirits the best as a ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... so complained of when we first came—that they weren't "feminine," they lacked "charm," now became a great comfort. Their vigorous beauty was an aesthetic pleasure, not an irritant. Their dress and ornaments had not a touch of the ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... with extravagance of action as the symptom of intense religious conviction. And its influence on social development had been such that the susceptibility of the public mind to suggestions was as a raw wound in the presence of a powerful irritant. Such an institution as the Inquisition could only have maintained itself among a people thoroughly familiar with supernaturalism, and to whom its preservation was the first and most ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... when the operation was finished, "that I forgot to bring any Spanish flies with me; we must have something here to answer for a counter-irritant!" ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... so deep. It was sinking because it was all doing what Kate had conceived for him; it wasn't in the least doing—and that had been his notion of his life—anything he himself had conceived. The difference, accordingly, renewed, sharp, sore, was the irritant under which he had quitted the palace and under which he was to make the best of the business of again dining there. He said to himself that he must make the best of everything; that was in his mind, at the traghetto, even ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... already begun to shrink from the companionship of his family. The play and voices of his little children jarred his shattered nerves almost beyond endurance; and every look of love and act of trust became a stinging irritant instead of the grateful incense that had once filled his home with perfume. In bitter self-condemnation he saw that he was ceasing to be a protector to his daughters, and that unless he could break the dark, self-woven spells he would drag them down to the depths of poverty, ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... astounded ourselves by more originality than we had been accustomed to believe was left in the world altogether—while something put into our conversation just the right amount of polite friction to act as a counter-irritant, so that, when we left the table, each felt that he had been at his best—had been brilliant, in fact, and shone with lustre enough ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... Sybarite comprehended in a glance and, comprehending, bristled like a truculent game-cock or the faithful hound in the ghost-story. The aspect of Respectability seemed to have upon him the effect of a violent irritant; his eyes took on a hot, hard look, his lips narrowed to a thin, inflexible crease, and his hands ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... in this way, Thomas Hutchinson was one. The good Governor, having read his instructions, knew what his duties were. One of them manifestly was to stand in defense of Government; and, when Government was every day being argumentatively attacked, to provide, as a counter-irritant, arguments in defense of Government. Imagining that facts determined conclusions and conclusions directed conduct, Mr. Hutchinson hoped to diminish the influence of Samuel Adams by showing that the latter's facts were wrong, and that his inferences, however ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... realisation. Russia's short-sighted policy in 1878, in annexing the Roumanian province of Bessarabia as a reward for their valiant support at Plevna, drove the Roumanians into the arms of Austria-Hungary, and for a whole generation not even the perpetual irritant of Magyar tyranny in Transylvania could avail to shake the entente between Vienna and Bucarest, strengthened as it was by the personal friendship of the Emperor Francis Joseph and King Charles. But the spell ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... in danger of losing her breath entirely. "A guinea-hen sort of a woman" Councill called her. "She can talk more an' say less 'n any woman I ever see," was Bacon's verdict, after she had been at dinner at his house. She was a perpetual irritant. ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... not discernible, may quell for the moment, but it does not moralise, nor abidingly deter. There must be an apparent proportion between the offence and the punishment. A Draconian code, visiting petty offences with the severity due to high misdemeanours, is more of an irritant than a represser of crime, because it goes beyond ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... occurs first on exposed parts, as the hands, arms, face, and neck, in those who handle irritant dyes, sugar, ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... hating each other with true Oriental fervor, they hated the Dutch even more. In order to divert this hostility toward themselves into safer channels, the Dutch evolved still another scheme, which consisted in installing at the court of the Susuhunan, as at that of the Sultan, a counter-irritant in the person of a rival prince, who, though theoretically a vassal, was in reality as independent as the titular ruler. And, as a final touch, the Dutch decreed that the cost of maintaining the elaborate establishments of these hated rivals must be defrayed from ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... vision. "Fine chance we'd have had," he muttered, "if that happened to be a bulldog. Angel," he said, as the mate drew near, "hot coffee is good for moon-blindness, taken externally, as a blistering agent—a counter-irritant. We have no fly-blisters in the medicine-chest, but smoking-hot grease must be just as good, if not better than either. Have the cook heat up a potful, and you get me out ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... won't, O, you inventor of rain-water creeks!" Hour by hour, day by day, against almost continual head winds and with the lowest water in years, that discouraging prophecy invaded me and was repulsed. And that is why we have pessimists in the world. A pessimist is merely a counter-irritant. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... difficult to dissolve, so that practically little of it is digested. It serves a mechanical purpose in the digestive tract by helping to fill the organs and dilute the real food. If fibrous, it acts as an irritant and overcomes sluggishness of the intestines known as constipation. The outer coats of cereals are an example of coarse cellulose, as used in brown bread and some ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education
... internally in doses of from one to five drops. The British Pharmacopoeia contains a watery solution—the Aqua Chloroformi—which is useful in disguising the taste of nauseous drugs; a liniment which consists of equal parts of camphor liniment and chloroform, and is a useful counter-irritant; the Spiritus Chloroformi (erroneously known as "chloric ether"), which is a useful anodyne in doses of from five to forty drops; and the Tinctura Chloroformi et Morphinae Composita, which is the equivalent of a proprietary ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... quite adorably melancholy; there is something calm, severe, manly, and mysterious about him which interests me profoundly. His unvarying solemnity and the silence which envelops him act like an irritant on the mind. His mute dignity is worthy of a fallen king. Griffith and I spend our time over him as though he were ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... popular notion that this happens to the public loss; but the truth is that no discovery of any real value is ever entirely lost. It may be retarded; but that is all. In the case of the gas companies and the incandescent light, many of them to whom it was in the early days as great an irritant as a red flag to a bull, emulated the performance of that animal and spent a great deal of money and energy in bellowing and throwing up dirt in the effort to destroy the hated enemy. This was not long nor universally the spirit shown; and to-day in hundreds of cities ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... Priscilla, temporizing, "try him with a little—just a little slap? Only a little one," she added hastily, for the mother looked at her oddly, "only as a sort of counter-irritant. And it needn't be ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... in Scenis aut acta refertur: Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem; Quam quae sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus, et quae Ipse ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... Great War," said Brown, "I went down with pneumonia. They painted my chest yellow, and, when I asked the Sister why, she said it was a counter-irritant. That's what you want to use now, my lad. Stand up to your little friend and beat him at his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... not tell you that Robert Browning is an Englishman, and they wish he were an American." Spiritualism, in the main an American institution, became during the later years a centre of fervid interest to the one and an irritant to the other. One turns gladly from that episode to their noble and helpful friendship for a magnificent old dying lion, with whom, as every one else discovered, it was ill to play—Walter Savage Landor. Here it was the wife who looked ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... the grain as to make it possible to cook it ready for easy digestion in five or ten minutes. An insufficiently cooked grain, although it may be palatable, is not in a condition to be readily acted upon by the digestive fluids, and is in consequence left undigested to act as a mechanical irritant. ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... "I'd like to make you a present of these cardamom seeds. They do say they're the best thing goin' for the temper; kind o' counter-irritant, y' know; bite the ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... wakeful vigils seemed to give him no rest. His food, he thrust from him with the petulance of a child; and at every suggestion I could make, he sneered with a quiet, gentle insistence that was utterly discomfiting. To be sure, I had Father Holland's boisterous good cheer as a counter-irritant; for the priest had remained at Fort Douglas, and was ministering to the tribes of the Red and Assiniboine. But it was on her, who had been my guiding star and hope and inspiration from the first, that I mainly depended. As hard, merciless winter closed in, I could not think ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a ...
— The Yellow Wallpaper • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... were little piles of material for plain work; so prim, so square, so geometrically precise, that Clarissa thought the flannel itself looked cold—a hard, fibrous, cruel fabric, that could never be of use to mortal flesh except as an irritant. ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... danger of catching a fever;—that to enter the high woods, a path must be hewn with the cutlass through the creepers and vines and undergrowth,—among snakes, venomous insects, venomous plants, and malarial exhalations;—that the finest blown dust is full of irritant and invisible enemies;—that it is folly to seek repose on a sward, or in the shade of trees,—particularly under tamarinds. Only after you have by experience become well convinced of these facts can you begin to comprehend ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... enough in other things. Putting that devilish stuff on the ninth finger of the skeleton, and never losing an opportunity to get his poor old father to handle it and to show it to people. It's a strong, irritant poison—sap of the upas tree is the base of it—producing first an irritation of the skin, then a blister, and, when that broke, communicating the poison directly to the blood every time the skeleton hand touched it. A weak solution at first, so that the decline would be natural, ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Madame at Brompton—perhaps I know her a little better than I do young Mr. Ardworth—Mrs. Brad—I mean Madame Dalibard!" and the stranger glanced at Mr. Mivers, who was slowly recovering from some vigorous slaps on the back administered to him by his wife as a counter-irritant to the cough. "Is it true that she has lost the use ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Dr. Max Kassowitz, professor in the University of Vienna, said, after Dr. Atwater's statement had been published: "For the animal and human organism, alcohol is not both a food and a poison, but a poison only, which like other poisons is an irritant when taken in small doses while in larger ones it produces paralysis." In connection with the fact that alcohol is simply a poison, it may be worth stating, that the original meaning of the word "intoxicated" was "poisoned." After reading Dr. Atwater, ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... such characters as John, who was not successful even in crime. He may be regarded roughly as the royal poultice who brought matters to a head in England, and who, by means of his treachery, cowardice, and phenomenal villany, acted as a counter-irritant upon the malarial surface of ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... those weeks I will not weary you further than by remarking that the "thinking," was done entirely by Raffles, who did not always trouble to communicate his thoughts to me. His reticence, however, was no longer an irritant. I began to accept it as a necessary convention of these little enterprises. And, after our last adventure of the kind, more especially after its denouement, my trust in Raffles was much too solid to be shaken by a want of trust in me, which I still ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... us that his dope was planned to be a counter-irritant after being bitten as well as a preventer ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... away. Reflecting, she endeavoured to assure herself that the movement was an idle eccentricity, and no more. Yet, on the other hand, his subordinate position in an establishment where he once had been master might be acting on him like an irritant poison; and she finally resolved to ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... the German Headquarters Staff had experimented with sulphur, chlorine and bromine fumes. They reported on sulphur gas: "This gas thus produced acts as an irritant on the lungs and eyes, and thence it is adapted to render the enemy incapable of resistance, but is not poisonous, and in that way its use in war is not contrary to international right." They had in view Article 23 ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... after a while," said Varney, hastily lighting a pipe as counter-irritant. "So you're ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... city. Gregariousness and individuality do not abide together; nor is external excitement the cause or the concomitant of thought. In fact this "mental massage" of the city is to real thinking about what a mustard-plaster is to circulation—a counter-irritant. The thinker is one who finds himself (quite impossible on Broadway!); and then finds himself interesting—more interesting than Broadway—another impossibility within the city limits. Only in the country can ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... that the missionary enterprise encumbered and impeded the geographical. He had a special objection to an Episcopal mission, holding that the planting of a Bishop and staff on territory dominated by the Portuguese was an additional irritant, rousing ecclesiastical jealousy, and bringing it to the aid of commercial and political apprehensions as to the tendency of the English enterprise. Neither mission nor colony could succeed in the present state of the country; they could only be a trouble ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... are markedly irritant to the mucous membranes. They have an acrid taste and provoke a flow of saliva, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. If injected directly into the circulation they produce hemolysis, diuresis and direct actions on the central nervous system which may be rapidly fatal. Absorption after oral administration ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... the European war was occupying most of the attention of the American people, but Mexico was a constant irritant. Carranza carried the Presidential art of biting the hand that fed him to an undreamed-of height. Wilson, Villa and Obregon had enabled him to displace Huerta, and Obregon had saved him from Villa. Yet he had quarreled with ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... natural result. Having proved a blessed narcotic to the dying father, Timothy ceased to be an irritant to the daughter. An irritant? Timothy couldn't irritate her, and she couldn't irritate Timothy. I've studied them curiously the three years of their married life, only to arrive at this conviction. And you took them for bride and groom? No wonder! ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... which develop sex precocity is promiscuous playing with other boys and girls for hours without supervision. It may also be produced by playful repose on the stomach, sliding down banisters, going too long without urinating, by constipation or straining at stool, irritant cutaneous affections, and rectal worms. Sliding down banisters, for instance, produces a titillation. The act may be repeated until inveterate masturbation results, even at an early age. Needless laving, ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... and to remain a comparatively short time. So great was the need of him that he did not go home until after the Peace had been signed. He signed the Treaty under protest because he believed it was uneconomic and it has developed into the irritant that he ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... smoker, and therefore cannot speak about its effects; I find it an irritant rather than a sedative. But I am quite sensible of the virtue of an occasional glass of good wine, and am certain I can work better with than ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... years. It constitutes a variety of consumption which is specially amenable to proper treatment. On the other hand, the soft, yellow, cheesy, tubercular matter, which is totally destitute of any vitality, is too often deposited in large quantities, acts on the adjacent lung tissue as an active irritant, causes inflammation, undergoes softening, forms cavities, defies treatment, and rapidly hurries the sufferers to a premature grave. These facts, taken in connection with the immunity from lung diseases enjoyed by those whose respiratory ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... slang on the lips of the octogenarian made Barraclough laugh. But the nerves of Nugent Cassis were frayed and laughter was an irritant. ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... with a dull foreboding in her heart. She felt constrained and awkward. The unusual and expensive gown Joyce wore acted as an irritant upon her, now that she considered it. It seemed so vulgar, so theatrical for the girl to deck herself in this fashion; and the very gown itself spoke volumes against any such lofty ideals as Ralph Drew had ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... Jesus stands in silence, doubtless with those eyes of His turned now upon Caiaphas, now on the others. His presence disturbed them in more ways than one. That great calm, pure face must have been an irritant to their jaded consciences. Suddenly the presiding officer stands up and dramatically cries out, as though astonished, "Answerest thou nothing? Canst thou not hear these charges against Thee?" Still that silence of lip, and those great ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... time is then effective, and cooling can again be given after the heating. Soapy lather on an inflamed part will do delightful service for a while, then it may become painful. Warm oil may then be used instead. When this becomes irritant, a return to the soap will cure. Or the hot bathing of a sore knee may be most effective for a while, and then may give rise to sore pain. In such a case, cease the bathing, and for a time apply the soapy lather. Do not despair because a thing "loses its effect." ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... hypochlorite for surgical use must be free of caustic alkali; it must only contain 0.45% to 0.50 of hypochlorite. Under 0.45% it is not active enough and above 0.50 it is irritant. With chloride of lime (bleaching powder) having 25% of active chlorine, the quantities of necessary substances to prepare ten litres of solution ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... you going?" Jude broke in with an eagerness that intensified the smile on Gaston's face, and bade the devil in him awake. The same devil that in boyhood days had made him such an irritant to ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... admirable auxiliary in epilepsy connected with distemper; it is a counter-irritant and a derivative, and its effects are a salutary discharge, under the influence of which inflammation elsewhere ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... deal of evil has been said of the stitch in the side; but it is nothing to the stitch to which we now refer, which the pleasures of the matrimonial second crop are everlastingly reviving, like the hammer of a note in the piano. This constitutes an irritant, which never flourishes except at the period when the young wife's timidity gives place to that fatal equality of rights which is at once devastating France and the conjugal relation. Every ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... the night, when by rights she should have been asleep, immersed in endless mathematical studies, and in solving, or attempting to solve, almost impossible problems. She found that the strenuous effort of the brain acted as a counter-irritant to the fretting of her troubles, and though it may seem an odd thing to say, mathematics alone, owing to the intense application they required, exercised a soothing effect upon her. But, as one cannot constantly sleep induced by chloral without paying for it ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... of Sir Norman Kingsley among these human revelers. The only one who seemed rather to enjoy it than otherwise was the prisoner, who was quietly and quickly making off, when the malevolent and irrepressible dwarf espied him, and the one shock acting as a counter-irritant to the other, he bounced fleetly over the table, and grabbed ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... "because I have so much gas on my stomach!" The diagnosis of gastritis used to be very common. The ending itis means inflammation,—gastritis, enteritis, colitis, each meaning inflammation of the corresponding organ. An inflammation implies an irritant. There can be no kind of itis without the presence of something which irritates the membrane of the affected part. If we get unusual and irritating bacteria in some spoiled food, we are likely to have an acute inflammation until the offending bacteria are expelled. But an inflammation ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... a promptitude that appeared again to act on him slightly as an irritant, for he met it—with more delay—by a long and derisive murmur. "Oh MY pride—!" But this she in no manner took up; so that he was left for a little to his thoughts. "That's what you were plotting when you told me the other day ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... who, for half a century, had killed the joy of art. He could not, however, altogether blot out the shadows of the sorrowful dream in which he had been cradled. He would not look behind him, but he well knew that the shadow was there. He was too healthy to seek a counter-irritant to his uneasiness in the lazy skepticism of the preceding epoch: he detested the dilettantism of men like Renan and Anatole France, with their degradation of the free intellect, their joyless mirth, their irony without greatness: a shameful ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... of Basil was a continual irritant to the desperate man, so he himself ordered his satellite to withdraw. Basil obeyed with no very good grace, and the look that Windybank received boded ill. Jerome now placed his victim in a cosy ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... supernatural powers—witches, in fact, and such was the belief in their power that, "without resistance, all immediately acquiesce in their demands." They also had physicians who used cold water, plasters of herbs, whipping with nettles (doubtless the principle of the counter irritant), the smoke of certain plants, and incantations, with a great deal of general, all-around humbug to produce ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... parts of America to prepare a popular drink. The powdered seeds make a useful parasiticide especially when used on the scalp, but it is necessary to avoid getting any of the drug in the eyes on account of its irritant effect. ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... remember,' interrupted the squire hastily. 'I was low last week, and read the Church papers by way of a counter-irritant. You have been starting a new religion, I see. A new ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... teeth. Had he gained on her at all? "Monkey on a gridiron!" yelped a small boy. Hoopdriver redoubled his efforts. His breath became audible, his steering unsteady, his pedalling positively ferocious. A drop of perspiration ran into his eye, irritant as acid. The road really was uphill beyond dispute. All his physiology began to cry out at him. A last tremendous effort brought him to the corner and showed yet another extent of shady roadway, empty save for a baker's van. His front wheel suddenly ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... routes thither see Appendix B.] (678 ft.), on the River Tech, in the Eastern Pyrenees. A winter resort, with a dry, clear air, tonic and slightly irritant, and a mean temperature during the months of January, February, and March (taken collectively) of 48-1/3 deg. Fahr. The average number of fine days in the year is 210. The baths are naturally heated from 100 deg. to 144 deg., according to the distance from the source. They contain soda in combination ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... to work, as he always ways did when actually hand in hand with war. Warfare was an art to him, neither a sport nor a counter-irritant; he was never impetuous over it. For a week he satisfied himself with a close investiture of the town on all sides. No supplies could get in nor fugitives out. Then, when everything was according to his liking, he advanced his engines, brought forward his towers, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... of military work has diminished the time given to them; but they have ceased to monopolise the thoughts of boys. The problem then of reducing the absorption in games is the problem of finding and providing other absorbing interests. We cannot, fortunately, always have the counter-irritant of war. Where we fail now, is that the intellectual training of a boy does not interest him enough in most cases to give him subjects of conversation out of school. We give some few new interests by means of societies, literary, antiquarian or scientific. But the main ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... he was not one with whom the watcher would have cared to come in contact. He wondered, indeed, that so puissant a star as Beulah Baxter should not be able to choose her own director, for surely the presence of this unlovely, waspishly tempered being could be nothing but an irritant in the daily life of the wonder-woman. Perhaps she had tolerated him merely for one picture. Perhaps he was especially ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... stomach. Gastric, or stomach, indigestion is the better name, because it actually signifies the true condition. It is indigestion that causes a child to vomit, though it is possible to have a true inflammation caused by the taking of irritant or ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... consolation for the severities of winter and the utter lack of beauty in the situation and surroundings of Munich, he has his winter-garden, that mysterious enclosure at the top of the palace, which is a perpetual irritant to the curiosity of the public, who grudge to their ruler every token of that possession of his which he seems to value above all the rest—his privacy. Now and then some noted scholar or privileged acquaintance is invited to enter this green retreat, so that its delights are not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... baccatum has a globular fruit, and furnishes cherry or berry capsicum. They are all of the simplest culture, and may even be grown with very little care in England. Culture appears to increase the size, but to diminish the pungency of the fruit. In capsicums irritant properties prevail so as to obscure the narcotic action. Their acridity is owing to an oleaginous substance called capsicin. Cayenne pepper is used in medicine chiefly in the form of tincture, as a rubefacient and stimulant, especially in cases of ulcerated sore ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... instinct. Talk confuses women and renders them helpless. But that isn't it. I talk to women because they make the best sounding-boards. Do you object to being reduced to an acoustic? Yes, sex is a sort of irritant to the vocabulary. It's amusing to converse profoundly with a pretty woman whose sole contributions to any dialogue are a bit of silk hose and an oscillation ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... really meant to be unkind. There was of a truth no object to be gained by being brutal to her now. But that wallet, which she held so tightly clutched, acted as an irritant to his nerves. Never of very equable temperament and holding all women in lofty scorn, he chafed against all parleyings with his wife, now that the goal of his ambition was ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... Le Chapelier was conciliatory, seeking to provide an antidote to the irritant administered by his companion. "We require your help, Andre. Danton here thinks that you are the very man ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... strange character in this setting, like an exotic plant in an old-fashioned garden, and his eccentricities aroused considerable amusement among the settlers, although he became in time a favorite with them, serving as a sort of counter-irritant to the strain of pioneer life. Men who trudged all day through the broiling sun turning furrows in that stubborn soil were entertained by the strange antics of a man who sat before his cabin in the shade (when there was any) painting ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... in the sunset melt and burn, This proud stern people, these dead seas and lakes, These sombre cedars, this intense still sky, To me, o'erwearied with life's din and strain, Are grateful as the solemn blank of night After the fierce day's irritant excess; Besides, a deep absorbing interest Detains me here, fills up my mind, and sways My inmost thoughts—has got, as 'twere a gripe Upon my very life, as strange as new. I scarcely know how well to speak of this, Fearing your raillery at best—at worst Even your contempt; yet, spite of all, ...
— A Roman Lawyer in Jerusalem - First Century • W. W. Story |
