"Nervous system" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ascribe to the other of hearing the last movement of the music undisturbed. Op. 999 was prospering, there was no doubt of it! Laetitia Wilson was a very fair example of a creditable career at the R.A.M. But she was not quite equal to this unfortunate victim of a too nervous system, who could play like an angel for half an hour, mind you—not more. This was his half-hour; and it was quite reasonable for Fenwick to take for granted that his hostess would like to pay attention to it, or vice-versa. So ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... I. The Mechanistic Conception of Life. II. The Significance of Tropisms for Psychology. III. Some Fundamental Facts and Conceptions concerning the Comparative Physiology of the Central Nervous System. IV. Pattern Adaptation of Fishes and the Mechanism of Vision. V. On Some Facts and Principles of Physiological Morphology. VI. On the Nature of the Process of Fertilization. VII. On the Nature of Formative Stipulation ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... Mr. Hedge—'such a supposition with reference to our beloved pastor would be sacrilege. He is only somewhat agitated; he is extremely sensitive, and deep study has doubtless operated to the injury of his nervous system. My dear Brother Sinclair, we are waiting for you to perform the ceremony,' he ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... nervous system that the most considerable action of electricity is exerted. A strong charge passed through the head, gave to Mr. Singer the sensation of a violent but universal blow, and was followed by a transient loss of memory and indistinctness of vision. If a charge be sent ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... new fashions with comparative ease. The obvious inference is, that in proportion as the brain is feeble it is incapable of the effort of origination; therefore, savages are the slaves of routine. Probably a stronger nervous system, or a peculiarity of environment, or both combined, served to excite impatience with their surroundings among the more favored races, from whence came a desire for innovation. And the mental flexibility thus slowly developed has passed by inheritance, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... at nights would not poison a fly. Nay, in overcrowded rooms, they actually absorb carbonic acid and give off oxygen. Cut-flowers also decompose water and produce oxygen gas. It is true there are certain flowers, e.g., lilies, the smell of which is said to depress the nervous system. These are easily known by the smell, ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... two yards did the snake endeavour to swallow his victim, and each time he gave it up; and after the last experiment Egbert, evidently finding this constant semi-disappearance into the other's interior bad for his nervous system, conceived the idea of backing towards the pond instead of heading in that direction, the process, though slower, being less liable to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... agreeable excitement all the evening. My mind was full of fancy, imagination, flowing with ideas; a sense of lightness and joyousness lifted me up. I wanted music, and felt full of laughter. Like the half-fabled haschish, the golden bloom of the hops had entered the nervous system; intoxication without wine, without injurious after-effect, dream intoxication; they were wine for the nerves. If hops only grew in the Far East we should think wonders of so powerful a plant. At hop-picking a girl can earn about ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... She gave only one glance at the room and realized the situation. On the arm-chair, with head thrown back and eyes closed, lay Mr. Ireland, apparently in a dead faint; some terrible shock must have very suddenly shattered his nervous system, and rendered him prostrate for the moment. What that shock had been it ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... monologue or a dissertation.[3231] The stamp of rank, condition or fortune, whether gentleman or bourgeois, provincial or Parisian, is frequently overlooked.[3232] We are rarely made to appreciate physical externals, as in Shakespeare, the temperament, the state of the nervous system, the bluff or drawling tone, the impulsive or restrained action, the emaciation or obesity of a character.[3233] Frequently no trouble is taken to find a suitable name, this being either Chrysale, Orgon, Damis, Dorante, or Valere. The name ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... world at the same time. But as the wish is strong there are also strong obstacles against it; first, though I have lately been tolerably industrious, I am far behind-hand with my appointed work; and next, my nervous system is so apt to be deranged by going from home, that I am by no means sure that I should not be so much of a dependent invalid, I mean a person obliged to manage himself, as to make it absolutely improper for me to obtrude myself ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... stage in the development of latent faculties than the negro race has reached. Not only is the negro a stranger to the diverse intellectual and sentimental qualities which we denote by the name of love: nay, even in a purely bodily sense it may be asserted that his nervous system is not only less sensitive, but less well-developed. The negro loves as he eats and drinks.... And just as little as a black epicure have I ever been able to discover a negro who could rise to the imaginative phases of amorous ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... plainly: "Madam, though I observe that you bathe frequently, your cleanliness, like your beauty, is only skin-deep. You are fair without and foul within. Your alimentary canal is overloaded and your blood is so unclean that it has poisoned your nervous system. Eat less, take more exercise and drink plenty—of water. Try to be as clean as your gardener." It has been remarked that the labourer who sweats at his work is, in reality, far cleaner than the bathing sedentary ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... point where the college dropped it. A person in my position ought to be well read in physiology, biology, psychology, sociology, and eugenics; she should know the hereditary effects of insanity, idiocy, and alcohol; should be able to administer the Binet test; and should understand the nervous system of a frog. In pursuance whereof, he has placed at my disposal his own scientific library of four thousand volumes. He not only fetches in the books he wants me to read, but comes and asks questions to make ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... terrible for her to grasp. Gradually she came back to life again, but she was not the same as before. Her recovery would be, the doctor explained, a question of time. The accident that had befallen her, following the great strain and anxiety she had gone through, had completely upset her nervous system, and appeared—a not uncommon result after such an accident—to have completely obliterated the time immediately preceding her fall. The moment when Rendel, seeing her gradually recovering, first ventured on some allusion to Stamfordham ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... our friends, nor our children; he shuts them up in silence from us, to see if we can say, "Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee." The painful effect upon our feelings, and upon our nervous system, of separations from departed friends, is involuntary and natural; but to cherish our griefs, to spend much time in melancholy moods, or in poring over the memorials of the departed, so as to excite and indulge morbid feelings, ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... a simple spectator," he said, "the imagination, you know, is impressed. And then I have such a nervous system!" ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... knew his internal furies were worse than folly, and yet he could not restrain them. The creeping suspicion that this was only the result of the simple fact that he had never tried to restrain any tendency of his own was maddening. His nervous system was a wreck. He drank a great deal of whisky to keep himself "straight" during the day, and he rose many times during his black waking hours in the night to drink more because he obstinately refused to give up the hope that, if he drank enough, it would ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Form and General Considerations 2. The Alimentary Canal of the Rabbit 3. The Circulation 4. The Amoeba, Cells and Tissue 5. The Skeleton 6. Muscle and Nerve 7. The Nervous System 8. Renal and Reproductive Organs 9. Classificatory Points 10. ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... recovery was, comparatively speaking, rapid, though of course the effects of so severe a shock to the nervous system could not be shaken off in a day. Though she was no longer mad, she was still in a disturbed state of mind, and subject to strange dreams or visions. One in particular that visited her several nights in a succession, made a great impression ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... of his brow and chin and head lifting themselves to noble bruises, felt the throb and pain of each aspiring contusion. His nervous system slid down to lethargy; at each movement in his press adjustment he felt he lifted a weight. And as for his honour—that too throbbed and puffed. How did he stand? What precisely had happened in the last ten minutes? What would happen next? He knew that here was enormous matter ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... bear with the meekness and patience of a true-hearted man all the worrying little acerbities of to-day; and he had no small merit in doing so; for in him, as in his mother, the reaction after intense excitement had produced its usual effect in increased irritability of the nervous system. ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... in commanding my thoughts, or fixing them upon the subject which had engrossed them all day. I had not tasted food for twenty-four hours, nor closed my eyes for thirty-six, while, during the whole of the time, my nervous system had ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... feelings. Me, a rational intelligence, succumbing to such low-level emotional stimuli! If this keeps on, the next thing I know I will be seeing little green men flitting through the trees.... Of course, this world is unnatural, which makes its effect on the nervous system more powerful, yet that does not explain the feeling of tension which I have been experiencing, the silent straining tension of an overloaded cable, the tension of a toy balloon overfull with air. I have a constant feeling of dreadful expectancy, ...
— The Issahar Artifacts • Jesse Franklin Bone
... between them; it might have saved him unnecessary suffering. Thinking thus, Iola resolved, at whatever cost of pain it might be to herself, to explain to Dr. Gresham what she meant by the insurmountable barrier. Iola, after a continuous strain upon her nervous system for months, began to suffer from general debility and nervous depression. Dr. Gresham saw the increasing pallor on Iola's cheek and the loss of buoyancy in her step. One morning, as she turned from the bed of ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... aspect of the case. They have shown, or they have tried to show (for I don't want to dogmatise on the subject), how mind is gradually built up from the simplest raw elements of sense and feeling; how emotions and intellect slowly arise; how the action of the environment on the organism begets a nervous system of ever greater and greater complexity, culminating at last in the brain of a Newton, a Shakespeare, or a Mendelssohn. Step by step, nerves have built themselves up out of the soft tissues as channels of communication between part and part. Sense-organs of extreme simplicity have ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... health, a subject which occupies the larger part of the volumes, it is evident that, though his nervous system was deranged, he was a complete hypochondriac. There is very little repining about the invalid conditions under which he lived; and it gradually dawned upon me that this was not because he had resolved to bear it in a stoical and courageous manner, but because his ill-health, seen through ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... who reason but for a moment on this subject, the danger of such a practice must be obvious. So sudden a change from a temperature of nearly 100 of Fahrenheit to one quite low, perhaps scarcely 40, must and does have a powerful effect on the nervous system even of an adult; but how much more on that of a tender infant? We may form some idea of this, by the suddenness and violence of its cries, by the sudden contractions and relaxations of its limbs and body, and by its ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... not increasing or decreasing in nearly the same ratio with that of the amount of light which they receive, as shown in the trials with the plants before the lamp, all indicate that light acts on them as a stimulus, in somewhat the same manner as on the nervous system of animals, and not in a direct manner on the cells or cell-walls which by their contraction or ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... and Bluebell seemed as spell-bound as the rest. For one soul deeply moved and agitated often affects by electricity another in a receptive condition. Does not the atmosphere in a tempestuous mood thrill and disturb our nervous system? ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... relaxation of the nervous system is the source of numerous disorders, and requires a treatment as various as the causes on which it depends. In general, gentle heat possesses both stimulating and strengthening properties, and this is best communicated by a warm bath, which instead of relaxing will ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... something else, Miss Agnes," he said. "If you'll look it up you will probably find that the little lady had had either a shock sometime before that, or a long pull of nursing. Something, anyhow, to set her nervous system to going in the ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... The horror of them fascinated her, so that she could scarce take her eyes from them. It was evident from their groping hands that they were eyeless, and their sluggish movements suggested a rudimentary nervous system and a correspondingly minute brain. The girl wondered how they subsisted for she could not, even by the wildest stretch of imagination, picture these imperfect creatures as intelligent tillers of the soil. Yet that the soil of the ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... phenomena, after continuing for upwards of a month, happened to be about to cease at the very time the committee began to observe them,—or whether the harsh suspicious and terror-inspiring tests of these gentlemen so wrought on the nervous system of an easily daunted and superstitious girl, that some of her abnormal powers, already on the wane, presently disappeared,—or whether the poor child, it may be at the instigation of her parents, left without the means of support,[20] really did at last simulate phenomena ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... are now full to overflowing with that weird chanting which one hears nowhere but in Rome at this solemn season. Those voices, neither of men nor women, have a wild, morbid energy which seems to search every fibre of the nervous system, and, instead of soothing or calming, to awaken strange yearning agonies of pain, ghostly unquiet longings, and endless feverish, unrestful cravings. The sounds now swell and flood the church as with a rushing torrent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... Irelanders from the Repeal Association. O'Connell was at heart glad of this, for his physical and intellectual energies were flagging, and the constant tantalising to which he was subjected in the association by these young men irritated his nervous system, and impaired his health. He made a show of conciliation, and sent a Roman Catholic clergyman of considerable importance, the Rev. Dr. Miley, to open negotiations with Smith O'Brien, whom he did not hesitate publicly to declare was the only man of weight among them. O'Brien was not to be won by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... country is to be found in the unceasing toil and anxiety to which the working-classes are subjected, this cause developing the disease in the existing generation, or, what is quite as frequently the case, transmitting to the offspring idiocy, insanity, or some imperfectly developed sensorium or nervous system. The agitated, overworked, and harassed parent is not in a condition to transmit a ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... would have had a better nervous system and been a happier man if he had not been so rich. Riches are over- estimated in the Old Testament: the good and successful man receives too many animals, wives, apes, she-goats and peacocks. The values are changed in the New: Christ counsels a different ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... that hypnotism could only be applied to the treatment of nervous illnesses; its domain is far greater than that. It is true that hypnotism acts through the intermediary of the nervous system; but the nervous system dominates the whole organism. The muscles are set in movement by the nerves; the nerves regulate the circulation by their direct action on the heart, and by their action on the blood vessels which they dilate or contract. The nerves ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... should an accurate correspondent inform me of the elopement of a married man with his maid-servant in East Machias? Why should I sup on all the horrors of a railroad accident, and have the bleeding fragments hashed up for me at breakfast? Why should my newspaper give a succession of shocks to my nervous system, as I pass from column to column, and poultice me between shocks with the nastiness of a distant or local scandal? You reply, because I like spice. But I don't. I am sick of spice; and I believe that ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... friend; the mere idea of the success of the whole expedition depending upon his extreme care unhinged the nerves of the poor artist, who, although absolutely a brave man, in the true sense of the term, could no more control his nervous system than he could perform an Indian war-dance. He could have rushed single-handed on the whole body of warriors with ease, but he could not creep among the dry twigs that strewed the ground without trembling like an aspen leaf ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... Rickman's nervous system was still so far under the dominion of Dicky's champagne that he started violently. Double doors and double carpets deadened all sound of coming and going, and the voice seemed to have got into the room by itself. As from its softness he judged it to be still some yards ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... several famous doctors called Eudemus. One of these was an anatomist in the third century before Christ, and a contemporary, according to Galen, of Herophilus and Erasistratus. He gave great attention to the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system. There was, however, another Eudemus, a physician of Rome, who became entangled in an intrigue with the wife of the son of the Emperor Tiberius. He aided her in an attempt to poison her husband in A.D. 23. ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... so downhearted because your nervous system has been playing you false. It was a plucky thing to do, and to carry out; but you have suffered enough for honour, and I should not continue the experiment of trying how much you can suffer, were ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... properly, to regard the nervous system, or that portion of it which is connected with animal life—that which renders us conscious of surrounding objects and susceptible of pleasure and of pain—as the source of intellectual power and moral feeling. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... But only seemingly. For all this time the physiologist has been working. Beginning with a candle and now holding in his hands the most powerful arc-lights, he has explored two regions, the sympathetic nervous system and the glands of internal secretion, and has come upon data which in due course will render a good many of the Freudian dicta obsolete. Not that the Freudian fundamentals will be scrapped completely. But they will have to fit into the great synthesis which must form the basis of any ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... speaking, I believe them both to be invaluable to humankind. The cases of dire disease generated by total abstinence from liquor are even more terrible than those caused by excess. With regard to tobacco, I have a notion that it is only dangerous where the vital organism, and particularly the nervous system, is ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... Isabel were peculiarly frank and playful; the consciousness that her life was spent in the discharge of active duty, gave the same energy to her mind, which bodily exertion did to her nervous system. She never acted under the influence of motives which required disguise; the simplicity of her habits, her ignorance of the world, and innocence of intention, gave such an undesigning engaging character to her conversation, that whoever spoke to her, might think themselves ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... the days that had been so short and pleasant. To the children there was no such thing as time. Having absolute and perfect health, they enjoyed happiness as far as mortals can enjoy it. Emmeline's highly strung nervous system, it is true, developed a headache when she had been too long in the glare of the sun, but they ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... precipitancy in me, which makes emotion of any kind a thing to be shunned. It is my nerves, my nerves.... Such a nervous system as I have.... Thomas feeling in his breast for comfort and finding bilious fever.... All palpitating, fluttered with sleeplessness and drug-taking, etc.... Weary and worn with dull blockheadism, chagrin (next to no sleep the ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... a little girl, not over twelve years old, apparently their daughter, to view a scene which was calculated to drive sleep from the child's eyes for many nights, if not to produce a permanent injury to her nervous system. The comments of the crowd were varied. Some remarked on the efficacy of this style of cure for rapists, others rejoiced that men's wives and daughters were now safe from this wretch. Some laughed as the flesh cracked and blistered, and while a large ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... of my vision; and I seemed to be observing a little moon revolving with lightning rapidity round the earth, while I felt that I had, in some way, been sucked into its orbit, and was whirling around with it. Suddenly, with a keen sense of danger pervading my whole nervous system, I awoke. Yes, it was a dream! I was in my boat, gazing up into the serene heavens, where the larger moon was tranquilly following her orbit, while I was being whirled round in a strong eddy under a high bank of the river, with ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... of colour-blindness (p. 117) we have already discussed an instance in which the defect is rare, though not {176} unknown, in the female. Sex-limited inheritance of a similar nature is known for one or two ocular defects, and for several diseases of the nervous system. In the peculiarly male disease known as haemophilia the blood refuses to clot when shed, and there is nothing to prevent great loss from even a superficial scratch. In its general trend the inheritance of haemophilia is not ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... relatives succeeded, by political influence, in obtaining for him a subordinate situation in the Stamp Office,—one which at once afforded him a certain subsistence, and did not necessarily preclude the exercise of his literary talents. But a constitutional weakness of the nervous system did not permit of his long enjoying the smiles of fortune. He died suddenly at Janefield, near Leith, on the 15th August 1835, in his thirtieth year. In October 1831, he had espoused Mrs Mary Hill, a widow, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... work and anxieties, his nervous system shattered, Garcia was subject to fits of petulance which were ludicrous. In these rages he called everybody who would bear it pigs, dogs, and other more unsavory nicknames. Coronado bore it because thus he got his living, and got ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... women—as impossible to describe as water in motion. These are decidedly complex, yet so regular that five hundred pairs of feet and hands mark the measure of the song as truly as if they were under the control of a single nervous system. ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... distance was fully twenty feet, he actually reached and succeeded in grasping the end of the blade. To swing himself up astride upon it was the work of a moment; and then he paused to rest and recover from this last shock to his nervous system. Not for long, however; he knew that his companions must be nearly exhausted, and that their lives now probably depended solely on his activity and the celerity with which he might be able to go to their rescue; so he pulled himself together, shouted to them the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the necks of their coats, if men, and into the headbands of petticoats if women. These talismans, in many cases, I have little doubt, did real good in this way, that they supplied their wearers with a courage which sufficed to brace up their nervous system—which drove out fear, in fact,—a very important condition for health, as physicians well know. These talismans were so generally and thoroughly believed in, and so numerous and apparently well-attested were the evidences of their beneficial effects, that in years not long past, medical ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... stutterer were brought under treatment before the spasmodic habit became established, his cure would be much easier than after the malady has become rooted in his muscular and nervous system." ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... connected. And the reason is purely hygienic. Smoking increases the pulsations without strengthening them, and depresses the heart-action with a calming and soothing effect. Coffee, like alcohol, affects the circulation in the reverse way by exciting it through the nervous system; and not a few authorities advise habitual smokers to end the day and prepare for rest with a glass of spirits and water. It is to be desired that the ignorants who write about "that filthy tobacco" would take the trouble to observe its effects on a large scale, and not base the strongest and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... and perfection of the sensitiveness in these two plants is all the more astonishing as no one supposes that they possess nerves; and by testing Drosera with several substances which act powerfully on the nervous system of animals, it does not appear that they include any ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... together as to form the film on the under side of a jellyfish, the elements of mind-stuff which go along with them are so combined as to form the faint beginnings of Sentience. When the molecules are so combined as to form the brain and nervous system of a vertebrate, the corresponding elements of mind-stuff are so combined as to form some kind of consciousness; that is to say, changes in the complex which take place at the same time get so linked together that ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... nature he considered their hypotheses relating to the brain, the nervous system, the lymphatic fluid, and other subjects; concerning which many curious but hitherto equivocal facts have been the discovery of ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... glory even upon the instruments of human skill, which elevated man to the Unseen and the Divine. When we examine the most minute organisms, we find clear evidence in their voluntary powers of motion that these creatures possess a will, and that such Will must be conveyed by a nervous system of an infinitesimally minute description. When we follow out such a train of thought, and contrast the myriads of suns and planets at one extreme, with the myriads of minute organised atoms at the other, we cannot but feel ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... continuity), which Wundt calls external, is simple and homogeneous. It reproduces the order and connection of things; it reduces itself to habits contracted by our nervous system. ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... despondency. One is loth to call selfish a nature so attractive in its refinement, so unhappy in its over-susceptibility. But it is obvious that such a one might easily become a trial to those he loved. With all its vigor her nervous system could not escape the exhaustion and disturbance that attend on incessant brain-work. "Those who have nothing to do," she remarks, "when they see artists produce with facility, are ready to wonder at how few hours, how few instants, these can reserve for themselves. For such do not know how these ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... regarding mercantile affairs, but was merely an amateur horseman, he most decidedly and strongly objected. He did not wish to hurt his friend's feelings by refusing to go out to drive with him, but he would not rack his own nervous system by accompanying him. Therefore it was that he had not yet visited the beautiful upland country residence of ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... much in brute muscles, though he had enough of them, as in his nervous energy; and the slow horror of his burning hair and of that iron which had twice raked the length of his body had come close to destroying his whole nervous system. Other men might have endured the same thing and laughed the next day, but Brian was high-strung and tense, and while his will was still strong, his physical ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... When I say constitutional care, I mean that the various organs of the body that assist in nourishing and sustaining the hair-forming apparatus should, by judicious diet, exercise, and attention to the nervous system, be kept healthy and sound, in order that they in turn may assist in preserving the hairs in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... continued beyond the first stage, the function of the spinal cord is influenced. Through this part of the nervous system we are accustomed, in health, to perform automatic acts of a mechanical kind, which proceed systematically even when we are thinking or speaking on other subjects. Thus a skilled workman will continue his mechanical ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... the least use. The second principle, that of antithesis, is the converse of the last; when an opposite state of mind is induced, there is an involuntary tendency to directly opposite movements, though of no use. The third principle, that of the direct action of the nervous system, is independent of the will and of habit; nerve force being generated in ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... properly. You can't learn how to squeeze it on paper. You have got to practise. Every time you work your bolt, squeeze your trigger. Get in some extra "squeezes." You will find that your whole muscular and nervous system will need to be coordinated and harmonized. After you have been long about it you will find an extreme delicacy in its operation. You will find that it requires a great deal more than a finger. All the muscles of your hand and arm will be required. We cannot overemphasize the ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... sunset light of memory that they who have been wont to walk with her, and are now deprived of her companionship, will have henceforward to tread their weary way. I see in that sunset light the days when we were much together—when she used to call herself my wife. In those days her nervous system was stronger than it was when you became acquainted with her. Her soul spoke through more obedient organs. Nothing could exceed the eloquence and beauty of her letters in those days, when written under the influence of strong feeling. She ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... question in debate was stated to him, he, with becoming gravity of countenance and suavity of manner, entered into a discussion upon the effect of hot and cold climates upon the solids and fluids, and nervous system in general; then upon English constitutions in ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... amend the originating grievance," said the doctor. "No. And at times they are even costly. But they certainly lift a burthen from the nervous system.... And now I suppose we have to get that little ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... knowledge of facts concerning sexual processes, vices, and diseases will do a given individual harm or good. The effect of such information upon any person is unquestionably determined by his physiological age, by his nervous system, by the manner and time of the presentation of the subject; above all, by his will power and the controlling ideals that are acquired along with scientific facts. As yet, we have not discovered thoroughly trustworthy pedagogical principles, ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... he says, the progaster is already developed, and its wall is differentiated for the first time into an animal or dermal layer (ectoblast), and into a vegetative or intestinal layer (hypoblast). At the sixth stage, there branched off the prothelmis, or worms, with the first formations of a nervous system, the simplest organs of sense, the simplest organs for secretion (kidneys) and generation (sexual organs), represented to-day by the gliding worms or turbellaria; as the seventh stage, the soft worms, as ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... huge and its capacity for comfort enormous. The cool sheets seemed to caress his legs. His whole nervous system was delightfully wearied with the achievement ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... single diseases of children with the country death-rate, thus demonstrating that, in general, epidemics in Manchester and Liverpool are three times more fatal than in country districts; that affections of the nervous system are quintupled, and stomach troubles trebled, while deaths from affections of the lungs in cities are to those in the country as 2.5 to 1. Fatal cases of smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, and whooping ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... I think you are right there. My nervous system is so delicately attuned that anything in the shape of a brawl would reduce it to a frazzle. I think that, for this occasion only, we will promote Comrade Maloney to the post of editor. He is a stern, hard, rugged ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... that the doctor could say, La Cibot had no belief in this wear and tear of the nervous system by the humoristic. She was a woman of the people, without experience or education; Dr. Poulain's explanations for her were simply "doctor's notions." Like most of her class, she thought that sick people must be fed, and nothing short of Dr. Poulain's ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... there are three well-marked types of the disease, attacking respectively the respiratory, the digestive, and the nervous system.' Well, I should say I'd had 'em all three. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... body of the subject, as well as to the mind. The effect of this force upon the subject will depend very much upon the health, mental capacity and general character of the operator. Its action in general should be soothing and quieting upon the nervous system; stimulating to the circulation of the blood, the brain and other vital organs of the body of the subject. It is the use and application of this power or force ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... comfortable. Leaving Eglosilyan had not troubled him. There was something in the knowledge that he was at last free from all those exciting scenes which a quiet, middle-aged man, not believing in romance, found trying to his nervous system. This brief holiday in Eglosilyan had been anything but a pleasant one: was he not, on the whole, glad to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... suffer. The moving panorama of desolate landscape, rocky coast, rough sea, moor and mountain, with the motion of the coach, and the smell of stale tobacco and beer in inn-parlours where they waited to change horses, nauseated her to faintness. Her sensitive nervous system received too many vivid impressions at once; the intense melancholy of the scenes they passed through, the wretched hovels, the half-clad people, the lean cattle, and all the evidences of abject poverty, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... heated by their physical exertions, shiver to the marrow before they are able to accustom themselves to this sudden change of temperature. Every night these things are renewed. During the day the children sleep as best they can. Their nervous system is rapidly undermined; their digestion becomes impaired. It is rare that one can point to instances of children arriving early at positions of eminence in the dramatic art. It is true that there are a few who shine as stars in the theatrical profession, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... subject has left the compressed atmosphere. It was while investigating this most interesting affection as it occurred in the course of the construction of the Hudson River tunnel, that I was able, at the same time, to study the effects of compressed air upon the organism, and especially upon the nervous system, as exhibited in a large number ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... hero to sit still and helpless while death rattles his bullet fingers against the walls and screams in voices of hate and fury from a distance which every minute diminishes. For a woman burdened with the disability of a high-strung nervous system, it is a martyrdom. Yet these women, brought up on the froth of an enervating, pleasure-seeking society, held out—held out with a martyr's courage and constancy—against the torture of inactivity, of an imagination ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... of. He was a prosperous East India merchant—not a miser, though a cross old bachelor, and not a millionaire, though comfortably rich. His business was prosperous, his friends were numerous, his digestion was good, his nervous system was apparently all that could be desired, and ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... book was a vision of what the inner life of plants may be like. He called it 'Nanna.' In the development of animals the nervous system is the central fact. Plants develop centrifugally, spread their organs abroad. For that reason people suppose that they can have no consciousness, for they lack the unity which the central nervous system provides. But the plant's consciousness may be of another type, ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... Blake believed in "hammering" his victims. He was an advocate of "confrontation." He had faith in the old-fashioned "third-degree" dodges. At these, in his ponderous way, he became an adept, looking on the nervous system of his subject as a nut, to be calmly and relentlessly gnawed at until the meat of truth lay exposed, or to be cracked by the impact of some sudden great shock. Nor was the Second Deputy above resorting to the use of "plants." Sometimes he had to call in a "fixer" to manufacture ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... your eyes are suffering; that, however, is no acute disease; but your whole nervous system is in a dangerous condition, and all this must be rectified before your ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... ten hours on the strain of continued, unintermitted toil feels no inclination, when evening comes, to sit down and darn her stockings, or make over her dresses, or study any of those multifarious economies which turn a wardrobe to the best account. Her nervous system is flagging; she craves company and excitement; and her dull, narrow room is deserted for some place of amusement or gay street promenade. And who can blame her? Let any sensible woman, who has had experience of shop and factory life, recall to her mind ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... fats. The value of fat, in any of its many forms, in promoting the health of the body and preventing the onset of wasting diseases is hardly appreciated, and besides this action it markedly serves to nourish the brain and nervous system. Dr. Murchison, the late eminent physician, was wont to declare that bacon fat or ham fat was worth a guinea an ounce in the treatment of wasting diseases. Cod liver oil, also, has a wide repute in the treatment of the same class of maladies. Indeed, it is related of ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... His nervous system had been so unusually excited in the last few days, that he seemed to know everything that was passing in her mind. He took her hand. "Why, Patty, you're not afraid of me, surely?" ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... and he went back to his unparalleled labors quite refreshed. But he had set himself a task which it was impossible that any man could do, and although he worked himself mercilessly to the end, he failed of accomplishing it. His nervous system became completely shattered, and he had several strokes of paralysis; but it was not until his mind also began to fail in serious fashion that he would give over his work. He seemed determined to die a free man, but the task was ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... started a rumour that Her Majesty was, against the advice of the Court physicians, following a system of German Entfettungscur, or cure for obesity, the result having been a complete breakdown of the nervous system. ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... in her little clothes-press, on her knees, was pleading with God for his soul, and that through him Sadie might be reached, I presume he would have laughed. The result of this long communion with himself was as follows: That he had overworked and underslept, that his nervous system was disordered, that in the meantime he had been fool enough to attend that abominable sensation meeting, and the man actually had wonderful power over the common mind, and used his eloquence in a way that ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... the man, so his pleasures and disappointments don't enter into my sphere. Promiscuous universal sympathy is too great a tax on the nervous system. Why should I distress myself about a man I have ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... tell you. You and I were in here, discussing certain legal minutiae in the interests of the firm, when it suddenly fell. We both saw it and were very much surprised and startled. I soothed your nervous system by giving you this half-crown. The whole incident was very painful. Can you remember all this to tell my father when he comes in? I shall ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... between mother and offspring, is passed as it were in sleep, and no one can make any statement in regard to the mind of the unborn child. Even after birth the dawn of mind is as slow as it is wonderful. To begin with, there is in the ovum and early embryo no nervous system at all, and it develops very gradually from simple beginnings. Yet as mentality cannot come in from outside, we seem bound to conclude that the potentiality of it—whatever that means—resides in the individual from the very first. The particular ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... and men differ greatly in this way. Men of rugged physique, dull imagination, and sluggish nerves are not so prone to fear of physical danger, especially danger far ahead in the future, as are men of delicate physique, keen imagination, and highly strung nervous system; and yet men of the latter class sometimes surpass men of the former class when the danger actually arrives—they seem to have prepared themselves for it, when men of the former class seem in a measure to be ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... heard of (and I have collected very many) the consequence has been either sudden death, or fits, or idiocy, or mania, or a brain fever. Whence comes the difference? evidently from this,—that in the one case the whole of the nervous system has been by slight internal causes gradually and all together brought into a certain state, the sensation of which is extravagantly exaggerated during sleep, and of which the images are the mere effects and exponents, as the ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... Bayley's outbreak to drop at once into trivialities. For it must be understood that Madeline's little touch of coquetry had been merely instinctive, a sort of unconscious reflex action of the feminine nervous system, quite consistent with very ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... given me a muscular strength far beyond that of most men. And all my powers had been trained to swift obedience and almost unlimited endurance. With this was a nervous system that matched the years of a young man's greatest vigor. Strong drink and tobacco had never had the chance to play havoc with my steady hand or to sap the vitality of my reserve forces. Even as Jean lifted ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... theory, Miss. Morgan, that young ladies ought not to undergo these ordeals. The delicacy of their nervous system unfits them for such a strain. I'm sure we shall all feel very glad when you are successfully through the trial. After it, you ought to ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... repeated doses as a hypnotic and in the Philippines as a diuretic and 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 of ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... water fell right down on him, wetting him to the skin, and just missing his left shoulder by a couple of inches. At the same moment he heard stifled shrieks of laughter proceeding from the four-post bed. The shock to his nervous system was so great that he fled back to his room as hard as he could go, and the next day he was laid up with a severe cold. The only thing that at all consoled him in the whole affair was the fact that he had not brought his head with him, for, had he done so, the consequences ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... digestion operates and our blood circulates without asking our permission. It is not unreasonable to suppose that Sub-Consciousness is simply the psychical side of the molecular changes that are going on in our nervous system. There is more than "metaphysical conceit" in ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... became non-existent among us, and was forgotten. There were men and women in that Sunday afternoon gathering at the Albert Hall whose very pleasures were a complicated and laborious art, whose pastimes were a strain upon the nervous system, whose leisure was quite an ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... the mind, Sir Wycherly Wychecombe," put in Magrath, "and ye'll be solacing the body by the same effort. When the mind is in a state of exaltation, the nervous system is apt to feel the influence of sympathy. By bringing the two in harmonious co-operation, the testamentary devises will have none the less of validity, either ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of Sir Sidney's constitutional temperament, and the little service through which I and my two comrades contributed materially to his relief, as an illustration of that infirmity which besieges the nervous system of our nation. It is a sensitiveness which sometimes amounts to lunacy, and sometimes even tempts to suicide. It is a mistake, however, to suppose this morbid affection unknown to Frenchmen, or unknown to men of the world. I have myself known it to exist in both, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... but admits that its use in most persons is attended with a temporary excitation of mental activity, lighting up the scintillations of genius into a brilliant flame, or assisting in the prolongation of mental effort when the powers of the nervous system would be otherwise exhausted. Concede this, and then answer if it is not on such evidence that the common idea is based that alcohol is a cause of inspiration, or that it supports the system to the endurance of unusual mental labor. The idea is as erroneous ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... one of more than passing interest. A sensitive point in our governmental nervous system had been touched and a condition uncovered that sooner or later ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... me!" he said to Lionel, in tones of deep and bitter indignation. "Look at me—a skeleton—a wreck of a human being, who can only get along by the most careful nursing of his nervous system. My heart is affected; I have serious doubts about the state of my lungs? it is only through the most assiduous nursing of my nerves that I exist at all. And what is more maddening than enforced restraint—imprisonment—no ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... to his seat at Looe, to be welcomed home by his friend Clayton and the servants of the establishment. The young baronet proceeded to open a number of letters, and during the perusal of one in particular his countenance changed, betokening some shock sustained by his nervous system. Evening wore into night, but he would neither eat nor converse. At length he confessed to Clayton that he had received an affecting expostulation from his wife's former lover, who had written, while ignorant ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... of intelligence have made the human body what it is, different from the animal bodies out of which, physically, in ages long gone by, it has grown. Your delicacy of touch, the exquisite beauty and delicacy of your nervous system, these things are the outcome of the higher powers of the Spirit expressing themselves in the human body, where they cannot express themselves in the animal form. And if you ignore this, if you forget it, if you forget that this splendid ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... the memory of schoolboy friendships; it softens the heart, and even affects the nervous system of those ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... be found in a piece of exposition; and all three may be employed in argument. If a person should wish to prove the dangers of intemperance, he might enforce his proof by a story, or by a description of the condition of the nervous system after a drunken revel. And one does not need to do more than explain the results of intemperance to a sensible man to prove to him that he should avoid all excesses. The explanation alone is argument enough for such a person. Still, is such an explanation exposition or argument? ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... least understand its rationale. They find certain facts in their consciousness that could not be known to them by the physical senses, but why or how they get the information they do not know. That form of clairvoyance is a sensitiveness related to the sympathetic nervous system, the center of which is the solar plexus. It has no relationship whatever to the mind, no association with intelligence, and will often—indeed, commonly—be possessed by the most ignorant and uncouth. It is much more common among Indians and negroes than among more highly evolved people. ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... would be ruin to my nervous system," said Frederick. "I am not suited for this passive heroism. I might do more if I could ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the night which I devoted to study could scarcely have been beneficial to my nervous system; for when, with burning head and full of excitement, I returned from the tavern which was closed, by rule, at eleven—from the "Schuttenhof," or some ball or entertainment, I never went to rest; that was the time I gave the intellect its due. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... his crew. And at the turning, as if on signal, on musical cue, Tom and Frank began the pantomime of urging Louie to his feet. Louie looked at the two standing men alternately. With bloodless lips he tried to grin wryly, apologetically, for what his nervous system was doing to ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... Cocoa. The "weakest" and most commonly used of these beverages or amusement foods, are tea, coffee, and cocoa. These have an agreeable taste, mildly stimulate the nervous system, and, when used in moderation by adults, seldom do much harm. To a small percentage of individuals, who are specially sensitive to their effects, they seem to act as mild poison-foods, much in the same way as strawberries, cheese, or lobsters do ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... studious youths, but neither did they belong to the class that Godwin despised, and he had a comrade-like feeling for them. In a few minutes his demeanour was wholly changed. A glass of hot whisky acted promptly upon his nervous system, enabled him to forget vexations, and attuned him to kindred sprightliness. He entered merrily into the talk of a time of life which is independent of morality—talk distinct from that of the blackguard, but equally so from that of the reflective man. His first glass had several successors. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... to do battle with the unknown enemies that might beset their path were rude and clumsy to handle. The art of compressing and condensing provisions was unknown. They had no tea nor coffee to refresh the nervous system in its terrible trials; but there was one deficiency which perhaps supplied the place of many positive luxuries. Those Hollanders drank no ardent spirits. They had beer and wine in reasonable quantities, but no mention is ever made in the journals of their famous voyages ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... touch," returned Turnbull. "These hansom-cab rides will raise the tone—raise the tone, my dear fellow—of our London youths, widen their horizon, brace their nervous system, make them acquainted with the various public monuments of our great city. Education, Wayne, education. How many excellent thinkers have pointed out that political reform is useless until we produce a cultured populace. So that ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... seeing that the stricken man is given time to rise again. So the burden of Worlington Dodds was lightened for him; many shoulders helped to bear it, and he was able to go for a little summer tour into Ireland, for the doctors had ordered him rest and change of air to restore his shaken nervous system. Thus it was that upon the 15th of July, 1870, he found himself at his breakfast in the fly-blown coffee-room of the "George Hotel" in the market square of Dunsloe. It is a dull and depressing coffee-room, and one which is usually empty, but ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... form. Tobacco Redeemer in most cases relieves all craving for it in a few days' time. Don't try to quit the tobacco habit unaided. It's often a losing fight against heavy odds, and may mean a distressing shock to the nervous system. Let Tobacco Redeemer help the habit to quit you. Tobacco users usually can depend upon this help by simply using Tobacco Redeemer according to simple directions. It is pleasant to use, acts quickly, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... the remote cause, the immediate one is some irritation of the nervous system, causing convulsions, or an effusion to the head, inducing coma. In the first instance, the infant cries out with a quick, short scream, rolls up its eyes, arches its body backwards, its arms become bent and fixed, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... at once a strange sensation came over me, such as I had never experienced before—a singular blending of curiosity, awe and pleasure, the remembrance of which, even at this distance of time, produces a remarkable effect upon my nervous system. What strange things are the nerves—I mean those more secret and mysterious ones in which I have some notion that the mind or soul, call it which you will, has its habitation; how they occasionally tingle and vibrate before any coming event closely connected with the future ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... not even be called an invalid. His attention to vexatious litigation evidenced unimpaired mental power, and his open life at Greystone proved that his physical condition did not hide him from men. He undoubtedly required regular rest and sleep. His nervous system did not resist excitement as readily as in the days of his battle with Tweed and the Canal ring. It is possible, too, that early symptoms of a confirmed disease had then appeared, and that prudence dictated hygienic precautions. Once, in December, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... she said to herself, "one would think I had some of those awful telegrams in me which Miss Primrose said was the nervous system. Why, I'm all upset from top to toe. I never had a good view of him before, for I didn't pay no heed to nobody when my dear little Miss Daisy was so ill; but I do say that the cut of the hand and the turn of the head is as like—as like ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... reasons,' she said, 'for wishing to be gone; but there was one reason which overbalanced them all—God's time had not yet arrived.' But at length it did arrive. 'Lay me down,' she said, for the irritability of her nervous system had rendered frequent change of posture necessary, and her friends had just been indulging her,—'Lay me down; let me sleep my last sleep in Jesus.' And these were her last words. Her grandson John seems to have cherished, when a mere boy, years before she died, the design of writing ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... spinning on ahead, came tearing back to see what had happened. Though he pretended to be sympathetic, he was visibly overjoyed at our misfortune, which turned the tables upon us for once, and his suggestions were enough to wreck the valvular system of a motor-car; not to mention the nervous system of a distracted chauffeur. ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Royal Society, and reviewed in the Edinburgh Review, in 1811. He brought some of the Woorara poison, with which the natives poison their arrows and destroy their victims. It was his theory that this poison destroys by affecting the nervous system only, and that after a certain time its effects on the nerves would cease as the effects of intoxicating liquors cease, and that the patient might recover, if the lungs could be kept in play, if respiration ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... I take for study is a very common fresh-water individual) has a well-developed nervous system. Its transparent, translucent nectocalyx, or swimming-bell, has a central nervous system which is localized on the margin of the bell, and which forms the so-called "nerve-ring" of Romanes.[3] This nerve-ring is separated into an upper and lower nerve-ring by the "veil," an ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... age, the condition of his nervous system made the scent of a tobacco-pipe very disagreeable to him. The old colored house-servants were compelled to hide their pipes, and rid themselves of the scent of tobacco, before they ventured to approach him.... They protested that they had not smoked, or seen a pipe; and he invariably ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... discomfiture of her political hopes, and had never resumed her previous tenour of life. She was secluded, her spirits uncertain, moods of depression succeeded by fits of unaccountable excitement, and, on the whole, Myra feared a general and chronic disturbance of her nervous system. His sister prepared Endymion for encountering a great change in their parent when he returned home. Myra, however, never expatiated on the affairs of Hurstley. Her annals in this respect were somewhat dry. She fulfilled her promise of recording them, ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... it, in the hope that your nervous system may be strengthened, and you may find courage to do the duty that lies before you," said the doctor, as he pressed her hand and left ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the course of generations, the young birds of this race begin to display a fear of man before yet they have been injured by him, it is an unavoidable inference that the nervous system of the race has been organically modified by these experiences, we have no choice but to conclude, that when a young bird is led to fly, it is because the impression produced in its senses by the approaching ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... stop, and that at once. I had reached a point where my will had to capitulate to Unreason—that unscrupulous usurper. My previous five years as a neurasthenic had led me to believe that I had experienced all the disagreeable sensations an overworked and unstrung nervous system could suffer. But on this day several new and terrifying sensations seized me and rendered me all but helpless. My condition, however, was not apparent even to those who worked with me at the same desk. I remember trying to speak and at times finding ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... These five months are times of extreme discomfort. The damp heat, despite charcoal fires in the houses and offices, mildews everything—clothes, weapons, books, man himself. It seems to exhaust all the positive electricity of the nervous system, and it makes the patient feel utterly miserable. It also fills the air with noxious vapours during the short bursts of sunshine perpendicularly rained down, and breeds a hateful brood of what ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... first blinded trembles violently, jumps about wildly, and rolls over repeatedly, as Cyon has stated; but Kishi believes that these disturbances of behavior are temporary effects of the strong stimulation of certain reflex centers in the nervous system. After having been blinded for only a few minutes the dancers observed by him became fairly normal in their behavior. They moved about somewhat more slowly than usually, especially when in a position which required accurately ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... treatment, especially when combined with various forms of massage and exercises. Simple thermal waters, hot sulphur springs and hot muriated waters are all successful in different cases. Chronic muscular rheumatism can also be benefited in a similar manner. Diseases of the nervous system are on the whole treated by these means with small success. Mental diseases other than very mild cases of depression should be considered inapplicable. Neurasthenics are sometimes treated at chalybeate or thermal muriated ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... splendid healthy physique, her fully-developed passions, passions of which she had tasted the full pleasure, but which had been for a long time ungratified, were roused to intensity by the feel of my prick, by my groping her cunt, by the excitement of the position; all had relazed her nervous system, and absorbed her in voluptuousness. What did she think? Did she think at all?—did she ever know? How can I recollect what I thought in that maddening moment of fierce desire to have her? I grasped her round the waist, and pushed her to the sofa. No resistance, not a word was said. My arse ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... action is not so marked as that of tea or coffee, and hence it is more suitable for young children. Dr. Hutchison, an authority on dietetics, writes: "Tea and coffee are also harmful to the susceptible nervous system of the child, but cocoa, made with plenty of milk, may be allowed, though it should be regarded, like milk, as a food rather than ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... three explanations to make, and they all had to be full, frank, ample, satisfactory, and all the rest of those words, you know. But it's awfully hard work. It's wearing on the constitution. It destroys the nervous system. I tell you what it is, old chap—I'm serious—if this sort of thing is to go on, hang it, ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... that may be, there can be no question that the men and women who sat through the acting of Wycherley's Country Wife were past blushing. Our tenacity of national impressions has caused the word theatre since then to prod the Puritan nervous system like a satanic instrument; just as one has known Anti-Papists, for whom Smithfield was redolent of a sinister smoke, as though they had a later recollection of the place than the lowing herds. Hereditary Puritanism, regarding the stage, is met, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Cottage was one of extreme dulness varied by dread. Every meal was a tete-a-tete with my father, unrelieved by the presence of any lady or young person, and he became more and more gloomy as his nervous system gradually gave way, so that after having been simply stern and unbending, he was now like a black cloud always hanging over me and ready, as it seemed, to be my destruction in some way or other not yet clearly defined. It was ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... and tubs, are sharp visions of modernity. Degas observes here, with the tenacious perfection of his talent, the slightest shiver of the flesh refreshed by cold water. His masterly drawing follows the most delicate inflexion of the muscles and suggests the nervous system under the skin. He observes with extraordinary subtlety the awkwardness of the nude being at a time when nudity is no longer accustomed to show itself, and this true nudity is in strong contrast to that of the academicians. One might say of Degas that he has the disease of truth, if the necessity ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... of this evil 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
... a Soul?" It begins with a vindication of Descartes as a great physiologist, doing for the physiology of motion and sensation that which Harvey had done for the circulation of the blood. A series of propositions which constitute the foundation and essence of the modern physiology of the nervous system are fully expressed and illustrated in the writings of Descartes. Modern physiological research, which has shown that many apparently purposive acts are performed by animals, and even by men, deprived of consciousness, and therefore of volition, is at least compatible with ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... the worst dreams. It is full of mishaps for the dreamer. A loss of estates, failure of persons to carry out their plans and desires, bad health, depressed conditions of the nervous system for ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... a smile stole over the pallid features; then, as they watched eagerly for some token of returning consciousness, the nervous system, so long strained to its utmost tension, suddenly relaxed and utter ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... should not see him—at least not that night—and I told her so. This gave her great relief, though she said it was cowardly in her to feel so. But in truth she was too ill to see him. Her struggle had been too long and severe, and her nervous system was utterly prostrated. I had Doctor Bates here when Gilbert Hearn came, and the doctor is very discreet. I told him that he must manage so that Emily need not see the one she so feared to meet again, and hinted plainly why, though making no reference to thee, of course. The doctor acted ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... pecked at the rabbit, and the next day was a dead hen. This time we were the vultures; so we opened the bird, and this time all special symptoms had disappeared, there were only general symptoms. There was no peculiar indication in any organ—an excitement of the nervous system—that was it; a case of cerebral congestion—nothing more. The fowl had not been poisoned—she had died of apoplexy. Apoplexy is a rare disease among fowls, I believe, but very common among men." Madame de Villefort appeared ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was like the sailor who, bowling along under full pressure of canvas for weeks, in the old days of the sailing vessel, suddenly found himself in the "doldrums," and becalmed for what might be an indefinite period—it was apt to wear upon a nervous system that demanded work. ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... necessary to health as food. "Only by exercise—physical exercise—can we maintain our muscles, organs and nervous system in proper vigor; only by exercise can we equalise the circulation and distribute the blood evenly over every part of the body; only by exercise can we take a cheerful and wholesome view of life, for exercise assists the digestion, and a good digestion ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... concerned with, is the final result of such exercises of individual thought powers. In the case of the solitary forms, such new conceptions die with the individual. Though they may exert an influence on the development of the nervous system, and aid in the hereditary transmission of more active brain powers, they are lost as special ideas, fail to be taken up and repeated by other members of the species. This is not the case with the social animals. Each of these has some faculty of observation and some tendency to imitation, ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... away in a beautiful cadence as she concluded, and she held out her hands as in supplication. I am always sensitive to female influences. Besides, what would Jorrocks' ghost be to this? Could anything be in better taste? Would I not be exposing myself to the chance of injuring my nervous system by interviews with such creatures as my last visitor, unless I decided at once? She gave me a seraphic smile, as if she knew what was passing in my mind. That smile settled the matter. "She will do!" I cried; "I choose this one;" ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... in displaying himself amidst his councillors, his officers of the household, and his train of vassals, allies, and dependents, the Marquis of Argyle probably wished to make an impression on the nervous system of Captain Dugald Dalgetty. But that doughty person had fought his way, in one department or another, through the greater part of the Thirty Years' War in Germany, a period when a brave and successful soldier was a companion for princes. The King of Sweden, and, after his example, even ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... states, there is no difference, from the point of view of the outside observer, between voluntary and reflex movements. The physiologist can discover that both depend upon the nervous system, and he may find that the movements which we call voluntary depend upon higher centres in the brain than those that are reflex. But he cannot discover anything as to the presence or absence of "will" or "consciousness," for these things can only be seen from within, ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell |
