"Optic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Anderson, Indiana, is all American, with the exception of a glass eye. The substitute optic is alien. Gary tried to enlist in the U. S. Marine Corps at their recruiting station in Louisville, Ky., but was rejected when his infirmity was discovered ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... see with our outward eye any more than we do with spectacles. The apparent ocular apparatus is but the passive, unconscious instrument to transmit images thrown through it upon a fine interior fibre, the optic nerve; and even this does not take cognizance of the object, but is only another conductor, carrying the image still farther inward, to the intellectual nerves of the brain; and not until it reaches them do we see the object, not until then is its individuality and are its ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... of interest which were brought before the British Medical Association, at the recent Glasgow meeting, was an account by Mr. Brudenell Carter of a method which he had devised of opening the sheath of the optic nerve behind the eye, for the relief of pressure within this sheath and within the cavity of the skull. The brain is invested by firm membranes, which secrete a certain amount of fluid and are continued down to the eye in the form of a sheath which surrounds ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... lost in the universal reason, His will as surrendered to the will of God, His human affections as fused in the fire of divine feeling, His body as a phantom. They could not admit that He lived the real life of a real man. They could not see the value of such a life. Neo-Platonism had paralysed their optic nerve. Thinkers such as the Christologians of Alexandria, imbued with the spirit of Neo-Platonism, had no motive for preserving the distinct subsistence of Christ's human nature. It was their boast that their Ideal had faced and overcome and trampled ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... which stood furniture for which Anthony had no use, and many crates in which his machines and phials came to him; this floor was seldom visited, except by the man, who sometimes came to put a box there; and the spiders had it to themselves; except for a little room where stood an optic glass through which on clear nights Anthony sometimes looked at the moon and stars, if there was any odd misadventure among them, such as an eclipse; or when a fiery-tailed comet went his way silently in the heavens, coming from none might ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... eye is not of flesh but one of manufacture. It is placed in sensitive connection with the optic nerve, on which images are thrown by the delicate mechanism of the false eye. The sight thus obtained is almost one-half as distinct as that which is enjoyed by ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... slightly to the left and began to get the rest—the great levelled creature upon the darkened floor. Skag kept his imagination down until his optic nerves actually brought him the picture. The long thin sweep was the mother's tail, yet she was not crouched. Skag saw her sprawled paws extended toward him. ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... presences that flaunt The obvious possession of today, To wear with me the spectacles that haunt The optic sense with wraiths of yesterday— These cobbled shores through which the traffic streams Have been the stage-set of successive towns, Where coffined actors postured out their dreams, And harlot Folly changed her thousand gowns. This corner-shop was Bull's Head Tavern, ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... room, leaving the door open, and she saw the maid instantly, and was astonished, and laughed." In the Colophonian oracle, they were the spectators, not the prophetess, who had need thus to be put under the influence of the mesmeric glamour. Can it be that, in certain diseased states of the optic nerve, it really is subject to the illusion of seeing objects rise in air, as well as go round in horizontal motion? They who saw these sights in the adyta of temples, in caves and sacred groves, in initiations ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... witnessed such an extraordinary glare. I do not believe that any human being ever lived whose eyes habitually wore that expression: only by a violent effort could the expression be produced, and then for a very short time, without serious injury to the optic nerves. The eyes were made as large as possible; and the thing after which the poor fellow had been struggling was that peculiar look which may be conceived to penetrate through the beholder, and pierce his inmost ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... to our sensibility, which needs to be just touched on here, is known by the name of the specific energy of the nerves. One and the same nerve-fibre always reacts in a precisely similar way, whatever the nature of the stimulus. Thus, when the optic nerve is stimulated in any manner, whether by light, mechanical pressure, or an electric current, the same effect, a sensation of light, follows.[27] In a usual way, a given class of nerve-fibre is only stimulated by one kind of stimulus. Thus, the ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... and vanished at a wink, only to appear in other places; and by and by not only islands, but refulgent and revolving lights began to stud the darkness; light-houses of the mind or of the wearied optic nerve, solemnly shining and winking as we passed. At length the mate himself despaired, scrambled on board again from his unrestful perch, and announced that we had missed our destination. He was the only man of practice in these waters, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and declare that the convolutions of your brain are of the regulation standard—that the medullary part is not disproportioned to the cineritious—that your falx is not thicker or thinner than it ought—and that your optic thalami are not too prominent? And if you are not ready to do this, what avails all your assumption of superiority? In these—they are not many—lie the alleged differences between you and your caged cousins yonder." Thus ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... wreck of is and was, Things incomplete and purposes betrayed Make sadder transits o'er thought's optic glass Than noblest ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... and went to take off the plaster he had a great while worn over his eye, he found he had totally lost the sight of it indeed, and that it was absolutely gone. 'Tis possible that the action of sight was dulled from having been so long without exercise, and that the optic power was wholly retired into the other eye: for we evidently perceive that the eye we keep shut sends some part of its virtue to its fellow, so that it will swell and grow bigger; and so inaction, with the heat of ligatures and, plasters, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... when the superior Fiend Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield, Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, Behind him cast. The broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views At evening, from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe. His spear—to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast Of some great ammiral, were but a wand— He walked ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... outline of the head. This is the only part of the work on the stick itself wherein the eye is assisted by actual measurement or pattern. The shaping, or modelling of the head, as also, later, the gradation in thickness of the stick depending entirely upon optic precision. The absolute accuracy of hand and eye required for such work is only to be attained by long ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... an object and are thrown off in all directions. Of the particles which vibrate with any particular velocity, some are gathered by the optical apparatus of the eye, and deflected so as to impinge on the retina and on the fibres of the optic nerve therewith connected, producing in these fibres a change which is followed by other changes in the brain, which, again, by virtue of some inscrutable union between the brain and the mind, create a feeling ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... of communication protocols, as BESSER pointed out. By layering both physically and logically, a sense of scalability is maintained from local area networks in offices, across campuses, through bridges, routers, campus backbones, fiber-optic links, etc., up into regional networks and ultimately into ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... shorter train of other thoughts, which end in a volition and an act—the loosing of the greyhound from the leash. These several thoughts are the concomitants of a process which goes on in the nervous system of the man. Unless the nerve-elements of the retina, of the optic nerve, of the brain, of the spinal chord, and of the nerves of the arms went through certain physical changes in due order and correlation, the various states of consciousness which have been enumerated would not make their appearance. So that in ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of commission and her stricken men in the hospital; but by the time the specialists had diagnosed the trouble as amblyopia, from some sudden shock to the optic nerve—followed in cases by complete atrophy, resulting in amaurosis—another ship came into Honolulu in the same predicament. Like the other craft four thousand miles away, her deck force had been stricken suddenly and at night. Still another, a battle-ship, followed into ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... miracle," replied the wise doctors, after they had first consulted their books: "it is only the electrifying of the optic nerve." ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... stretches out his hand and grasps an object need not understand anything of the working of the muscles, nor of the electrical and chemical changes set up by the movement in muscles and nerves, nor need he elaborately calculate the distance of the object by measuring the angle made by the optic axes; he wills to take hold of the thing he wants, and the apparatus of his body obeys his will though he does not even know of its existence. So is it with the man who prays, unknowing of the creative force ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... the cord and bifurcates into an ascending and a descending branch. In the cord the fibres rearrange themselves and pass to the brain by a double path. Those that convey sensations of pain and of temperature pass by the spino-thalamic route by way of the tract of Gowers and the fillet to the optic thalamus; those that are concerned with the muscular sense, the joint sense, and tactile discrimination pass up the posterior columns in the tracts of Goll and Burdach to the nuclei gracilis and cuneatus in the medulla, whence they ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... beneath the grey shaggy brow, at one moment in a strange fiery way, while the next, as its owner made some slight movement, it literally flashed as if sending forth scintillations of light, giving to his countenance a weird, strange aspect, emphasised by the peculiar fixed stare of his left optic, which suggested that it was doing the fixed, quiet, patient work of its master, while the other searched and flashed and sought for fresh subjects upon which its fellow might gaze. Whatever value such a pair of eyes might be to their possessor, ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... who have not read some of the writings of this famous author, whose books are scattered broadcast and eagerly sought for. Oliver Optic has the faculty of writing books full of dash and energy, such as healthy boys ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... sea!), excellence of climate, warmth, dryness and clearness of air; and in all manner of household goods and stuff, care, order, daintiness of habits, leisure and affluence. All things these which, quite as much as any peculiarity of optic function, give for the healthy mind a sort of restfulness, of calm, of virtue, and I might almost say, of regal or priestly quality to white; a quality which suits it to the act of restoring our bodies with food and wine, above all, to the act of spiritual purification, the ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... able to hear it because the only nerve-ends tuned to vibrate in harmony with the ether-waves set in action by the sun are nerve-ends that are connected with the brain center devoted to sight. "If," says Professor James, "we could splice the outer extremities of our optic nerves to our ears, and those of our auditory nerves to our eyes, we should hear the lightning and see the thunder, see the symphony ...
— Applied Psychology: Making Your Own World • Warren Hilton
... softest splendor, the accessible German Courts, especially the likely or well-disposed: Mainz, Koln, Trier, these, the three called Spiritual, lie on our very route; then Pfalz, Baiern, Sachsen:—we will tour diligently up and down; try whether, by optic machinery and art-magic of the mind, one ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... hope. Look at the pupils yourself, count; there is not the least susceptibility to the light; there is a paralysis of the optic nerve. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... flying-fish sitting on the branches, I hear them sing, and they fly and mate and build their nests in the branches; I see a dun-coloured aboriginal she-female, mongolianee, petite, squat-faced, And she has a cast in her sinister optic and a snub nose but her heart is true; And I gaze into her heart (which is true), and I find that she is musing (as indeed I often muse) on ME, Me Prononce, Me ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... the third held the materials. We found that these men could remain at work forty-eight seconds at a time. When they emerged, their eyes were always red and starting; the effect of the violent strain upon the optic nerve which the use of the sight under water produces. We had some skilful divers among our own sailors, who, although they could not have attempted this work, were able to inspect what was done by the Wahuaners, and to report that ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... Photogen, and if they grew darker as she grew older, it was only a darker blue. Watho, with the help of Falca, took the greatest possible care of her—in every way consistent with her plans, that is, the main point in which was that she should never see any light but what came from the lamp. Hence her optic nerves, and indeed her whole apparatus for seeing, grew both larger and more sensitive; her eyes, indeed, stopped short only of being too large. She was a sadly dainty little creature. No one in the world except those two was aware of the being of ...
— Harper's Young People, December 2, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... question had only thought of the dilatation of the pupil, the mere wish to dilate it would not have brought about the result, inasmuch as the motion of the gland, which serves to impel the animal spirits towards the optic nerve in a way which would dilate or contract the pupil, is not associated in nature with the wish to dilate or contract the pupil, but with the wish to look at remote or very near objects. Lastly, he maintained that, ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... therefore, wakened on election morning with the damaged optic swollen shut and sadly discolored. Realizing that this unfortunate condition would not win votes, Mr. Hopkins remained at home all day and nagged his long-suffering spouse, whose tongue ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... When the optic image of a given object is not projected upon the retina of the visual medium, that object fails to be desired by the chief vital organ of the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... highly vascular membrane of a dark brown or chocolate color and is pierced behind by the optic nerve and in this situation is ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... chief source of light, are so rapid that billions of them enter the eye in a second of time, and the retina is of such a nature that its nerve cells are thrown into activity by these waves; the impulse is carried over the optic nerve to the occipital lobe of the cortex, and the sensation of sight is the result. The different colors also, from the red of the spectrum to the violet, are the result of different vibration rates in the waves of ether which strike the retina; and in order to perceive color, the retina must ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... called the isthmus, no cell masses, just bundles of fibers running up and down. Almost all the nerves come off below that point; and the few that don't can be spliced together, except the smell nerves and optic nerve. Ever notice I can't smell, Willie? And they transplanted my eyes with the brain—biggest trick of ...
— A Matter of Proportion • Anne Walker
... respects, to—hem! to welcome you as a neighbor—as a neighbor. Arthur Bimby, humbly at your service—Arthur Bimby, once a man of parts though now brought low by abstractions, gentlemen, forces not apparent to the human optic, sirs. Still, in my day, I have been known about town as a downy bird, a smooth ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... fraternity was traced to which the author had called particular attention because three of its eleven members were born blind. The defect was described as "optic atrophy associated with a pigmentary retinitis and choryditis" and "this condition," Dr. Penrose averred, "is one stated by the authorities to be due to the ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... decay and death, to another of sleep and rest, after toil, to prepare for a new and brighter awakening. All the glory of dawn and sunset is but etheric waves thrilling the vapory air and impinging on the optic nerve; but behind it all is the magician who sees and knows, who thinks and loves. "It is the mind that makes the body rich." Thoughts take shape and coloring from souls through which they pass; and a free and open mind looks upon the world in the mood in which a fair woman beholds herself ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... vicious, treacherous and superstitious, but they are childlike and simple, as the following incident will show:— After the Indians came back from Fort Pitt, one of them found a glass eye; that eye was the favorite optic of Stanley Simpson, who was taken a prisoner there by Big Bear. He brought it with him for one of his brother Indians who was blind in one eye, imagining with untutored wisdom that if it gave light to a white man, it should also to a ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... nerves (except the optic and olfactory, which spread out directly in the cortex, save some of their filaments terminating in the subcortical centers) terminate in the subcortical center; the cortex of the cerebrum acts as a checking organ for the subcortical center; as the cerebral cortex in woman, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... general. The first Greek anatomist, however, who is recognized as such, is said to have been Alcmaeon. He is said to have made extensive dissections of the lower animals, and to have described many hitherto unknown structures, such as the optic nerve and the Eustachian canal—the small tube leading into the throat from the ear. He is credited with many unique explanations of natural phenomena, such as, for example, the explanation that "hearing is produced ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... soon as Brian was able to be moved, the doctor wanted him to go to Paris to an American brain specialist who had lately come over and made astonishing cures. Brian's blindness was due to paralysis of the optic nerve; but this American—Cuyler—had performed spine and brain operations which had restored sight in two similar cases. There might be a hundredth chance ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Mr. Bond, a bankrupt metal-broker, who had two hobbies—farming and astronomy; and, as Hogarth approached the yard- gate, he saw Mr. Bond, his two daughters, his servants, grouped round an optic tube mounted on a tripod. He asked permission to get the account-book, got it, in a few minutes was again passing through, and, as he went by, bowing his thanks, Mr. Bond said: "But—have you seen ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... process of inducing sleep by wearying out the optic nerve of the eyes, by making the patient fix them upon a certain spot for a time, generally situated where it is a little wearisome for the eyes to find it. The fatigue thus induced spreads from the ocular muscles to the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... "Who? When? What? Chart" as soon as you possibly can, and also tell me whether you will send me one of those books which you want criticised. I am eleven years old. I like to read very much—history, travel, and adventure being my favorites. The books I like specially are Oliver Optic's works for travels, and G.A. Henty's works for historical facts and thrilling adventures. I like ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1. No. 23, April 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... normal condition is sympathetically attuned to the vibrations of starlight. Your consciousness is located in your brain, and so long as those vibrations continue to strike with sufficient force upon the optic nerve, you will be conscious of the light. But suppose the machinery of your body were finer—suppose your senses were absolutely in accord with those vibratory movements, instead of only partially so—do you not know that the starlight would reveal far more than it now does? Then you ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... our own, the activities of Nature would have to translate themselves under other forms. And doubtless the elementary bodies would not be found there in the same proportions. Consequently we have to conclude that organs and senses would not be the same there as here. The optic nerve, for instance, which has formed and developed here from the rudimentary organ of the trilobite to the marvels of the human eye, must be incomparably more sensitive upon Neptune than in our dazzling solar luminosity, in order to perceive ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... ascertained, 1.40 grain euphthalmine inserted, and examination of eye grounds showed no optic atrophy. The right eye ground (retina) was slightly higher in color ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... oddities, to the remotenesses and 'minutiae' of vegetable terms,—the same entireness of subject. You have quincunxes in heaven above, quincunxes in earth below, and quincunxes in the water beneath the earth; quincunxes in deity, quincunxes in the mind of man, quincunxes in bones, in the optic nerves, in roots of trees, in leaves, in petals, in every thing. In short, first turn to the last leaf of this volume, and read out aloud to yourself the last seven paragraphs of Chap. v. beginning with the words 'More considerables,' &c. But it is time for me to be in bed, in the words of Sir Thomas, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... section through the head of an embryo of the approximate age of the one just described; it passes through both forebrain, fb, and hindbrain, hb; through the extreme edge of the optic vesicles, ov, and through the anterior end of the notochord, nt. It is just cephalad to the anterior end of the pharynx and to the hypophysis. The chief purpose in showing this section is to represent the two large head-cavities, hc. The origin of these cavities may be discussed at a later ...
— Development of the Digestive Canal of the American Alligator • Albert M. Reese
... saying, for example, that a sound is audible, when it consists of vibrations within the compass of the auditory nerve; that an object is visible, when either directly or by reflection, it sends forth luminiferous vibrations within the compass of the retina and the optic nerve. Vibrations below or above that compass make no impression at all, and the object remains invisible; as, for example, a kettle of boiling water in a dark room, though the kettle is sending forth heat vibrations ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... staring at an open page of a textbook, but not studying; not even reading; not even thinking. Nor was he lost in a reverie: his mind's eye was shut, as his physical eye might well have been, for the optic nerve, flaccid with ennui, conveyed nothing whatever of the printed page upon which the orb of vision was partially focused. Penrod was doing something very unusual and rare, something almost never ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... Custer was right about that. The eyes are perfect, beautiful gray eyes, he says, and the optic nerves and auditory nerves are perfectly functional. The defect isn't there. It's deeper. Too ...
— Second Sight • Alan Edward Nourse
... other features: Faithless, mean; Encased in matter; vowed to Gods obscene; Contemptuous of the impalpable, it swells On Doubt; for pastime swallows miracles; And if I bid it face what I observe, Declares me hoodwinked by my optic nerve! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The optic or visual, the palpebral or pupil, and the eyebrow agent. Each of these has its peculiar sense, and we shall show how they ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... anticipation. For the volume is but the first of the Old Glory Series, and the imprint is that of the famed firm of Lee and Shepard, whose name has been for so many years linked with the publications of Oliver Optic. As a matter of fact, the story is right in line with the productions of that gifted and most fascinating of authors, and certainly there is every cause for congratulation that the stirring events of ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... one hand covering his injured left optic, told me he would settle with me in the morning, and then took a long look astern, and there, certainly enough, was a long streak of black rising over the horizon. The mate stood by ...
— "Pig-Headed" Sailor Men - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... the country Sherlock, getting on his knees and peering into the depths, but just then Bunch handed him a handful of hard mud which located temporarily over Harmony's left eye and put his optic on ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... harmonious contrast to blue; red and blue form violet or purple, so much admired in contrast with yellow in the pansy; yellow and blue form green, the contrast to red, and the color needed to restore the tone of the optic nerve when strained or fatigued by undue attention to red. This is the most common and admirable contrast in the vegetable kingdom; the brilliant red blossom or fruit, with green leaves, as instance the fiery tulip, the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... if some strong anxiety had wasted it. The cheeks were sunken, and there was a wearied, puckered expression on the brow. And it seemed to me that his eyes were strange, not only the expression, but the physical seeming, as though the optic nerves and supporting muscles had suffered strain and slightly twisted ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... Pride Superb, haughty Plenty Copious Pitch Bituminous Priest Sacerdotal Rival Emulous Root Radical Ring Annular Reason Rational Revenge Vindictive Rule Regular Speech Loquacious, garrulous, eloquent Smell Olfactory Sight Visual, optic, perspicuous, conspicuous Side Lateral, collateral Skin Cutaneous Spittle Salivial Shoulder Humeral Shepherd Pastoral Sea Marine, maritime Share Literal Sun Solar Star Astral, sideral, stellar Sunday Dominical ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... energies there are that can act upon the nerves. Touch, taste, and smell imply contact, sound has greater range, and sight has the immensity of the universe for its field. The most distant but visible star acts through the optic nerve to present itself to consciousness. It is not the ego that looks out through the eyes, but it is the universe that pours ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... my first essay of using high powers with the Newtonian telescope, I began to doubt whether an opinion which has been entertained by several eminent authors, 'that vision will grow indistinct when the optic pencils are less than the fiftieth part of an inch,' would hold good in all cases. I perceived that according to this criterion I was not entitled to see distinctly with a power of much more than about 320 in a seven-foot telescope of an aperture of six ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... (Gutta Serena). It was once thought that this sort of blindness was an incurable extinction of vision by a transparent watery humor distilling on the optic nerve. It caused total blindness, but made no visible change in the eye. It is now known that this sort of blindness arises from obstruction in the capillary nerve-vessels, and in some cases at least is curable. Milton, speaking of his own blindness, expresses a doubt whether it arose ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... all directions. The optical apparatus of the eye gathers some of these together, and gives them such a course that they impinge upon the surface of the retina, which is a singularly delicate apparatus, connected with the termination of the fibres of the optic nerve. The impulses of the attenuated matter, or ether, affect this apparatus and the fibres of the optic nerve in a certain way; and the change in the fibres of the optic nerve produces yet other changes ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... I wonder who's on the bay alongside of her," remarks another, and each of these observations is taken quite as a matter of course. With a wide and empty field of vision, and with trained, unspoiled optic nerves, the plainsman is marvelously penetrating of glance. Hence, Mrs. McFarlane was perfectly certain that not one but several of her neighbors had seen and recognized Berrie and young Norcross as they came down the hill. In a day or two every man would know just where they camped, ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... Van Biervliet, "L'Homme Droit et l'Homme Gauche," Revue Philosophique, October, 1901. It is here shown that in the constitution of their nervous system the ambidextrous are demonstrably left-sided persons; their optic, acoustic, olfactory, and muscular sensitivity is preponderant on the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... The optic nerve has power so keen, That ev'ry object by it seen Is stamped upon the brain; But they of sluggish mental mold No vivid photograph will hold, And scarce a ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... forced under oath to tell what I know—or suspect. However, I am in a position to assure you that Oriental activities on this ranch have absolutely ceased. Mr. Okada has been solemnly assured that, in dealing with certain white men, they will insist upon an eye for an optic and a tusk for a tooth; he knows that if he starts anything further he will go straight to that undiscovered country where the woodbine twineth and the ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... structure of the retina demands fuller notice. Figure 9 shows an enlarged, diagram of a small portion of this, the percipient part of the eye. The optic nerve (o.n. in Figure 8) enters the eye at a spot called the blind spot (B.S.), and the nerve fibres spread thence over the inner retinal surface. From this layer of nerve fibres (o.n. in Figure 9) threads run outward, through certain ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... still wide open behind (z). mp medullary plates. Figure 1.155 with sixteen pairs of somites. Brain divided into five vesicles: v fore-brain, z intermediate-brain, m middle-brain, h hind-brain, n after-brain, a optic vesicles, g auditory vesicles, c heart, dv vitelline veins, mp medullary plate, uw ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... ingredient wanted yet to perfect the thing, and somehow I can't just manage to hit upon the thing that's necessary, and I don't dare talk with a chemist, of course. But I'm progressing, and before many weeks I wager the country will ring with the fame of Beriah Sellers' Infallible Imperial Oriental Optic Liniment and Salvation for Sore Eyes—the Medical Wonder of the Age! Small bottles fifty cents, large ones a dollar. Average cost, five and seven cents for ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... This needless use of the adjective for the noun is probably supposed to be humorous, like "canine" for dog, "optic" for eye, "anatomy" for body, and the like. Happily the ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... had been wrong, and that it was not near-sightedness after all. He could not forget Uncle Joe—and Uncle Joe had not been able to find any glasses that did any good. Besides, he heard his father and the doctors talking a great deal about "an accident," and a "consequent injury to the optic nerve"; and he had to answer a lot of questions about the time when he was eleven years old and ran into the big maple tree with his sled, cutting a bad gash in his forehead. But as if that, so long ago, could have anything to do with things ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... dynamite charge had been the unusual fruit of the raid—unusual because when the boatswain and others had rushed to recover what they thought was their captain's mangled body, they discovered their leader unmarred by the blast but stone-blind from the shock. An injured optic nerve, the San Francisco specialists ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... is anything real, I say, it is prevailing, little by little, and drawing me more interiorly into hell. Optic nerves, he talked of. Ah! well—there are other nerves of communication. May God Almighty help me! You ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... See with its resorting throng Rude Carfax teems, and waistcoats, visited With too-familiar elbow, swell the curse Vortiginous. The boating man returns, His rawness growing with experience— Strange union! and directs the optic glass Not unresponsive to Jemima's charms, Who wheels obdurate, in his mimic chaise Perambulant, the child. The gouty cit, Asthmatical, with elevated cane Pursues the unregarding tram, as one Who, having ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a nervous illness is well illustrated by two cases reported by Thaddeus Hoyt Ames.[39] A young woman, the drudge of the family, suddenly became hysterically blind, that is, she became blind despite the fact that her eyes and optic nerves proved to be unimpaired. She remained blind until it was proved to her that a part of her welcomed the blindness and had really produced it for the purpose of getting away from the monotony of her unappreciated life at home. She naturally resented the charge but finally accepted ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... so much fun over anything in my life never such consuming interest and delight. And just think! I had Sol Smith Russell in my mind's eye for the old detective's part, and bang it! he has gone off pottering with Oliver Optic, or else ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... must be bounded less perfectly and less distinctly, than the group; for it is like a fragment cut out of the optic scene of the world. However the painter, by the setting of his foreground, by throwing the whole of his light into the centre, and by other means of fixing the point of view, will learn that he must neither wander beyond the composition, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... eye "makes use of" light, I do not merely mean that the eye is capable of seeing; I allude to the very precise relations that exist between this organ and the apparatus of locomotion. The retina of vertebrates is prolonged in an optic nerve, which, again, is continued by cerebral centres connected with motor mechanisms. Our eye makes use of light in that it enables us to utilize, by movements of reaction, the objects that we see to be advantageous, and to avoid those which we see to be ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... of Oliver Optic's Library of travel and adventure chronicles the doings of the Young America and her crew in British ports and waters, and is replete with thrilling adventures and ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... vouchsafed upon the exciting subject. He understood the value of restraint, and left their minds to supply what details they liked best. But this wink of pregnant suggestion, while leaving them divinely unsatisfied, sent them busily on the search. They imagined the lost optic roaming the universe without even an attendant eyelid, able to see things on its own account—invisible things. "Weeden's lost eye's about," was a delightful and mysterious threat; while "I can see ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... every part and organ of the body. Every organ and part of the body is represented in the iris of the eye in a well-defined area. The iris of the eye contains an immense number of minute nerve filaments, which through the optic nerves, the optic brain centers and the spinal cord are connected with and receive impressions from every nerve in the body. The nerve filaments, muscle fibers and minute blood vessels in the different ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... his fancy. "But there are grounds for the suspicion" (says Dr. Hibbert, "Philosophy of Apparitions," p. 250), "that when ideas of vision are vivified to the height of sensation, a corresponding affection of the optic nerve accompanies the illusion." Muller ("Physiology of the Senses," p. 1392, Baley's translation) states the same opinion still more strongly; and Sir David Brewster, quoted by Dr. Hibbert (p. 251) says: "In examining these mental impressions, I have found that they ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pent the whole year through, Man views the world, as through an optic glass, On a chance holiday, and scarcely then, How by persuasion ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... you know, Something of a boxing pro., So he knew the golden maxim: "He who eyes his man best whacks him." Shorty, when he saw the grim Optic that was turned on him, Thinking Jimmy's fist looked hard Prudently remained on guard. Canny Hun! And who can blame Longshanks if he did the same? But our hero, irritated, Grassed the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... assessment: automatic digital exchange domestic: connected via fiber optic cable to Telecom Italia network international: country code - 39; uses ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... peer, pry, take a peep; play at bopeep^. look full in the face, look hard at, look intently; strain one's eyes; fix the eyes upon, rivet the eyes upon; stare, gaze; pore over, gloat on; leer, ogle, glare; goggle; cock the eye, squint, gloat, look askance. Adj. seeing &c v.; visual, ocular; optic, optical; ophthalmic. clear-eyesighted &c n.; eagle-eyed, hawk-eyed, lynx-eyed, keen- eyed, Argus-eyed. visible &c 446. Adv. visibly &c 446; in sight of, with one's eyes open at sight, at first sight, at ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... was in the optic nerve; there was no external inflammation. Under the [33] best surgical advice I tried different methods of cure,—cupping, leeches, a thimbleful of lunar caustic on the back of the neck, applied by Dr. Warren, of Boston; and I remember spending that very evening ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... rheumatism while in the service, coupled with the startling proposition that this rheumatism resulted, just previous to his application, in blindness. Upon medical examination it appeared that his blindness was caused by amaurosis, which is generally accepted as an affection of the optic nerve. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... his mystic significance, or altogether miss and misinterpret it; do but look at him, and he is contented. May we not well cry shame on an ungrateful world, which refuses even this poor boon; which will waste its optic faculty on dried Crocodiles, and Siamese Twins; and over the domestic wonderful wonder of wonders, a live Dandy, glance with hasty indifference, and a scarcely concealed contempt! Him no Zoologist classes among the Mammalia, no Anatomist dissects ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... heartily at the success of his stratagem, and polished and fondled the great eye until that optic seemed to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... enough to have perceived other than the natural man. Shakespeare's men are always "a little lower than the angels;" whereas a gentleman might fittingly stand among angels as a brother. This one star never swung across the optic-glass of our great Shakespeare. That spiritual-mindedness which is life he scarcely possessed. This was his limitation. Spenser stood higher on this mount of vision. He conceived and executed a picture of pure ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... doubt "calculated," as well he might, that this taste of his quality would be quite sufficient for a little eighteen—gun sloop, close under his lee; but the fight was not to be so easily taken out of Deadeye, although even to his optic it was now high ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... he recovered. And like a flash he flew at Lew Flapp, before Sam could do a thing to stop him. Blow after blow was taken and given by each of the cadets, and Tom was hit in the chest, on the shoulder, and in the left cheek. In return Flapp got one in the right eye that almost closed up that optic and then came a blow on the nose that made the ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... are membranes without, and full of marrow within; they proceed from the brain, and carry the animal spirits for sense and motion. Of these some be harder, some softer; the softer serve the senses, and there be seven pair of them. The first be the optic nerves, by which we see; the second move the eyes; the third pair serve for the tongue to taste; the fourth pair for the taste in the palate; the fifth belong to the ears; the sixth pair is most ample, and runs almost over all the bowels; the seventh pair moves ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... into which it is continued, and with the nerves which come off from it: of the segments of which it is composed—the olfactory lobes, the cerebral hemisphere, and the succeeding divisions—no one predominates so much over the rest as to obscure or cover them; and the so-called optic lobes are, frequently, the largest masses of all. In Reptiles, the mass of the brain, relatively to the spinal cord, increases and the cerebral hemispheres begin to predominate over the other parts; while in Birds this predominance is still more marked. The brain of the lowest Mammals, ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... the best way out," agreed Jack, when they were in the corridor. "Now I've got to get some vinegar and brown paper for this optic or ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... full generation the youth of America has been reading and re-reading "Oliver Optic." No genuine boy ever tires of this famous author who knew just what boys wanted and was always able ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... you need an optic glass, Which were your choice? A lens to drape In ruby, emerald, chrysopras, Each object—or reveal its shape ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... for the smallest fraction of a second withdrawn my gaze from Captain Lenoir's eyes, or allowed the barrel of my pistol to waver a hair's-breadth from his larboard optic, for I knew that if I did he would be upon me like lightning. But although he dared not move his limbs he was not afraid to use his tongue, angrily demanding what I meant by perpetrating such an outrage upon one of Senor Morillo's best customers, and vowing that he would not be satisfied ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... amazement seized me, as the conviction flashed through me like an electric shock that I must have lost my reason. In a few moments, however, this terror subsided; I felt certain that my thoughts were rational, and concluded that it was some affection of the optic nerve. But in a very few seconds I discovered by internal sensations that I was in motion, in a rapid, irregular, and accelerating motion. Awful horror again seized me; I screamed out a despairing cry for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... man, like the highest longing and the dearest wish of his own heart, who was to them one knew not whether the more of Master or of chosen Friend,—Him, alas, I saw not. To me He was denied. No spiritual optic nerve in me announced His presence. I ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... definitions are not in all cases quite clear and definite. The tela aranea is said to take its origin from the retina, the retina from the optic nerve, and the latter from the rethi (rete, network) involving the substance of the brain. The cornea arises from the sclerotic tunic, the uvea and secundina take their origin from the pia mater, and the conjunctiva from a thin pellicle or membrane ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... light, it will be almost too oppressive for him, and appear excessively bright; and if he have been kept for a considerable time in a very dark place, the sensation will be very painful. In this case, while the retina, or optic nerve, was deprived of light, its excitability accumulated, or became more easily affected by light; for if a person goes out of one room, into another which has an equal degree of light, he will feel no effect. You may convince yourselves of this law by a very simple experiment—shut ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... of the back, and considerable power over those of the neck, but none over my limbs....I dimly saw Mr. Coxwell in the ring, and endeavoured to speak, but could not do so; when in an instant black darkness came over me, and the optic nerve lost power suddenly. I was still conscious, with as active a brain as whilst writing this. I thought I had been seized with asphyxia, and that I should experience no more, as death would come unless we speedily descended. Other thoughts were actively ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... very brave about it, however, and wrung the heart of Doctor Suydam by the uncomplaining fortitude with which he bore examination after examination. Learned oculists theorized vaporously about optic atrophies, fractures, and brain pressures of one sort and another; and meanwhile Robert Austin, in the highest perfection of bodily vigor, in the fullest possession of those faculties that had raised him from an unschooled farm-boy to ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... earliest stages of embryonic growth, a skeleton of cartilage, like that of the lamprey; also, five origins of the aorta and five slits on the neck, like the lamprey and the shark. Later, he has but four aortic origins, and a heart now divided into two chambers, like bony fishes; the optic lobes of his brain also having a very fish-like predominance in size. Three chambers of the heart and three aortic origins follow, presenting a condition permanent in the batrachia; then two origins ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... can be change at any place along the line, in the sense organs, in the conducting paths or in the central organ. Thus there may be false visual impressions which may be due to changes in the retina or in the optic nerve or in the brain matter to which the nerve is distributed. It is perfectly possible that substances of an unusual character or an excess or deficiency of usual substances in the fluids around brain cells may ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... domestic stories, Mr. William T. Adams (Oliver Optic) made his mark even before he became so immensely popular through his splendid books for the young. In the volume before us are given several of these tales, and they comprise a book which will give them a popularity greater than they have ever before enjoyed. They are written ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... matter to slink through the darkness wondering whether a foe one cannot see is following each movement with a rifle. Neither is there any chance of hitting back in such cases; for it is my opinion, from watching a stricken deer, that at short ranges the blow comes almost simultaneously as the optic nerve records the flash and before the ear has caught the explosion. All this I considered as I flattened myself against the wall—for I was by no means braver than my fellows—and presently, yard by yard, wormed myself along it until ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... announce the end of the paroxysm, often indicate only a progressive stage which is to become much more intense. In this case there follow spasmodic contractions of the muscles, trembling in all the limbs, a total numbness in the feet and hands, partial paralysis of the optic and auditory nerves. I can no longer see, I can hardly hear: vertigo ... almost swooning...." Such was the ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... it was natural she should end, in contemplating herself only in the infinite pettinesses of her life. Herself and God, her confessor and the weekly wash, her preserves and the church services, and her uncle to care for, absorbed her feeble intellect. To her the atoms of life were magnified by an optic peculiar to persons who are selfish by nature or self-absorbed by some accident. Her perfect health gave alarming meaning to the least little derangement of her digestive organs. She lived under the iron rod of the medical science ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... load was too heavy for them. A safety fuse blew out, causing the flare and the explosion, and a piece of the soft lead-like metal had hit the red-haired lad in the eye. Tom's fist had completed the work on the other optic, and for several days thereafter Andy Foger remained in seclusion. When he did go out there were many embarrassing questions put to him, as to when he had had the fight. Andy didn't care to answer. As for Tom, it did not take long to put a new ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... a tumour composed of neuroglia. It is met with exclusively in the central nervous system, retina, and optic nerve. It is a slowly growing, soft, ill-defined tumour, which displaces the adjacent nerve centres and nerve tracts, and is liable to become the seat of haemorrhage and thus to give rise to pressure symptoms resembling apoplexy. The glioma of the retina tends to grow into ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... had been the best-dressed man in Sydney, giving the glad and glassy optic to every flapper whose clocked silk stockings caught his fancy. Some girl must have jilted him, and this was his revenge on the fluffy things, the choice of a life where none of them could feast their ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... be contended with are that the ethmoid cells may be mistaken for the sphenoids; that we may go too low and enter the pons and medulla; that, laterally, we may enter the cavernous sinus, and above, that we may injure the optic nerve. ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... overhead, some clayey-visaged chemist in ragged robe-de-chambre, and with a soiled green flap over his left eye, was hard at work stooping over retorts and crucibles, discovering new antipathies in acids, again risking strange explosions similar to that whereby he had already lost the use of one optic; while in the lofty lodging-houses of the neighboring streets, indigent young students from all parts of France, were ironing their shabby cocked hats, or inking the whity seams of their small-clothes, prior to a promenade ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville |
