Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Nervous system   /nˈərvəs sˈɪstəm/   Listen
Nervous system

noun
1.
The sensory and control apparatus consisting of a network of nerve cells.  Synonym: systema nervosum.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Nervous system" Quotes from Famous Books



... Champlain, it was not from the burden of years and natural decay, but from the touch of disease in the period of life's full vigor in its midway course, that mental activity was restrained. When, besides the inflictions of a racked nervous system, the author suffered in addition a malady of the eyes, which limited him, as he says, to intervals of five minutes for reading or writing, when it did not wholly preclude them, we may well marvel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... in the fetus. In the adult the liver is the chief accumulatory organ. Arsenic, which in the mother elects to accumulate in the liver, is in the fetus stored up in the skin; copper accumulates in the fetal liver, central nervous system, and sometimes in the skin; lead which is found specially in the maternal liver, but also in the skin, has been observed in the skin, liver, nervous centers, and elsewhere in the fetus. The frequent presence ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... Stedman, "I'm afraid to go near that cable. It's like playing with a live wire. My nervous system won't stand many more such shocks as those they gave ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... what cool obstinacy he adhered to everything he had once assumed, and what a cold selfishness lay at the bottom of his character, I felt a satisfaction in the thought that he had a wife who must sometimes give a start to his blood and a stir to his nervous system." The feeling which betrays itself in this passage makes a still bolder and more amusing exhibit in one that follows: "The true way to see these people was to meet them all together, as I did once at dinner at Godwin's, and once at a convocation or 'Saturday Night Club' at Hunt's, when they felt ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... had proved inadequate to prevent their breach, their outraged relics had prompted the victim to despair and die. Intellectual development and reasoning powers had not availed one moment against inclination and self-will, and only survived in the involuntary murmurs of a disordered nervous system. All this had utterly overthrown that satisfaction in herself and her own moral qualities in which Miss Fennimore had always lived; she had become sensible of the deep flaws in all that she had admired in her own ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... up, she would rush against the end of the car, falling all in a heap from the violence of the concussion. For some fifteen minutes without intermission the frenzy lasted. I was nearly exhausted. My efforts to avoid her mad rushes, the terrible tension of my nervous system produced by the spectacle of such exquisite and prolonged suffering, were weakening me beyond what I should have thought it possible an hour before for anything to weaken me. In fact, I felt my strength leaving me. A terror such as I had ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... which were originally intelligent may by frequent repetition become automatic, so in the lifetime of species actions originally intelligent may by frequent repetition and heredity so write their effects on the nervous system that the latter is prepared, even before individual experience, to perform adjustive actions mechanically which in previous generations were performed intelligently. This mode of origin of instincts has been appropriately called (by Lewes—see "Problems of Life and Mind" {54a}) ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... her name among those of the General Committee posted on the notice board, and the delight and pride consequent thereon diverted her thoughts into a new channel, and were as good as a tonic to her nervous system. It was a compliment to have been chosen, for the dozen girls had been drawn from all five houses, and Irene Grey and herself were the only representatives of ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... young man who told wonderful stories in childhood and later obtained money under false pretenses with elaborate deception. From an eccentric grandmother, and a mother who was very excitable and suffered from hysteria, he inherited a nervous system which was not calculated to bear the strain which his own overzealous efforts in pursuing his studies and his spiritual exaltation put upon it, hence the mental and moral breakdown. This is a very ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy

... 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 ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... in front of the hotel for an hoar or two proved to be too much for our hero's nerves; he therefore made up his mind to exhaust his nervous system by means of a smart walk. Soon he found himself in a lonely place, half-way between the Grand Square and the Ramleh Gate, with a deliciously cool breeze playing on his brow, and a full ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne

... hot-house plants, shielded from the wholesome vicissitudes of air and temperature, and untrained in any of the occupations and exercises which give stimulus and development to the circulatory and muscular system, while their nervous system, especially in its emotional department, is kept in unnaturally active play; it is no wonder if those of them who do not die of consumption, grow up with constitutions liable to derangement from slight causes, both internal and external, and without stamina to support ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill

... before the gales of heaven; must fly, if even to certainty of destruction. I had felt this necessity once before, be it remembered, but never so stringently, so morbidly as now. I was yielding under the agony, the anxiety incident to my condition; my nervous system, too severely taxed, was breaking down, and it would succumb entirely, unless relief came to me (of this I felt convinced), before another weary month should roll away. Had I been imprisoned for a certain term of years as an expiation for crimes, I ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... disease of itself. It is merely a sign of some disorder of the nervous system. It may be shown by complete disability on one side of the body, or in some particular portion, and only certain sets ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... undulatory with the 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

... all concerned. So 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 evidence, ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer

... 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, ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... means free from harm to adults. It produces an artificial exhaustion, as it were, of the nerve-centers. It certainly does no good, even when used in moderation. Tobacco produces functional derangement of the nervous system, palpitation of the heart, certain forms of dyspepsia, and more or less irritation of the throat and lungs. Sometimes after long smoking, a sudden sensation of dizziness, with a momentary loss of consciousness is experienced. At other times, if walking, there ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... is one of the most effectual antispasmodic medicines, and the quickness of its effects, as such, probably depends on its being instantly converted into vapour by the heat of the stomach, through the intervention of which it acts on the nervous system. But the frequent use of ether, like that of spirituous liquors, becomes prejudicial, and, if taken to excess, it produces effects similar to those ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet

... young woman learned to do housework and cultivated her practical faculties in early life, she would, in the first place, be much more likely to keep her servants, and, in the second place, if she lost them temporarily, would avoid all that wear and tear of the nervous system which comes from constant ill-success in those departments on which family health and temper mainly depend. This is one of the peculiarities of our American life which require a peculiar training. ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... his own; as though she whispered in his ear and her breath swept his cheek; as though she was there in the room beside him, making the darkness light, tempering the wind of chastisement to his naked soul. In the overstrain of his nervous system the illusion was powerful. He thought he heard her voice. The pistol slipped from his fingers, and he fell back on the pillow with a sigh. The will beyond his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... 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. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... said died of starvation; foolishly married a dissipated man who happened to be rich and handsome. She was gentle, loving, sensitive to a fault. He was querulous, fault-finding and irritable, because his nervous system was constantly unstrung by liquor. She lacked tenderness, sympathy and heart support, and at last faded and died, not starvation of the body, but a trophy of the soul, and when I say the law helped, I mean it licensed the places that kept the temptation ever in his way. And ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... that she isn't in the least fidgety," replied the doctor. "That is quite another thing. Some of the most nervous people I know have absolute quiet of manner. Mrs. Little's nervous system has been for several years under a terrible strain. When I was first called to her, I thought her trouble and suffering would kill her; and I didn't think it would take so long. But it is that which is killing her now." Hetty was not listening: she ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous

... the horses, while Mr. Tietkens got the swag and things ready to start away. I returned, tied up the horses, and we had just begun to eat the little bit of damper we had for breakfast, when Mr. Tietkens, whose nervous system seems particularly alive to any native approach, gave the alarm, that our pursuers were again upon us, and we were again saluted with their hideous outcries. Breakfast was now a matter of minor import; ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... easy to conclude that I had been mistaken, that my nervous system was somewhat overwrought as a result of my hurried return from Cairo—from Cairo where I had left behind me many a fondly cherished hope. I addressed myself again to the task of unpacking my steamer-trunk and was so engaged when again a sound in the corridor outside ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... time, apparently, only in one part of the heavens. I looked aside and lost it. When I looked back, there was the image still. These are hallucinations which arise from a disordered condition of the nervous system; they are the seeing or the hearing of what is not, and they are not by any means uncommon. Out of these there must, undoubtedly, arise a large number of well-attested stories of ghosts, seen by one person only. Such ghosts ought ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... objective confirmation if, with the author of "Matter and Memory", we follow the progress of the perceptive functions along the animal series from the protoplasm to the higher vertebrates; or if, with him, we analyse the task of the body, and discover that the nervous system is manifested in its very structure as, before all, an instrument of action. Have we not already besides proof of this in the fact that each of us always appears in his own eyes to occupy the centre of the world ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy

... of a future life, and endowed with imagination, is not content with things material, especially if his brain is crowded with the thoughts of the brains of ten thousand dead authors, and his nervous system is over-tasked and over-excited. In this condition he rushes away—away from cool, pure, and lovely feature—burying himself in the hot, spicy, and gorgeous dreams of Art. He would adore Cagliostro, while he mocked Doctor Watts! Infatuated dreamer! Returning at last, by good chance—or, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... a species of paralysis, growing out of a sense of insecurity. It is purely an unnatural sensation, that temporarily disorganizes the nervous system. I knew a man who, whenever placed in such a ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... small piece of mind-stuff. When molecules are so combined 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 the repetition of one implies the repetition of the other. When matters ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... burst into tears. But her tears had never yet quenched Nan's flames. Nan made her lie down and gave her sal volatile. Sal volatile eases the head and nervous system and composes the manners, but no more than tears ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... bilateral, the last has radial symmetry. Vertebrates and Molluscs have blood-vessels, but Articulates show a functional transition from the blood-vessel to the tracheal system. Radiates approach the homogeneity of plants; they appear to lack a distinct nervous system and sense organs, and the lowest of them show only a homogeneous pulp which is mobile and sensitive. All four classes are principally distinguished from one another by the broad structural relations of their neuromuscular system, of the organs of the animal functions. Vertebrates have a spinal ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell

... a name from a list in front of him. He looked up and said, "Our dreams are produced by the action of drugs upon the brain and the central nervous system. There are many drugs which produce the desired effect. Among the most useful are heroin, morphine, opium, coca, hemp, and peyote. All those are Earth products. Found only on Omega are Black Slipper, nace, manicee, tri-narcotine, djedalas, and the various products of the carmoid group. ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley

... her said, "My poor Rosamond! has something agitated you?" Clinging to him she fell into hysterical sobbings and cries, and for the next hour he did nothing but soothe and tend her. He imagined that Dorothea had been to see her, and that all this effect on her nervous system, which evidently involved some new turning towards himself, was due to the excitement of the new impressions which that ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... country, are only to be fully perceived and appreciated by the thoughtful. Now the heart of the nation throbs strongly at the centre, while the current of activity flows quickly and freely to the remotest corners of the state. The telegraph provides a nervous system unknown before. By its means every portion of the country is placed in immediate contact with every other part; the thrill of joy and the moan of desolation are no longer things of locality; they are shared fully and immediately by the whole; and the interest of brotherhood, extending to parts ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde

... mixed and diversified. It still undergoes every phase of emotion, and even, as seems probable, with a susceptibility which has increased and is increasing, and which has its index and outer form in the growing delicacy and complexities of the nervous system. Does any one believe that ever at any time there was a greater number of deaths referable to that comprehensive cause a broken heart? Let none fear that this age, or any coming one, will extinguish the material of poetry. The more reasonable apprehension might ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... mournful in the breaking up of an agreeable party, and few are the roofs in which one has sojourned, which are quitted without some feeling of depression. The sudden cessation of all those sources of excitement which pervade a gay and well arranged mansion in the country, unstrings the nervous system. For a week or so, we have done nothing which was not agreeable, and heard nothing which was not pleasant. Our self-love has been respected; there has been a total cessation of petty cares; all the enjoyment of an establisnment without any of its solicitude. ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... The nervous system which had just been developed in me, and which made me pay for the pleasures and advantages it brought by keen and constant sufferings during the rest of my life, had rendered me specially sensitive to impressions from without; and this quickness ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... knowledge of the real extent and ravages of the disease. With the knowledge that the germ was related to certain other more familiar forms, Ehrlich set the trap for it that culminated in salvarsan, or "606," the powerful drug used in the modern treatment. By the finding of this same germ in the nervous system in locomotor ataxia and general paralysis of the insane, the last lingering doubt of their syphilitic character was dispelled. Every day and hour the man who deals with syphilis in accordance with the best modern practice brings to bear ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes

... erroneously thought to lessen tissue waste. These alkaloids, being purins, are open to the general objections named elsewhere. Stimulants do not impart energy or force of any kind, but only call forth reserve strength by exciting the heart, nervous system, &c., to increased activity. This is followed by a depression which is as great, generally greater, than the previous stimulation. Except, perhaps, as an occasional medicine, stimulants, should be avoided. Analysis ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan

... can do in the tropics. The Kafirs of South Africa used to stake down their prisoners (among them a poor friend of mine) upon an ant-hill and they were eaten atom after atom in a few hours. The death must be the slowest form of torture; but probably the nervous system soon becomes insensible. The same has happened to more than one hapless invalid, helplessly bedridden, in Western Africa. I have described an invasion of ants in my "Zanzibar," vol. ii. 169; and have suffered from such attacks in many places ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... that it's right for a man to kill any appetite that the Lord has given him. Of course, I don't believe in the abuse of a good thing, but it's better to abuse it a little sometimes than not to have it at all. If virtue consists in deadening the nervous system to all pleasurable influences, why, you may just mark my name off the list. There was old man Haskill. I sat up with him the night after he died, and one of the men with me was harping upon the great life the old fellow had lived—never chewed, never smoked, never was drunk, never ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... that 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 ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... feet. If the two eyes read at ten, it means that in working together they successfully strain for a result that is not worth what it is costing. When eyes thus unconsciously see what they are not intended to see, it is only a matter of time when stomach and nervous system will announce that the strain can no longer be borne. Indigestion, dislike of study, restlessness follow. If, however, the eyes are so near the normal that their story reads 12/10 or 8/10, the strain ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... this would by no means offer a complete explanation. There are many men of equal bodily and mental vigor who have not achieved a tithe of his accomplishment. What other factors are there to be taken into consideration to explain this phenomenon? First, a stolid, almost phlegmatic, nervous system which takes absolutely no notice of ennui—a system like that of a Chinese ivory-carver who works day after day and month after month on a piece of material no larger than your hand. No better illustration of this characteristic can be found than in the development of the nickel ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... might be converted to the latter purpose at once, remained where he was, and smoked his pipe out. The legal gentleman being by this time rather giddy and perplexed in his ideas (for this was one of the operations of the tobacco on his nervous system), took the opportunity of slinking away into the open air, where, in course of time, he recovered sufficiently to return with a countenance of tolerable composure. He was soon led on by the malicious dwarf to smoke himself into a relapse, and in that state ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... justified Percival's heightened spirits. All the acuter symptoms had vanished already. He sanctioned his patient's departure from town as soon as Madame Dalibard's convenience would permit, and recommended only a course of restorative medicines to strengthen the nervous system, which was to commence with the following morning, and be persisted in for some weeks. He dwelt much on the effect to be derived from taking these medicines the first thing in the day, as soon as Helen woke. Varney and Madame Dalibard exchanged a rapid glance. Charmed with the success that in ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... for which it was intended. For in the instance before us; fixed air was employed, not with an expectation that it would cure the fever, but to obviate the symptoms of putrefaction, and to allay the uneasy irritation in the bowels. The disease was too malignant, the nervous system too violently affected, and the strength of the patient too much exhausted by the discharges of blood which he suffered, to afford hopes of recovery from the use of the ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley

... (of which military drill is only one particular form) is based upon, the existence of this power which the nervous system possesses, of organising conscious actions into more or less unconscious, or reflex, operations. It may be laid down as a rule, that if any two mental states be called up together, or in succession, with due frequency and vividness, the subsequent production ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... in conversation, related to him something which he disapproved, he used to start from his chair, and rush up and down the apartment, furiously flapping his hands together, till he had thus blown off the steam produced by the irritation of his nervous system. That prince was a good man: and so aware was he of his infirmity, that, when in these fits of passion, he never suffered himself to say a single word: being aware that he might say what he would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... not seriously injured, nor did he suffer pain. A smart rap on the head from a flying fragment of the splintered post, incurred simultaneously with the frightfully sudden shock to the nervous system, had momentarily dazed him. His term of unconsciousness, including the period of recovery, during which he had had the strange fancies, had probably not exceeded a few seconds, for the dust of the wreck had not wholly cleared away as he began an ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... improper food, irregular and indiscriminate feeding, sudden change from one food to another, as at weaning time, a change from a poor quality to a rich food, or vice versa. Conditions affecting the health of the child, especially the nervous system, such as hot weather, extreme cold, fatigue, or at the beginning of any of the acute diseases. Children sometimes are predisposed to attacks of intestinal indigestion; these children are delicate in health and have weak digestive ability. The slightest irregularity or ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague

... while allowance should be made for this, the history of the factory system, both in England and in other countries, clearly indicates that factory labour is more intense than formerly, not, perhaps, in its tax upon the muscles, but in the growing strain it imposes upon the nervous system of ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... Brain and Nervous System.—The erectile tissue surrounding the spinal cord and origin of the spinal nerves in the Cetacea did not extend into the interior of the cranium. The entire encephalic mass weighed 2-1/2 lbs.: cerebrum, 2 lbs.; cerebellum, 1/4; pons and medulla, 1/4 2-1/2. Compared with a drawing of Camper ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various

... believed 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 act then on all the organs, and ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue

... her; she could smell whiskey and cigarette smoke. She noticed that she lacked complete muscular control; when she moved it was not a sinuous motion with the resultant strain distributed easily over her body—it was a tremendous effort of her nervous system as though each time she were hypnotizing herself into performing an ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... emotions. The soldier who habitually faces death in the foremost rank of the battle, and yet shrinks in mortal fear or antipathy from a mouse, is not an unknown spectacle. It is clear that his fear of the little animal is based not upon reason, but upon an uncontrollable sensitiveness in his nervous system acquired by inheritance or otherwise. It does not follow from this that conscious will is not able to affect emotion. As already pointed out, it can arouse emotion by using the proper means, and it undoubtedly can, to a greater or less extent, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... have been 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, and the fingers parted; the lips and eyelids assume a dusky leaden colour, while ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... and that the hermit's peculiar temptations (quite unknown to the hundreds of unmarried persons who lead quiet and virtuous, because rational and healthy, lives) are to be attributed, not as they thought, to a daemon, but to a more or less unhealthy nervous system. ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... they have arrived at clear and distinct, though by no means complete, conceptions of the manner in which the great functions of assimilation, respiration, secretion, distribution of nutriment, removal of waste products, motion, sensation, and reproduction are performed; while the operation of the nervous system, as a regulative apparatus, which influences the origination and the transmission of manifestations of activity, either within itself or in other ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley

... of the room where the old man was, and, throwing himself round his father's neck, wept like a child. The old man did not recognize him at first, but when he did he went into hysterics, so great was the shock to his nervous system. Never was there such a commotion in the quiet Nunnery, and the inmates gathered round in excited groups to listen to Hill's story. He told them that his father had left Boston some years before, and, becoming unable to support himself, had been placed by a heartless ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer

... on his reel, letting the ray fight against the braking action. The fish didn't give up easily. It had the primitive nervous system and great vitality of its relatives, the sharks, and it fought long after an edible fish, like a rockfish, ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin

... 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. ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... the celebrated specialist was summoned, but his examination was sickening in its brevity, and his verdict held out no hope. "The nervous system has received some terribly sudden shock," he said; "and there is a serious rupture of the vessels of the heart. She may recover consciousness, but it will be only momentary. We see many appalling ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang

... remedy, and it probably has not one medicinal use that cannot be more suitably met by other remedies. One can readily imagine easier digestion as the result of the sedative influence of the after-dinner cigar upon a disquieted nervous system, especially if the coincident irritation of alcohol and coffee have need of correction; but it can also be imagined that in most of such cases the remedy has been the cause of and will further increase the disordered ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various

... tea this evening than usual, for we have a literary friend who comes about this time of the week, and he must go home to retire about eight o'clock. His nervous system is so weak that he must get three or four hours sleep before midnight; otherwise he is next day so cross and censorious he scalps every author he can lay his hand on. As he put his hand on the table with an indelible blot of ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... of jelly, placed like padding between the lining and the cloth of a coat. He shewed that blood-vessels and blood were absent, in which he has been confirmed by all other observers. He declared more doubtfully against the existence of a special nervous system, and it was not until long after, when the methods of microscopic investigation were much more perfect, that the delicate nerve-cells and nerve-fibres, which we now know ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... 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 most of ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... 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

... 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 myself unable to give utterance to my ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... indifference in your public, simply disappointment and lamentation in yourself ... For so it is, Lisaveta: feeling, any warm, hearty feeling is always banal and unusable, and only the irritations and the cold ecstasies of our demoralized, of our artistic nervous system are useful in art. It is necessary that one should be something superhuman and inhuman, that one should have a strangely distant and uninterested relation to everything human, in order to be able or even ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... 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 designates only a simple quality, that of a ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... was the biggest man aboard. With the rum giving an unusual coordination to his usually sluggish nervous system, he promised to be a source ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... certainly greatly err who ascribed the whole result to a prospect of fresh food. The sight of a dear one, whom the sufferer has long desired to see, sustains the life that was about to go, and imparts strength and health. It is a fact, that joy can quicken the nervous system more effectually than all the cordials of the apothecary, and can do wonders in the case of inveterate internal disorders denied to the action of rhubarb and even mercury. Who then does not perceive that the constitution of the soul which knows ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... 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 ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair

... ready for them; but those of your own flesh and blood, or of certain grades of intimacy, can come in at the side-door, if they will, at any hour and in any mood. Some of them have a scale of your whole nervous system, and can play all the gamut of your sensibilities in semitones, —touching the naked nerve-pulps as a pianist strikes the keys of his instrument. I am satisfied that there are as great masters of this nerve-playing as Vieuxtemps ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... muscles are guided by means of the nerves, a training for the guidance of the muscles means, so far as the physique is concerned, first, a training for the better use of the nervous force. The nervous system is so wonderful in its present power for good or ill, so wonderful in its possible power either way, and so much more wonderful as we realize what we do not know about it, that it is not surprising that it is ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call

... have shattered her brother's composure with more completeness. In the leaping twist which brought him facing her, he rose a clear three inches from the floor. He had a confused sensation, as though his nervous system had been stirred up with a pole. He struggled for breath and moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue, staring at her continuously during ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... allow the Austrians to avoid the consequences of their defeat, and so disappointed Italy and the world. He was magnanimous, and most astonishing to the minds of men was his magnanimity. Most people called it stupidity, and strange stories were told of his nervous system having been shattered by the sights and sounds of those slaughter-fields which he had planned ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... instance, two animals, both vertebrates, mammals, and dwelling together, eating the same food, and even having a mutual understanding or sympathy of mind and affections, having a like circulation, a like brain and nervous system, it would naturally be supposed that these two would exhibit a like susceptibility to the actions of narcotic poisons; but when we are told that one dog has taken 21 grains of atropia with impunity we are staggered. Atropia may not affect rabbits (as it ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... the skin 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 for ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... early age Watt suffered from continual and violent headaches, which often affected his nervous system for many days, even weeks; and he was similarly afflicted throughout his long life. He seldom rose early, but accomplished more in a few hours' study than ordinary minds do in many days. He was never in a hurry, and always had leisure to give to his friends, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... father's death, Miss Callingham, who was present in the room during the attack, and who alone might have been a witness capable of recognising or describing the wretched assailant, lost her reason on the spot, owing to the appalling shock to her nervous system, and remained for some months in an imbecile condition. Gradually, as we have informed our readers from time to time, Miss Callingham's intellect has become stronger and stronger; and though she is still totally unable to remember spontaneously any events that occurred before her father's death, ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen

... organism to move about; thus it provides for motion and locomotion. Systems of support, comprising bones or shells, occur in many animals where the other organs are soft or weak. Perhaps the most interesting of the individual systems of relation is the nervous system. The strands of its nerve fibers and its groups of cells keep the various organs of the body properly cooerdinated, whereas in the second place, through the sensitive structures at the surface of the body, they receive the impressions ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... pains resembling rheumatism, hay fever, heart troubles, mental symptoms, nervous chills, morbid forebodings and mild mania, there lurks the abnormal activity of the psychic or "thought body" caused by thoughts and feelings acting abnormally upon the vital centers of the nervous system and mind. ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.

... use of tobacco, alcohol, and other kindred stimulants, for so many generations, has vitiated the brain and nervous system, so that it is not what it was in former times. Michelet treats of this subject quite at large in some of his late works; and we have to face the fact of a generation born with an impaired nervous organization, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... consumed merely for the pleasure which the warm drink gives. Both, however, have a certain stimulating effect on the nervous system, and when a tired woman refuses food but drinks cup after cup of strong tea, the exhilarating effect can be produced only at the expense of nerves and muscular tissue which must be later atoned for. Similarly, when a man under stress drinks strong black coffee ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... man's attempt to make his facts go for a great deal more than they are worth. Let him call his ten ten, and it shall pass for ten; but if he insist on calling it a thousand, we shall not acquiesce. The science of Physiology is just out of its babyhood. Of the nervous system in particular—of its physiology and pathology alike—our knowledge is extremely immature. We are just beginning, indeed, to know anything scientifically on that subject. The attempt in behalf of that little to banish spiritual philosophy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... atmosphere, and affect in a similar manner all organized bodies through the medium of a subtile and mobile fluid, which pervades the universe and associates all things together in mutual intercourse and harmony." This influence, he said, was particularly exercised on the nervous system, and produced two states which he called intension and remission, which seemed to him to account for the different periodical revolutions observable in several maladies. When in after-life he met with Father Hell, he was confirmed by that person's ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... distinguished him from the time when he was a student, he still subjected her to one test after another. The result was always the same. Not only was there no tendency to brain disease—there was not even a perceptible derangement of the nervous system. 'I can find nothing the matter with you,' he said. 'I can't even account for the extraordinary pallor of your ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins

... you want to spoil my nervous system? We are not given much to tea-balls in Durford. We consider ourselves lucky if we get a plain old-fashioned pot. Now you get fixed up," she directed, "while I get supper ready, and I'll stay just this time, if you'll let ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott

... 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 men believed ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... Prudence's nervous system had been a terrible one, and a breakdown, closely bordering upon brain fever, had followed. The girl's condition had demanded the utmost care, and, in this matter, Sarah Gurridge had proved herself a loyal friend. Dr. Parash, with conscientious soundness ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... Harry! never look 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 I ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell

... deal of attention to diseases of the nervous system. He has a rather interesting chapter on headache. The affection occurs in connection with fevers, after excess in drinking, and as a consequence of injury to the skull. Besides, it develops as a result of disturbances of the natural processes in ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... 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 of the marriage, calling on Trelawney ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... myself was concerned, all exertion was then over. The nervous system was almost shattered to pieces. Both my memory and my hearing failed me. Sudden dizzinesses seized my head. A confused singing in the ear followed me wherever I went. On going to bed the very stairs seemed to dance up and down under me, so that, misplacing my foot, I sometimes ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... Bill as funny, because it duplicated experiences he had had and seen, but he made an effort to suppress his mirth. He laughed silently upon his own unbalanced return-sheet until his nervous system was satisfied, then ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... the chain of life. Thus science recognizes inherited memory: not in the ghostly signification of a remembering of the details of former lives, but as a minute addition to psychological life accompanied by minute changes in the structure of the inherited nervous system. "The human brain is an organized register of infinitely numerous experiences received during the evolution of life, or rather, during the evolution of that series of organisms through which the human organism has been reached. The effects of the most uniform and frequent of these experiences ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... forth to the day only to die. That which makes the preeminence of our organization makes also its peril. Denmark is said to be impoverished by the disproportion of the learned to the industrial class; production is insufficient, and too much of a good thing cripples the country. The nervous system is a learned class in the body; it contributes dignity and superior uses, but makes no corn grow in the physiological fields. A brain of great animation and power is a perilous freight for the stanchest body; in a weak and shattered body it is like gold in a spent swimmer's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... gate of forces which vitalize the body. In the etheric counterpart of that organ solar energy is transmuted to vital fluid of a pale rose color. From thence it spreads all over the nervous system, and after having been used in the body it radiates in streams, much as bristles protrude from ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel

... 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 direct ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... of the coral reef is followed by a drowsy evening and a night of exceptionally sweet repose. No ill dreams molest the soothing hours during which the nervous system is burnished and lubricated, and you wake refreshed and invigorated beyond measure. I have endeavoured to account for the undoubted physical replenishment and mental exhilaration largely from the breathing of ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... singles match is the greatest strain on the body and nervous system of any form of sport. Richard Harte and L. C. Wister, the former a famous Harvard University football and baseball player, the latter a football star at Princeton, both of whom are famous tennis players, have told me that a close ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D

... complete rest were now what she required to restore her, but even so it might be weeks before she was entirely herself. Although Bousquet had no idea of the reasons responsible for her present state beyond the fairly obvious effects of the morphia, he rightly surmised that her nervous system had sustained a severe shock. He saw, too, that while in the villa she had been the prey of some obscure but almost paralysing fear. Directly she was removed from the atmosphere of the Cliffords' house ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... 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 ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... our senses, had, in this case, unquestionably stopped; and I am equally certain (seeing that I recovered him) that the vital principle was not extinct. When I add, that he had suffered from a long and complicated illness, and that his whole nervous system was utterly deranged, I have told you all I really know of the physical condition of my dead-alive patient at The ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens

... think, then, that Professor Max Muller's contention that thought and language are identical—and he has repeatedly affirmed this—will ever be generally accepted. Thought is no more identical with language than feeling is identical with the nervous system. True, we can no more feel without a nervous system than we can discern certain minute organisms without a microscope. Destroy the nervous system, and we destroy feeling. Destroy the microscope, and we can no longer see the animalcules; but our sight of the animalcules ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... Juliette still hesitated. She was just on that borderland between childhood and womanhood when all the sensibilities, the nervous system, the emotions, are strung to ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... part of the Philosophie zoologique Lamarck considers the physical causes of feeling—i.e., those which form the productive force of actions, and those giving rise to intelligent acts. After describing the nervous system and its functions, he discusses the nervous fluid. His physiological views are based on those of Richerand's Physiologie, which ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... colour, stamp certain images on the mind of an infant, which, however dim and confused, deepen and grow with it as it expands? There have been curious psychological instances of names, of languages, of dormant recollections, reawakening as it were under a peculiar condition of the nervous system, and which could only be traced to impressions received in ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... said Mr. Houghton, with an alarmed look; "of course she isn't! What put such an idea into your head?" And as Buster and her squirming prize departed, he told his Mary that her daughter was destroying his nervous system. "She'll repeat ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... highly decentralized nervous system," nodded Hendricks, who was, as I have said, something of a practical scientific man, although no laboratory worker or sniveling scientist. "And instinct is directing him back toward the sea from which, all unwillingly, he came. ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright

... the parasitic protozoa Trypanosoma; transmitted to humans via the bite of bloodsucking Tsetse flies; infection leads to malaise and irregular fevers and, in advanced cases when the parasites invade the central nervous system, coma and death; endemic in 36 countries of sub-Saharan Africa; cattle and wild animals act as ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... that required exceptionable ability. The vast amount of mental energy and wearing labor she put into this work, added to the past years of constant application to literary and other interests, told seriously upon her health. Her nervous system had become exceedingly susceptible, and it was evident that her good constitution was beginning to ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various

... from the amount of force furnished for the muscles and the will. In the rudeness of the primitive state, it is an unavoidable result of the superior muscular power of man that woman is his subject. But the more pronounced nervous system of woman gives her certain spiritual advantages. Her greater sensibility, her greater seclusion, with its relative stimulus of solitude and meditation; the closer endearments of maternity—develop her affections in a higher degree ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... miseries of a diseased nervous system—a system, the state of which is most conducive to our happiness, or the most productive of our misery. For now near three weeks I have been so ill with a nervous headache, that I have been obliged for a time to give up my Excise-books, being scarce able ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... provided, with no qualifications of his own except "the best bedside manner in England" and a thorough knowledge of the weaknesses of the feminine temperament. But his admirers—and they were legion—declared that Sir Henry Durwood was the only man in London who really understood how to treat the complex nervous system of the present generation. These thoughts ran through Colwyn's mind as he murmured that the opinion of such an eminent specialist as Sir Henry Durwood on the case before them must ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... cunning. The Amoebae, for instance, will patiently lie in wait for the new-born Acinetes, as they leave the maternal ovary; being aware that these must as yet be lacking their poisonous tentacles. Now, the Amoebae have neither a nervous system nor distinguishable organs of any kind. Or if we turn to the plants, which, being motionless, would seem exposed to every fatality,—without pausing to consider carnivorous species like the Drusera, which really act as animals,—we are struck by the genius that some of our humblest ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck

... our Agostino, with a nature intensely fervent and poetic, every fibre of whose soul and nervous system had been from childhood skilfully woven and intertwined with the ritual and faith of his fathers, yearning towards the grave of his mother, yearning towards the legends of saints and angels with which she had lulled his cradle slumbers and sanctified his childhood's pillow, and yet burning with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... hand to remove mountains, on the other, causes scales to grow on the eyes of the mind, so that a man loses his identity, and is blindly led about by the will of another; or if the result of bodily disease, hysteria, or some other derangement of the nervous system, there still remains enough of mystery to awaken the solemn inquiry of the physician, the psychologist, the Christian, of every thinking man. Contradictions will meet him at every turn. He will find all theories more than usually fallacious. He will see a strictly matter-of-fact ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various

... found pools and springs of every degree of heat. Some are boiling cauldrons into which the unwary fall now and again to meet a death terrible, yet—if the dying words of some of them may be believed—not always agonizing, so completely does the shock of contact with the boiling water kill the nervous system. Many pools are the colour of black broth. Foul with mud and sulphur, they seethe and splutter in their dark pits, sending up clouds of steam and sulphurous fumes. Others are of the clearest green or deepest, purest ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... it if I would; for a single hour with a family in trouble uses up more of my vitality than to prepare a sermon." My reply to him was: "That may be true, but, after all, the business of a minister is to endure these strains upon his nervous system if he would be a comforter, as well as ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... dangers than are others; 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 taken ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske

... practical jokes, and in thefts from one another. The cruel pathos of the story is not in the fact that such men are in prison, but that a Dostoevski should be among them. Here is a delicate, sensitive man of genius, in bad health, with a highly organised nervous system, with a wonderful imagination, condemned to live for years in slimy misery, with creatures far worse than the beasts of the field. Indeed, some of the most beautiful parts of the story are where Dostoevski ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... instead of nipples. At this time he was writing notes upon the phenomena of sleep to be inserted in his "Speculations on Metaphysics", and Mrs. Shelley informs us that the mere effort to remember dreams of thrilling or mysterious import so disturbed his nervous system that he had to relinquish the task. At no period of his life was he wholly free from visions which had the reality of facts. Sometimes they occurred in sleep, and were prolonged with painful vividness ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... organization. As striking evidence of this development, more than one hundred and fifty international associations[4] and more than thirty-five international unions of states have been formed. The modern intricate system of communication is a veritable nervous system which, in the event of any local paralysis or upheaval, informs the entire industrial organism. The figure is no longer "the shot heard, round the world," but becomes "the pulse-beat felt, round the world." If Spencer's definition of patriotism—that is, coextensive with ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... looked round quite in the wrong direction for ascertaining what was the cause of the sudden shock to his nervous system and his hat. ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... how they knocked unbidden at every door and no man opened. Others were denied culture, and now feel they are unfulfilled prophecies. Many by one error have injured eye or ear or lung or limb or nervous system. They grievously handicapped themselves. Others by ingratitude, infidelity to trusts, treachery to friends, have poisoned happiness. Repentance is theirs, and also forgiveness, but not forgetfulness. The past is ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... ranks ahead of coffee, though below tea. As a matter of fact, the active principles of all three are alkaloids, practically identical and equally effective.[1] Each derives its value from its influence on the nervous system, which it stimulates, while checking the waste of tissue, but the cocoa-bean provides in addition solid food to replace wasted tissue. It is, indeed, so closely allied in composition to pure dried milk, that in this respect there is little to choose between an absolutely ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head

... is generally understood to mean weakness of the nerves. It invariably comes to those who have extra strong nerves, but who do not know how to use them properly, as well as those whose nervous system is naturally weak and easily disorganized. Nervous prostration is a disease of overwork, mainly mental overwork, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, comes from worry. Worry is the most senseless and insane form of mental work. It is as if a bicycle-rider were so riding against time that, ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... the young animal is supplied by its parents with nourishment. The young bird is incubated within the egg where a supply of nourishment is provided sufficient to develop the bones, muscles, nervous system, blood, glands and covering—all developed to a point that makes the bird able to take from the mother during the early weeks after its release from the shell, such nourishment as the mother may provide. In the meantime it must be brooded ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall

... her posterity. "Periods of moral decadence in the life of a people are always contemporaneous with times of effeminacy, sensuality, and luxury. These conditions can only be conceived as occurring with increased demands on the nervous system, which must meet these requirements. As a result of increase of nervousness there is increase of sensuality, and since this leads to excess among the masses it undermines the foundations of society—the morality and purity of family ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir

... These two early phases of the problem leave but little more to be wished for; it is not so with a third phase, hitherto a good deal neglected, connected with physiology, and with the action of light on the nervous system. Therefore, we should search in vain in old treatises on optics and on astronomy, for a strict and complete discussion on the comparative effect that the size and intensity of the images, that the magnifying power and the aperture of a telescope ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... replied that this is at best an analogy upon which too great stress must not be laid; and we are warned against the fanciful comparisons which some writers have drawn between the body corporate and the actual physical body, with its cells, tissues, nervous system, and so forth. Now, whatever may be the danger of that mode of reasoning, I think that the statement, properly understood, corresponds to a simple logical canon too often neglected in historical and political reasonings. It means, I take it, in the first place, that ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... fact that, when a sense is disordered, the thing as he perceives it is not like the thing "as it is"? A blind man does not see things when they are there; a color-blind man sees them as others do not see them; a man suffering under certain abnormal conditions of the nervous system sees things when they are not there at all, i.e. he has hallucinations. The thing itself, as it seems, is not in the man's mind; it is the idea that is in the man's mind, and that represents the thing. Sometimes ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton

... book-learning. I once had an uncle who was a man of wonderful learning. He was a collegian, a master of half a dozen or more languages, and for all this he paid the price of his good health. All his life, he suffered the pangs of an outraged stomach and nervous system. He could never make any use of his splendidly cultivated brain, and was a miserable, unhappy burden to himself and friends to the end of his life. His end was sad, tinged with the element of ridiculousness. He was sitting in ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... 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

... quickly from the Doctor to Mistress Ann Putnam—for he was a regular attendant of that lady, whose nervous system indeed was in a fearful state by this time. And she puzzled a good deal over it. Did Master Raymond intend to accuse anyone? Who was it? Or was it merely a hint thrown out, that it was a game that two ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson

... that this should always be done, as nothing is more unjust than to leave her in a state of ignorance where the natural expression of her maturity may fill her mind with fears which may affect her nervous system ever after, even if they do not lead her to do acts which may permanently impair her reproductive vitality, and injure her health in other ways. All that she needs to know about the proper care of her person should be told ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley

... despatched on horseback to Castle Boterel, and the gentleman known as Dr. Granson came in the course of the afternoon. He pronounced her nervous system to be in a decided state of disorder; forwarded some soothing draught, and gave orders that on no account whatever was she to play ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... specimen that 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 ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... So, when the nervous system is constantly set on edge by the emotions to which this fault gives rise, it necessarily follows that all the ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke

... belonged to the "Texas Rangers"—that strange organisation that has existed ever since Stephen Austin first planted his colony in the land of the "Lone Star." If on this night the ex-Ranger is more than usually restless, it is from anxiety about his comrade, coupled with the state of his nervous system, stirred to feverish excitement by the terrible conflict through which they have just passed. Notwithstanding all, he slumbers in long spells, at times ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... 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 is gone. I do not ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... have a psychometric test, I placed in the hands of Mrs. Buchanan a portion of the manuscript of Spurzheim, who died fifty-five years ago, to see if her conception of his thought would coincide with the report from the trance medium. Her nervous system being somewhat disturbed at the time, she was unable to go as far as I wished, but she gave the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... become, in some measure, reconciled; what really dominated every other consideration was the need of being able to meet the peculiar conditions which had arisen through the complete breakdown of his nervous system. ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland

... a hand through his hair. The red bristles were scratchy on his palm. It was a cover-up, a substitute symbol to bring his nervous system back under full control. The process felt as if he were being tumbled ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson

... personality, whose business it is, feels it in the usual way and then goes on to something else. When the surroundings are less familiar and the departmental personality cannot deal with them, the position is reported through the nervous system to the central government which is frequently at a loss to know what feeling to apply. Sometimes it happens to discern the right feeling and apply it, sometimes it hits upon an inappropriate one and is thus ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... sympathetic system takes up its task of directing the renewal of tissue and supplying the nerve sheaths through the lymph vessels, which draw their material from the digestive canal, with a new supply of phosphatic oil. Thus the brain and spinal nervous system are prepared for another day's work. For the fulfillment of these processes, the magnetic blood ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... Magnetism, or your supply of Human Electricity. The solar plexus is the great sympathetic centre of the nervous system. Keep it aroused and active, and you will increase your magnetic forces. Sensation, emotion and intensity of expression rise from the solar plexus. Magnetism is generated by brain forces focalized by thoughts, the nerves are the ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft

... is my opinion, Isabelle, that Louis is a good deal worse than we think him to be. Don't mention it to Mamma, for she is so nervous, but I heard Dr. Russo talking to Papa in the hall this morning, something about an inherited tendency and a derangement of the nervous system. I could not understand—he spoke so low—but Papa looked dreadfully worried after ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black



Words linked to "Nervous system" :   peripheral nervous system, CNS, neural net, parasympathetic, neuron, nervous tissue, fiber bundle, ANS, fibre bundle, physical structure, ganglion, system, fascicle, central nervous system, systema nervosum periphericum, neural network, nerve tissue, nerve cell, body, systema nervosum centrale, fasciculus, organic structure



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com