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Putrefaction   Listen
Putrefaction

noun
1.
A state of decay usually accompanied by an offensive odor.  Synonym: rot.
2.
(biology) the process of decay caused by bacterial or fungal action.  Synonyms: decomposition, rot, rotting.
3.
Moral perversion; impairment of virtue and moral principles.  Synonyms: corruption, degeneracy, depravation, depravity.  "Moral degeneracy followed intellectual degeneration" , "Its brothels, its opium parlors, its depravity" , "Rome had fallen into moral putrefaction"






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"Putrefaction" Quotes from Famous Books



... by intermissions and remissions, and thus include our intermittent and remittent fevers; synochus depended theoretically upon putrefaction of the blood in the vessels, and was a continued fever. Synocha, on the other hand, was occasioned by a mere superabundance of ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson

... he looked at them all, the markets which he had left behind him that morning seemed to him like a vast mortuary, an abode of death, where only corpses could be found, a charnel-house reeking with foul smells and putrefaction. He slackened his steps, and rested in that kitchen garden, as after a long perambulation amidst deafening noises and repulsive odours. The uproar and the sickening humidity of the fish market had departed from him; and he felt as ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... we prevent this cry from escaping us? For these hapless ones, enjoy, laugh, sing, please, and love exist, persist; but there is a death-rattle in sing, a grating sound in laugh, putrefaction in enjoy, there are ashes in please, there is night in love. All these joys are attached to their destiny ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo

... the Empire which he ruled. And yet the piety of Noah, the faith of Abraham, the wisdom of Moses, and the stoicism of Aurelius have proved alike a spiritual power,—the precious salt which was to preserve humanity from the putrefaction of almost universal selfishness and vice, until the new revelation should arouse the human soul to a more serious contemplation of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord

... it to be a disputable thing. After affirming his notion he added, "If the world had a beginning, and if men were once earth-born, then must they have been, in all probability, either generated as worms, out of putrefaction, or else out of eggs." But the question comes up for an answer, From ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880 • Various

... Exposure to Air. Concretionary Nodules. Consolidating Effects of Pressure. Mineralization of Organic Remains. Impressions and Casts: how formed. Fossil Wood. Goppert's Experiments. Precipitation of Stony Matter most rapid where Putrefaction is going on. Sources of Lime ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... and they made sport of them. They took them by the hair, flouting, jeering, and laughing at them; and then giving them some ill names, boxed them on their ears and cheeks; which done, the hangman put them into his kettle, and parboiled them with bay-salt and cummin-seed: that to keep them from putrefaction, and this to keep off the fowls from seizing upon them. The whole sight, as well that of the bloody quarters first as this of the heads afterwards, was both frightful and loathsome, and begat ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... greatly disordered all its parts with various symptoms; for there was a gentle fever upon him, and an intolerable itching over all the surface of his body, and continual pains in his colon, and dropsical turnouts about his feet, and an inflammation of the abdomen, and a putrefaction of his privy member, that produced worms. Besides which he had a difficulty of breathing upon him, and could not breathe but when he sat upright, and had a convulsion of all his members, insomuch that the diviners said those ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... dead from among the ill, and though they were constantly drenched with rum to brutalize them, still we were forced to aid the gang by reckless volunteers from our crew, who, arming their hands with tarred mittens, flung the foetid masses of putrefaction into the sea! ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... we could perceive her crew—all of whom, save the helmsman, were leaning over the bulwarks—grinning at us. Never shall I forget the horror of those grins. They were hideous, meaningless, hellish grins, the grins of corpses in the last stage of putrefaction. And that is just what they were—all of them—corpses, but corpses possessed by spirits of the most devilish sort, for as we stared, too petrified with fear to remove our gaze, they nodded their ulcerated heads and gesticulated vehemently. The brig then gave a sudden yaw, and with that motion ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... metabolism in pellagra shows certain definite changes from the normal, which point to decreased gastric secretion and increased intestinal putrefaction. ...
— The Vitamine Manual • Walter H. Eddy

... death, brought on by his own crimes. In his war against Jeroboam he had indulged in excessive cruelty; he ordered the corpses of the enemy to be mutilated, and permitted them to be buried only after putrefaction had set in. Such savagery was all the more execrable as it prevented many widows from entering into a second marriage. Mutilating the corpses had made identification impossible, and so it was left doubtful whether their husbands were among ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... not in intellectual acquirements. It consists in the development of the triune man—body, soul and spirit—in their divine harmony. Without a cultivation of the spirit in harmony with its immortal destiny, all that this world calls culture is but the gilded tinsel that bedecks the putrefaction of death. The truly cultured man is developed in harmony with the laws of his being. This being is compound, having a fleshly and a spiritual side. Hence, to cultivate one to the neglect of the ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen

... a preparation of the dark-coloured liquor of the cuttle fish, was also bleached by chlorine, but the black matter of the lungs was not destroyed or bleached in the slightest degree by chlorine, it even survived unimpaired the destruction of the lungs by putrefaction in air. ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar

... prepares for that of the pancreas, which can act only in an alkaline medium. The fermentive action of the bile is trifling; it dissolves fats, to a certain extent, and is antiseptic, that is, it prevents putrefaction to which the chyme might be liable; it also seems to act ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells

... the production of eggs unless the worms have shown, until they began the spinning of their cocoons, every sign of perfect, robust health. Any indication of the disease called flacherie, from which the worms so often die after the fourth moult and turn black from putrefaction, or of any other disease from which silk worms suffer, should be considered as ample reason for not using the cocoons for the purpose in question. They should, on the other hand, be sold for the filature. If the worms ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various

... surgeons, nurses, cooks and proper provision; they were pent up between decks in small vessels, where they had not room to sit upright; they wallowed in filth; myriads of maggots were hatched in the putrefaction of their sores, which had no other dressing than that of being washed by themselves with their own allowance of brandy; and nothing was heard but groans, lamentations and the language of despair, invoking death to deliver them from ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... end so many Medicaments? I believe, that God in the things of Nature, naturally gives such Medicines, with a very few of which, we may much sooner, and more safely re-integrate the decayed, and languishing Health of Man, unless the Disease be Mortal, from a deficiency of Nature, or from the putrefaction of some noble internal part hurt, or by reason of a total absumption of the radical humidity in which desperate Cases, no Galenick Cure, or Paracelsick Tincture can yeild releif. But in ordinary Diseases it is not so; ...
— The Golden Calf, Which the World Adores, and Desires • John Frederick Helvetius

... earnestly desired. So many funerals happening every day, while so many lay sick, white persons sufficient for burying the dead were scarcely to be found; and though they were often interred on the same day they died, so quick was the putrefaction, so offensive and infectious were the corpses, that even the nearest relations seemed averse from the ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... developed by superstition and religion into the proportions it attained in Fiji or in Mexico. It is a fact that until this day many savages are compelled to devour corpses in the most advanced state of putrefaction, and that in cases of absolute scarcity some of them have had to disinter and to feed upon human corpses, even during an epidemic. These are ascertained facts. But if we now transport ourselves to ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin

... may cause an inhibition of the digestive secretions and of intestinal peristalsis. This means that the digestive processes are arrested, that putrefaction and autointoxication will result, and that still further strain will thus be put upon the organs of elimination. Who has not observed in himself and in others when under the influence of fear, anger, jealousy, or grief that the digestive processes ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile

... nothing striking to show in the way of industry. When it has fattened to the desired extent, it leaves the charnel-house of the natal crypt and descends into the earth, far from the putrefaction. Here, working with its legs and its dorsal armour, it presses back the sand around it and makes itself a close cabin wherein to rest for the metamorphosis. When the lodge is ready and the torpor of the approaching moult arrives, it lies inert; but, at the least ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... of science derives suggestive knowledge from the study of mere putrefaction; he places an infusion of common hay-seeds or meat or fruit in his phials, and awaits events; presently a drop from one of the infusions is laid on the field of the microscope, and straightly the economy of a new and strange kingdom is seen by the observer. The microscopist ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... might have wished to carry out the order to set up my bivouac on the spot used two days previously by Saint-Genis, this was impossible, for the ground was littered with more than two hundred bodies in a state of putrefaction, and to this major reason was linked another not less important. What I had seen and what I had learned about war had convinced me that the best means of defending a river against an enemy whose aim is not to establish himself on ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... of our diseases make these delicate spirits shy of taking this charge upon them. Lazarus the beggar found this a truth; a beggar so despised of the rich glutton that he was not suffered to come within his gate; a beggar full of sores and noisome putrefaction; yet, behold, when he dies, the angels come from heaven to fetch him thither: "And it came to pass that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom" (Luke 16:22). True, sick-bed ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... visit. But upon our arrival at the scene of operations we soon found that a fortnight had made a vast amount of difference in the condition of the oysters. For whereas when we had last visited the oyster-bed the process of putrefaction had only just begun, it had now advanced so far that the fish were not only completely decayed but had also in many cases so completely dried up under the influence of the sun's rays as to have, to a very great extent, lost their odour. Furthermore, ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... closed during sleep, this spirit heated by the eyelids becomes inflamed, and sets some faculty in motion, as the imagination. For, does it not happen that wood of different kinds, and fish bones, produce some light when their heat is excited by putrefaction? Why then may not the heat excited in this confined spirit produce some light? He proves afterwards that imagination ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... it is not unreasonable to believe that there may be some connection between this fact and the equally notorious one that we are the most unhealthy people in the world. An untold amount of disease results from the too free use of flesh during the hot months. Heat promotes putrefaction; and as this change in meat is very rapid in warm weather, we can not be too careful not to eat that which is in the slightest degree tainted. Even when it goes into the stomach in a normal condition, there is danger; for if too much is eaten, or the digestive ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells

... my only chance would be to make a long circuit, and to creep up wind through the thorns, until I should be advised by my nose of the position of the carcass, as it would by this time be in a state of putrefaction, and the lions would most probably be with the body. Accordingly I struck off to my left, and continuing straight forward for some hundred yards, I again struck into the thick jungle and came round to the wind. Success depended ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... which being foreclosed and the supplies cut off, all that remained of it floating before death in the atmosphere, must be condensed upon the cold corpse and lie harmless.[31] It must also be evident that when putrefaction begins, no production of what belonged to the living body can remain unchanged, but must undergo the transformation in form, substance and quality, ordained for all things; for putrefaction, although it may possibly produce a disease after its own character, is not pestilence, nor even compatible ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest

... neither had been the result of the other; they had been swept together, descended blindly in company, submerged in the passion that he had thought must last forever, but which had burned to ashes, to nothing more than a vague sense of putrefaction in life. ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... I have found that a fresh cabbage leaf, put under a glass vessel filled with common air, for the space of one night only, has so affected the air, that a candle would not burn in it the next morning, and yet the leaf had not acquired any smell of putrefaction. ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley

... bacteria. The tubercle bacillus is not really destroyed by external influences, and it may retain its virulence for several months in dried sputum if protected from the light. Its vitality enables it to resist high temperatures, changes in temperature, drying and putrefaction to a, greater degree than most non-spore-producing germs. Direct sunlight destroys the germ within a few hours, but it may live in poorly lighted, filthy stables for months. A temperature of 65260 C. destroys ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.

... expense of violence, only half satisfied this tender and serious spirit. The headlong precipitation of a people into the truth, a '93, terrified him; nevertheless, stagnation was still more repulsive to him, in it he detected putrefaction and death; on the whole, he preferred scum to miasma, and he preferred the torrent to the cesspool, and the falls of Niagara to the lake of Montfaucon. In short, he desired neither halt nor haste. While his tumultuous ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... fetor attending copious continued sweats, it is owing to the animalized part of this fluid being kept in that degree of warmth, which most favours putrefaction, and not suffered to exhale into the atmosphere. Broth, or other animal mucus, kept in similar circumstances, would in the same time acquire a putrid smell; yet has this error frequently produced miliary ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... beget man. But the power of a non-univocal agent does not wholly manifest itself in the production of its effect: as, for example, the power of the sun does not wholly manifest itself in the production of an animal generated from putrefaction. Now it is clear that God is not a univocal agent. For nothing agrees with Him either in species or in genus, as was shown above (Q. 3, A. 5; Q. 4, A. 3). Whence it follows that His effect is always less than His power. It is not necessary, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... of many kinds of fish, when it is supposed to have undergone a beginning putrefaction, becomes luminous in the dark. This seems to shew a tendency in the phosphorus to escape, and combine with the oxygen of the atmosphere; and would hence shew, that this kind of flesh is not so perfectly animalized as those before ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... Further, Christ's body was of the same nature as ours. But directly after death our bodies begin to dissolve into dust, and are disposed towards putrefaction, because when the natural heat departs, there supervenes heat from without which causes corruption. Therefore it seems that the same thing ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... problem: either the victims deposited by the mother are dead, and desiccation or putrefaction attacks them promptly, or else they are living, as indeed the larvae require; but then "what will become of this fragile creature, which a mere nothing will destroy, shut in the narrow chamber of the burrow among vigorous beetles, for weeks on end working their ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... rational and discursive faculty, it comes to a purer intellectual one, so that it can present itself to the mind, without feeling itself befogged by the exhalations of that humour, which, through the exercise of contemplation, has been saved from putrefaction in the stomach and is duly digested. In this state, the present enthusiast shows himself to have remained thirty years, during which time he had not reached that purity of conception which would make him a suitable habitation for the wandering species, which offering themselves to all, equally, ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... sultry sun had a sickening and enfeebling influence beyond any which I had ever experienced. The drought of unusual duration had bereft the air and the earth of every particle of moisture. The element which I breathed appeared to have stagnated into noxiousness and putrefaction. I was astonished at observing the enormous diminution of my strength. My brows were heavy, my intellects benumbed, my sinews enfeebled, and my ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... generated by the sun. In this case the forms received into matter are not of one species, but vary according to the adaptability of the matter to receive the influx of the agent: for instance, we see that owing to the one action of the sun, animals of various species are produced by putrefaction according to the various ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... the cachalot, deriving its origin either from the stomach or biliary ducts, and allied in its nature to gall-stones, ... whilst the masses found floating on the sea are those that have been voided by the whale, or liberated from the dead animal by the process of putrefaction." (Bennett, Whaling Voyage Round the Globe, 1840, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... water in which it was dissolved, and enters into combination with the animal substance, which substance, after being thus acted upon, is found to have lost its tendency to spontaneous decomposition, or putrefaction. ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... and should not have an unpleasant odor. If the stream of air from one nostril is stronger than from the other, there is an indication of an obstruction in a nasal chamber. If the air possesses a bad odor, it is usually an indication of putrefaction of a tissue or secretion in some part of the respiratory tract. A bad odor is found where there is necrosis of the bone in the nasal passages or in chronic catarrh. An ulcerating tumor of the nose or throat may cause the breath ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... stigmatize his morals; Through Scandal's magnifying glass His foibles view, but virtues pass, And on the ruins of his fame Erect an ignominious name. So vermin foul, of vile extraction, The spawn of dirt and putrefaction, The sounder members traverse o'er, But fix and fatten on a sore. Hence! peace, ye wretches, who revile His wit, his humour, and his style; Since all the monsters which he drew Were only meant to copy you; And, if the colours be not fainter, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... thousands that perished in our late contests with France and Spain, a very small part ever felt the stroke of an enemy; the rest languished in tents and ships, amidst damps and putrefaction; pale, torpid, spiritless, and helpless; gasping and groaning, unpitied among men made obdurate by long continuance of hopeless misery; and were at last whelmed in pits, or heaved into the ocean, without notice and without remembrance. By incommodious encampments and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... body, lying in this receptacle for two hours, absorbs certain parts of the gas which enters the pores and touches those parts of the dead body not reached by the injected fluid. By this process no part of the body is subject to putrefaction and the muscles all retain their rigidity, so that one hundred years after burial the ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris

... for brine dispels the juice of meat, and saltpetre only serves to make the meat dry, and give it a disagreeable and unnatural red color. Various experiments have been made in curing beef with salt otherwise than by hand-rubbing, and in a short space of time, and also to preserve it from putrefaction by other means than salt. Some packers put meat in a copper which is rendered air-tight, and an air-pump then creates a vacuum within it, thereby extracting all the air out of the meat; then brine is pumped ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... had liquid and highly offensive evacuations and died, in spite of all medical aid, in six hours. On the abdomen, the neck, the chest and especially on the feet of the corpses of these men there were gangraenous spots of different sizes, a plain proof that the acute inflammation, gangraene and putrefaction had been caused by the excessive irritation of the extremely weak body. Circumstances ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose

... quivered with the microscopic organisms that infest age-rotten places. Sections of the flooring and woodwork also reeked with mustiness. In one dark, webby corner of the room lay a pile of bleached bones, still tinted with the ghastly grays and pinks of putrefaction. Northwood, overwhelmingly nauseated, withdrew his eyes from the bones, only to see, in another corner, a pile of worm-eaten clothing that lay on the floor in the outline ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... stench of the charnel house, As he drew near enough to distinguish objects, what a scene presented itself! In one corner of the vault, lay a quantity of lime used to consume the bodies, whilst nearer the light, lay corpses in every stage of putrefaction. In some, the lime had but half accomplished its purpose; and while in parts of the body, the bones lay bare and exposed; in others, corruption in its most loathsome form prevailed. Here the meaner reptiles—active and prolific—might be seen busily at work, battening on human decay. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... used in great abundance, are subject to additional objections. They tend to produce an excess of acids, are very prone to putrefaction, and contain "purins" which lead to the production of uric acid. This is especially true of sweetbreads, liver and kidney. The well-known deficiency in flesh foods of lime often needs to be taken into consideration in the dietary. Some of the vegetable foods, ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk

... I imagine," I replied; "so let us make haste. I will go first, and you bring up the rear, with Woola between. Come," and with the words I dashed forward, across the fetid mass of putrefaction. ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... What is the fourth method of analysis? 12. How are the following sentences analyzed by this method? (1.) "Swift would say, 'The thing has not life enough in it to keep it sweet;' Johnson, 'The creature possesses not vitality sufficient to preserve it from putrefaction.'" (2.) "There is one Being to whom we can look with a perfect conviction of finding that security, which nothing about us can give, and which nothing about us can take away." 13. What is said of the fifth method ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... is found very little oak, and what grows there is not fit for use, being very small; therefore they are obliged to fetch their oak timber from those parts of Canada which border upon New England. But all the North American oaks have the quality of lasting longer, and withstanding putrefaction better, the further north they ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... His body thin and all discoloured: from the wounds thick blood poured out, and their edges were swollen and red; the broken knees, the feet and hands, were purple and green with the beginning of putrefaction. ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... directions for preparing essence of hartshorn—prepared, literally, from the horn itself. The preparation, strongly alkaline, he prescribed in small doses of eight to ten drops. The medicine "resists malignity, putrefaction, and acid humours," for it destroys the acidity. He used it "in fevers, coughs, pleurisies, obstructions of the spleen, liver, or womb, and principally in affections ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer

... that attend, the white gritty and chalky matter, and hard stony or flinty concretions which happen to all those long troubled with severe gouts, gravel, jaundice, or colic—the obstructions and hardnesses, the putrefaction and mortification that happen in the bowels, joints, and members in some of these diseases, and the rottenness in the bones, ligaments, and membranes that happen in others; all the various train of pains, miseries, and torments that can afflict any part of the compound, ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... that it is good, and then throw it into a basin with the rest. One bad egg would spoil fifty. Supposing you have a dozen or two dozen new-laid eggs just taken from the nest, it is not an uncommon thing to have one that has been overlooked for weeks, and which may be a half-hatched mass of putrefaction. ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne

... When Pasteur in 1857 showed that the lactic fermentation depends on the presence of an organism, it was already known from the researches of Schwann (1837) and Helmholtz (1843) that fermentation and putrefaction are intimately connected with the presence of organisms derived from the air, and that the preservation of putrescible substances depends on this principle. In 1862 Pasteur placed it beyond reasonable doubt that the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... from the dew which falls on plants, that fleas are developed from putrid matter, and so forth. T. J. Parker (Elementary Biology) cites a passage from Alexander Ross, who, commenting on Sir Thomas Browne's doubt as to "whether mice may be bred by putrefaction,'' gives a clear statement of the common opinion on abiogenesis held until about two centuries ago. Ross wrote: "So may he (Sir Thomas Browne) doubt whether in cheese and timber worms are generated; or if beetles and wasps in cows' dung; or if butterflies, locusts, grasshoppers, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... collected hundreds every day, and bore as heavy a load as we could carry across the ravine to the platform in front of our cabin, where we busied ourselves in skinning them, splitting them, and hanging them out to dry in the sun. The air of the island was so pure that no putrefaction ever took place, and during the last fortnight of the birds coming on the island, we had collected a sufficiency for our support until their return on the following year. As soon as they were quite dry they were packed up in a corner ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat

... succulent, that there only wanted heate to make his bodie live without a soul, and his face so dissembling death, that elsewhere it is true that sleep is the image of death, but here death was the image of sleep. Nay, his very funerall weeds were so fresh, as if putrefaction had not dared to take him ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate

... cries of welcome to us. Of all the vile, dirty places on earth, Omdurman must rank first. There was no effort at sanitary observances, and dead animals, camels, horses, donkeys, dogs, goats, sheep, cattle, in all stages of putrefaction, lay about the streets and lanes. There were dead men, women, and children, too, lying ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... atoms and molecules of all literature, so to speak—are the letters of the alphabet. How often by changing a letter in a word, by reversing their order, or by substituting one letter for another, we get a word of an entirely different meaning, as in umpire and empire, petrifaction and putrefaction, malt and salt, tool and fool. And by changing the order of the words in a sentence we express all the infinite variety of ideas and meanings that the books of the ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... love and admiration cannot view Without a beating heart, whose azure veins Steal like dark streams along a field of snow, 15 Whose outline is as fair as marble clothed In light of some sublimest mind, decay? Nor putrefaction's breath Leave aught of this pure spectacle But loathsomeness and ruin?— 20 Spare aught but a dark theme, On which the lightest heart might moralize? Or is it but that downy-winged slumbers Have charmed their nurse coy Silence near her lids To watch their own repose? 25 Will ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... stale and fusty that I had to come into the passage again and fetch a few breaths to humour my nose to the odour. As in the cabin, however, so here I found this noxiousness of air was not caused by putrefaction or any tainting qualities of a vegetable or animal kind, but by the deadness of the pent-up air itself, as the foulness of bilge-water is owing to its being imprisoned from air in ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... fatigue required rest, I sat down, with morbid melancholy, in the receptacle for the bodies of those unfortunate persons who had perished in the snow. There would I remain for hours, musing on their fate: the purity of the air admitted neither putrefaction, or even decay, for a very considerable time; and they lay, to all appearance, as if the breath had even then only quitted them, although, on touching those who had been there for years, they ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... line of Flers," wrote one of these Germans, "the men were only occupying shell-holes. Behind there was the intense smell of putrefaction which filled the trench—almost unbearably. The corpses lie either quite insufficiently covered with earth on the edge of the trench or quite close under the bottom of the trench, so that the earth lets the stench through. In some places bodies lie quite uncovered in ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... elastic substance resembling air, which differs from it in numerous properties, and is, with good reason, called aerial acid by Professor Bergman. It owes its presence to organised bodies, destroyed by putrefaction ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele

... wild beast in a small travelling menagerie. The space between the floor and the ground, and the interval which separates the cells from the surrounding fence, is one seething, living mass of stinking putrefaction. Here in the tropics, under a brazen sun, all unclean things turn to putrid filthy life within the hour; and in a native gaol the atmosphere is heavy with the fumes and rottenness of the offal of years, and the reeking pungency of offal that is new. No ventilation ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... ground, prowling from one hole to another. Having seized its prey, it immediately kills the spider, and carries it off to its own hole, when it is said to devour the limbs, and to deposit its egg in the body to be hatched by the putrefaction that ensues, and which furnishes food ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various

... courage, by which the surgeon has been led on to the performance of operations that were hitherto considered rash, audacious or impossible; and secondly, by the immunity which the surgeon has gained in the treatment of wounds through the increased knowledge he possesses of putrefaction and the means of preventing it. It were hard to say whether the surgeon's increase of skill and courage in performing operations has equalled his increased skill in ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... a blessing it is for us to have, as we may have, a source of joy, frozen by no winter, dried up by no summer, muddied and corrupted by no iridescent scum of putrefaction which ever mantles over the stagnant ponds of earthly joys! Like some citadel that has an unfailing well in its courtyard, we may have a fountain of gladness within ourselves which nothing that touches the outside can cut off. We have but to lap a hasty mouthful ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... evening a messenger, who, watching his opportunity, throws his burden down in some plot of building land, or over a fence. When I say that I have seen in one place, close alongside a public thoroughfare, a heap of about fifty herrings, in most active putrefaction and buzzing with flies, and some days afterward, in another place, some twenty soles, it will be understood that such nuisances can only be occasioned by dealers. To get rid of, or at least greatly diminish, carrion-flies, house-flies, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... mode of their confinement, being closely crowded together in infected prison-ships, where the very air is pregnant with disease, and the ships themselves (never having been cleaned in the course of many years), a mere mass of putrefaction, he would therefor, from motives of humanity, write to Rear-Admiral Digby, in whose power it was to remedy this great evil, by confining them on shore, or having a sufficient number of prison-ships provided for that purpose, for, he observed, ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... massive and wide-spread as is anything in Nature, and the study of them is as tedious, repellent and undignified. To reject it for its unromantic character is like rejecting bacteriology because penicillium glaucum grows on horse-dung and bacterium termo lives in putrefaction. Scientific men have long ago ceased to think of the dignity of the materials they work in. When imposture has been checked off as far as possible, when chance coincidence has been allowed for, when opportunities for normal knowledge on the part of the subject have been noted, and skill ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... thirst, and many by drinking with too much avidity when they fall in with wells. Owing to this Momia is found in these sands, bring the flesh of such as have been drowned in the sea of sand, which is there dried up by the heat of the sun, and the excessive dryness of the sand preventing putrefaction. This Momia or dried flesh is esteemed medicinal; but there is another and more precious kind of Momia, being the dried and embalmed bodies of kings and princes, which have been preserved ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... to the bank, a new farce was acted; they lamented over him, they begged his pardon for the accident, and they protested their innocence of any design. In every way they provided themselves with a plausible defense in case he should recover or they should be suspected. After several days, putrefaction happily settled all their doubts about the mortality of their conquerors, and the glad news was communicated to ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall

... maturity. When he is hard pressed for a peso or two he strips a few petioles, leaving them for days exposed to the rain and atmosphere to soften and render easier the drawing of the fibre, in which putrefaction has commenced. The result is prejudicial to the dealer and the plantation owner, because the fibre discolours. Then he passes the bast under a toothed knife, which is easy to work, and goes down to the village with his bundle of discoloured coarse fibre with a certain amount of ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... as a mark of affection. At Gaua, in Santa Maria, the body was dried over slow fires for ten days or more, till nothing but skin and bones remained; and the women who watched over it during these days drank the juices of putrefaction which dripped from the decaying flesh. The same thing used formerly to be done in Mota, another of the Banks' Islands. The corpses of great men in these islands were adorned in all their finery and laid out on the open space in the middle of the village. Here bunches of coco-nuts, yams, and ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... indeed, all fermented liquors have an antiseptic quality. They act in direct opposition to putrefaction, and in proportion to the quantity of alcohol which they contain, so will be their value and beneficial tendency. Now the circulating fluids of our system have a continual tendency to putrefaction; and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various

... tried to reach our wounded, but the fire was too hot. This bombardment kept on for two days, when the enemy retired, whereupon we again took possession of the hill. Two or three of our wounded were found to be still alive, but with their wounds in a terrible state of putrefaction. Imagine their sufferings during those two awful days of heat, thirst, and exposure, to say nothing of the shells continually exploding around them. They were brought into camp and ultimately recovered. For all I know, they may be fighting still. This little affair is known to the British as the ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar

... and on grounds which have been recently stripped of their woods. The fact is precise, but it has been set aside to make way for an opinion. It was assumed, about half a century since, by a celebrated army physician, that camp diseases originated from causes of putrefaction, and that putrefaction is connected radically with a ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... momentary emotion in the readers of fiction. But the reality is stern and dreadful, beyond imagination or conception. There is in the cess-pools of the great capitals of Christendom a mass of human creatures who are born, who live, and who die, in moral putrefaction. Their existence is a continued career of sin and woe. Body and soul, mind and heart, are given up to earth, to sense, to corruption. They emerge for a brief season into the light of day, run their swift and ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... as a pet, and mars his attractiveness as game, is by no means the greatest indignity that can be offered to a nose. It is a rank, living smell, and has none of the sickening qualities of disease or putrefaction. Indeed, I think a good smeller will enjoy its most refined intensity. It approaches the sublime, and makes the nose tingle. It is tonic and bracing, and, I can readily believe, has rare medicinal qualities. I ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs

... taste or ingenuity. He has invented the dog (Al Rakim) the Seven Sleepers; the respect of the sun, who altered his course twice a day, that he might not shine into the cavern; and the care of God himself, who preserved their bodies from putrefaction, by turning them to the right ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... take extraordinary pains to preserve the body from putrefaction, in the hope of the soul again joining the body it had quitted." The remark is intrinsically untrue, because the doctrine of transmigration coexists in reconciled belief with the observed law of birth, infancy, and growth, not with the miracle of transition ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... diplodocus tender eating. The particular diplodocus of which I speak probably died of old age in the act of drinking, and was engulfed in a pool of the great curdling, reedy river that ran lazily through the forest. The imagination sickens before the thought of the speedy putrefaction of such a beast under such conditions; but this process over, the creature's bones lay deep ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... moderate stop at one hundred thousand. In any case, the carnage was great, for the battle-field, where all these corpses rested without burial, rotting in the sun and rain, got the name of Campi Putridi, or Fields of Putrefaction, a name traceable even nowadays in that of Pourrires, a ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... of rotten Wood, rotten Fish and the like, are also in motion, I think, will as easily be conceded by those, who consider, that those parts never begin to shine till the Bodies be in a state of putrefaction; and that is now generally granted by all, to be caused by the motion of the parts of putrifying bodies. That the Bononian stone shines no longer then it is either warmed by the Sun-beams, or by the ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... the 20th, our old man kept his promise, and brought on board four of the heads of the seven people who had been so much the subject of our enquiries: The hair and flesh were entire, but we perceived that the brains had been extracted; the flesh was soft, but had by some method been preserved from putrefaction, for it had no disagreeable smell. Mr Banks purchased one of them, but they sold it with great reluctance, and could not by any means be prevailed upon to part with a second; probably they may be ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... cruciferous plants; and all contain much nitrogen, or vegetable albumen, with a considerable quantity of sulphur; hence they tend strongly to putrefaction, and when decomposed their odour is very offensive. Being cut into pieces, and pressed close in a tub with aromatic herbs and salt, so as to undergo an acescent fermentation (which is [75] arrested at that stage), Cabbages form ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... Roman thinkers, gazing mournfully at the seething mass of moral putrefaction round him, detected and deigned to notice among its elements a certain detestable superstition, so he called it, rising up amidst the offscouring of the Jews, which was named Christianity. Could Tacitus have looked forward nine centuries to the Rome of Gregory ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph

... water is thus secured from the heavy rain that falls in the early part of summer. Water saved in this manner never becomes putrid. The leaves of the gum-tree fall into the pool abundantly, and not only give to the water a very peculiar flavour, but preserve it from all putrefaction. This gum water is safest when boiled with a little tea, and drunk cold. Every settler in the Bush drinks water in no other way, and—for want of better things—he takes tea and fresh mutton at least three times a-day. His bread is a lump ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... and recomposition of water is perpetually operating before our eyes, in the temperature of the atmosphere, by means of compound elective attraction. We shall presently see that the phenomena attendant upon vinous fermentation, putrefaction, and even vegetation, are produced, at least in a certain degree, by decomposition of water. It is very extraordinary that this fact should have hitherto been overlooked by natural philosophers and chemists: Indeed, ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier

... that piece of pasteboard the wife had seen a crime which the mother could never forgive, the partner had seen a crime which the friend could never forgive. Think of a loved face suddenly melting before your eyes into a grinning skull, then into a mass of putrefaction, then into the ugliest fiend of hell, leering at you, distorted with all the marks of vice and shame. That is what I saw, that is what they ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... the old time did not have," came a deep voice from under a bowler hat, "was the leisure to be sad. The sweetness of putrefaction, the long remembering of palely colored moods; they had the sun, we have the colors of its setting. Who shall say which ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... ferocious urgency of his loud bass voice, turned to have a last look at the woman who was "out for life"; but Cora was already lost in the crowd, and instead of gazing into the dead-white face which suggested to her some strange putrefaction, she gazed full into the face of a man. He was not far off—by the doorway through which people were streaming out into Regent Street—and he happened to be looking at her. She had been expecting to see a whiteness ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... been made respecting it. It is an amphibious plant, thriving only in water or wet soils, is very productive, and the stalks after a summer's growth secrete a large quantity of sugar. It has the power, when the stalks are ripe, of resisting putrefaction, and will become blanched and more nutritious by being cut and laid in heaps in the winter season, at which time only it is useful. The cultivator of this plant must not expect to graze his land, but allow ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury

... there are hideous pictures of blood, carnage, oozing brains, putrefaction—pictures portraying intolerable suffering—pictures alive with every conceivable horror, wrought out in dreadful detail—and similar pictures are being put on the canvas every day and publicly exhibited—without a growl from anybody—for they are innocent, they are inoffensive, being ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain

... He liked to have his statements sound well. He once said in forcible Saxon: "The Rehearsal! has not wit enough to keep it sweet," but a moment later he translated this into: "It has not sufficient vitality to preserve it from putrefaction." In his Dictionary he defined "network" as "anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances with interstices between the intersections." Some wits of the day said that he used long words to make ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... answered, that he came in the night, but invisibly, and fed only on the soul, or immaterial part, which, according to their doctrine, remains about the place of sacrifice, until the body of the victim be entirely wasted by putrefaction. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... Penruddock gave a spiteful hit, being, as he said, of a cantankerous turn, to Mr. Treluddra, principal "jowder," i.e. fish salesman, of Aberalva. Whereon Treluddra, whose conscience told him that there was at present in his back-yard a cartload and more of fish in every stage of putrefaction, which he had kept rotting there rather than lower ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... of warmer weather, so replete were they with half-buried corpses, covered only with a few inches of loose earth. In every direction the ground was dotted with graves; the soil cracked and split in obedience to the forces acting beneath its surface, and from the fissures thus formed the gases of putrefaction issued to poison the living. In those more recent days, moreover, another center of contamination had been discovered, the Meuse, although there had already been removed from it the bodies of more than twelve hundred dead horses. It was generally believed that there were ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... "the drawer missing. That contained substances offensive to the sight or smell, which my maid, conducted to it by her nose, conceived to be some animal curiosities I had been collecting, in a state of putrefaction and decay, and did not hesitate to throw them into the fire. I afterwards found myself very much at a loss, whenever my subject led me to the mention of objects of this character, and I therefore spoke of them as seldom as possible." After bestowing ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... temperature of the pantry and cellar is important, in order that one may make improvements in conditions. Putrefaction will start at 50 deg., so that a pantry or closet where food is kept should have a temperature at least as low as that. Cellars where canned goods are stored should have a temperature of 32 deg. or over. Apples are frequently stored in outside cellars, where ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... vaunted paltry titles; and resigned their wives to cicisbei and their sons to sloth: art and learning languished; there was not a man who ventured to speak out his thought or write the truth; and over the Dead Sea of social putrefaction floated the sickening oil ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... entered the door he was enveloped by a smell of putrefaction and hospital air. On the stairs he met a Russian army doctor smoking a cigar. The doctor was followed by a ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... the Carboniferous Formation, so called from its remarkable feature of numerous interspersed beds of coal. It commences with beds of the mountain limestone, which in England attains a depth of 800 yards. Coal is altogether composed of the matter of a terrestrial vegetation, transmuted by putrefaction of a peculiar kind beneath the surface of water, and in the absence of air. From examples seen at the present day at the mouths of such rivers as the Mississippi, which traverse extensive sylvan regions, it is thought that the vegetation, the rubbish of decayed forests, was carried by rivers into ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous

... specific gravity of the blood and other fluids of the body; (2) to preserve the tissues from disorganization and putrefaction; (3) to enter into the composition of the teeth and bones. These are only a few of the uses of salts in the body, but are sufficient for our purpose. Fruits and nuts contain the least quantity of salts, meat ranks next, then vegetables ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless

... sending up odours as foul as the language of sellers and buyers. Blood and sewer-water crawled from under doors and out of spouts, and reeked down the gutters among offal, animal and vegetable, in every stage of putrefaction. Foul vapours rose from cowsheds and slaughter houses, and the doorways of undrained alleys, where the inhabitants carried the filth out on their shoes from the back-yard into the court, and from the court up into the ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... will exist, or be caused by wear and tear, unseen. In one place evil liquids and gases will percolate; in another evil accumulations will putrefy. Instead of blending small portions of needful manure quickly with small portions of earth that needs it, we secure in the drains a slow putrefaction and a permanent source of pestilence; we relieve a town by imposing a grave vexation and danger on the whole neighbourhood where its drains have exit; we make the mouth of every tide river a harbour and storehouse of pollution; and after thus ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... Globigerina skeletons, did not go on very fast. It is demonstrable that an animal of the cretaceous sea might die, that its skeleton might lie uncovered upon the sea-bottom long enough to lose all its outward coverings and appendages by putrefaction; and that, after this had happened, another animal might attach itself to the dead and naked skeleton, might grow to maturity, and might itself die before the calcareous mud had buried ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... exhibition is not yet completed, but, in its present condition, is very interesting. Some hints, not altogether useless, may be collected from it. In England, our churches are charnel houses. The pews of the congregation are raised upon foundations of putrefaction. For six days and nights the temple of devotion is filled with the pestilent vapours of the dead, and on the seventh they are absorbed by the living. Surely it is high time to subdue prejudices, which endanger health without promoting piety. The scotch ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr

... things—taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life began here. But by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power; to no germs do we succumb without a struggle, and to many—those that cause putrefaction in dead matter, for instance—our living frames are altogether immune. But there are no bacteria in Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow. Already when I watched them they were ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... of the process is this: Fermentation and putrefaction of the foods eaten to excess produce in the stomach various acids and toxins. These become absorbed and pass into the liver. Then the liver becomes clogged, its flow of blood is obstructed and this naturally retards the flow of food from the stomach. That organ becomes congested and inflamed and, ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... corrupt sooner than that killed by the gun or knife. The body of this fowl was kept for sixteen hours in a climate damp and rainy, and within seven degrees of the equator, at the end of which time it had contracted no bad smell whatever and there were no symptoms of putrefaction, saving that just round the wound the flesh appeared ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... classified with reference to their significant bearings upon the problem. Moreover the facts gathered and the classifications of relationship made are not more or less accurate, more or less true; they are tested and verified results. That putrefaction, for example, is due to the life of micro-organisms in the rotting substance is not a mere assumption. It has been proved, tested, and verified by methods we shall have occasion presently ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... without air. Further experiments showed there were ferments to which air was necessary, called by Pasteur the aerobics, and others to whom oxygen was fatal, the anaerobics. He proved, also, by an exhaustive series of experiments, that what is called putrefaction of animal matter is the result of the combined work of the aerobics and the anaerobics, which reduce that part not taken up by oxygen to dead organic matter, ready in its turn to form food for ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... that beautiful tawny reddish tint, which gives the Florentine bronzes their warm, life-like appearance, so preferable to the verdigris tones of ordinary bronzes, which might be taken readily for statues in a state of putrefaction; a satiny luster gleamed over its curves, polished by the amorous kisses of twenty centuries; for it must have been a Corinthian bronze, a work of the finest period, molded perhaps ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... or Devil be the author of war. All human advancement is born of strife. Only warlike nations march in the van of the world's progress—prolonged peace has ever meant putrefaction. The civilizations of Greece and Rome were brightest when their blades were keenest. When the sword was sheathed there followed social degradation and intellectual decay. When all Europe trembled at the haughty tread of her matchless infantry, Spain was empress in the realm ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... them by standing between the crates. Presently feeling an almost ravenous appetite, I bethought myself of the cold mutton, some of which I had eaten just before going to sleep, and found excellent. What was my astonishment in discovering it to be in a state of absolute putrefaction! This circumstance occasioned me great disquietude; for, connecting it with the disorder of mind I experienced upon awakening, I began to suppose that I must have slept for an inordinately long period of time. The close atmosphere ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... I found myself in that place chill and gloomy as the tomb; when I felt choked by the mephitic gases that arose from this seat of infection; when I found myself in the presence of a heap of corpses mutilated by the scalpel, disfigured by putrefaction and partially devoured by rats and worms; when, beneath tables laden with these horrible remains, I saw mean tubs filled with human entrails mingled with limbs and heads severed from their trunks; when I felt ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... provisions. You must know that, in a climate so sultry as mine, it is frequently impossible to keep a spirit alive for more than two or three hours; and after death, unless pickled immediately (and a pickled spirit is not good), they will—smell—you understand, eh? Putrefaction is always to be apprehended when the souls are consigned to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... it, as that of Colonel Morland had been, who was killed at the battle of Austerlitz. For this purpose the corpse was carried to Schoenbrunn, and placed in the left wing of the chateau, far from the inhabited rooms. In a few hours putrefaction became complete, and they were obliged to plunge the mutilated body into a bath filled with corrosive sublimate. This extremely dangerous operation was long and painful; and M. Cadet de Gassicourt deserves much commendation for the courage he displayed under ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... neatly set forth what he considers the task of the author. According to him, the man of to-day has lost courage; he interests himself too little in life, his desire to live with dignity has grown weaker, "an odor of putrefaction surrounds him, cowardice and slavery corrupt his heart, laziness binds his hands and his mind." But, at the same time, life grows in breadth and depth, and, from day to day, men are learning to question. And ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... exciting and rancid ones must be experienced; and if the stupid virtues of the philistine herd do not then come in and save society from the influence of the children of light, a sort of inward putrefaction becomes ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... of June and July, the thermometer is at from 88 to 90 degrees. What must it be, then, in the latitude of 6 or 7, under a vertical sun, and where, after the rainy season, the effluvium which arises from the putrefaction of vegetables is productive of the most fatal effects? Sir James L. Yeo agrees with their account, in his statement laid before ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... alimentary canal from fermentation and decomposition following imperfect or faulty digestion. If the fermentation is of vegetables or fruit, the toxins are irritating, stimulating and enervating, but not so dangerous or destructive to organic life as putrefaction, which is a fermentation set up in nitrogenous matter—protein-bearing foods, but particularly animal foods. Endogenous toxins are autogenerated. They are the waste products of metabolism. Dr. John. H. Tilden, Impaired Health: ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... natural process, will be set up; but I am inclined to think, from my own experience, that it is best to add, in the first instance, a small quantity of yeast. If, as sometimes happens, the fermentative action be too slow, putrefaction of a portion is liable to take place, ...
— The Production of Vinegar from Honey • Gerard W Bancks

... filthy servants! Pity for a lickspittle parasite that battens on the passions and vices of hopeless gaol-birds, abandoned women, jaded pleasure-hunters and terrified neurasthenics! Pity on a speculator calculating huge revenues from the festering putrefaction of human disease! I haven't hit you yet, because your flesh is foul to me—but—drink that down, or, by God! I'll smash every ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming

... frequently a compact, brittle texture; the flesh is white; they grow more readily in open places, such as dry pastures and waste lands, than in places humid or shaded by wood. In general, those should be suspected which grow in caverns and subterranean passages, on animal matter undergoing putrefaction, as well as those whose ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... buried in bogs or morasses; and the animals which have been trodden down by their fellows and crushed in the mud at the river's bank, as the herd have come to drink. In any of these cases, the organisms may be crushed or be mutilated, before or after putrefaction, in such a manner that perhaps only a part will be left in the form in which it reaches us. It is, indeed, a most remarkable fact, that it is quite an exceptional case to find a skeleton of any one of all the thousands of wild land animals that we know are constantly ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... animals killed by electricity, rapidly undergo putrefaction, and the action of electricity upon the flesh of animals is also found to accelerate this process in a remarkable degree. The same effect has been observed in the bodies of persons destroyed by lightning. It is also a well-established ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various

... sheep dogs flee in terror from this mournful place, and when one leans over it one perceives a disgusting odor of putrefaction. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... are called gases. Some are salutary, but many extremely noxious, especially such as those arising from the putrefaction of animal bodies; the burning of charcoal; corrupted air at the bottom of mines, cellars, &c. The inflammable gas, which lights our streets, churches, shops, &c., is procured chiefly from coal, burnt in furnaces for the purpose the gas being ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

... death-flicker and extinction, then in the sordid and icy dark that would remain there could be no war of like nature with this that to-day gives the land its woful baptism of blood and tears. Oh, no! there would have been peace—and putrefaction: peace, but without its sweetness, and death, but without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... adds, "why these negroes conceal themselves, is, that they have lips of an unnatural size, hanging down halfway over their breasts, and which they are obliged to rub with salt continually, to keep them from putrefaction." Thus even the great salt trade of the interior of Africa is not wholly ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... any effort made among Painters to prove that they are alive—but when I find, thrust in the van of your leaders, the body of my dead 'Arry, I know that putrefaction alone can result. When, following 'Arry, there comes on Oscar, you finish in farce, and bring upon yourselves the scorn and ridicule of your ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler

... well as others which have been mentioned are better prepared to serve as nutrients to the body than are meats. Besides, nuts have the advantage of being clean, free from the products of disease and putrefaction. Meats of all sorts, as found in the market, with the exception of canned meats, abound with putrefactive bacteria to an astonishing degree. This is true of dried, smoked and salted meats as well as of the fresh meats and ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various

... of Vitrioll, according to Dioscorides, Galen, AEtius, Paulus AEgineta, and Oribasius, are to heate and dry, to bind, to resist putrefaction, to give strength and vigour to the interiour parts, to kill the flat wormes of the belly, to remedy venemous mushromes, to preserve flesh over moyst from corruption, consuming the moysture thereof by its heat, and constipating by his astriction the substance ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane

... was neither savoury nor safe. It was built round a courtyard which consisted of a gigantic hole crammed with manure in all the stages of unpleasant putrefaction. One side is a barn; two sides consist of stables, and the third is the house inhabited not only by us but by an incredibly filthy and stinking old woman who was continually troubling the general because some months ago a French ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson

... institutes of science—that philosophy which, in the words of Macaulay, "began in observations, and ended in arts." A few words will suffice to close his personal history. While riding in his coach, he was struck with the idea that snow would arrest animal putrefaction. He alighted, bought a fowl, and stuffed it with snow, with his own hands. He caught cold, stopped at the Earl of Arundel's mansion, and slept in damp sheets; fever intervened, and on Easter Day, 1626, he died, leaving his great work unfinished, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... perceive the odour of the rhubarb, which the wind wafts towards them. In the morning they go towards the place whence came the odour, and search there for the rhubarb until they find it. Rhubarb is the putrefied wood of a great tree, and acquires its odour even from its putrefaction, the best part of the tree is the root, nevertheless the trunk, which they call calama, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... of putrefaction rose from a sewer near by that several people were turned sick; a woman was taken ill and handed over in a fainting condition to a couple of National Guards, who carried her off to a pump a few yards away. All held their noses, and fell to growling and grumbling, exchanging conjectures each ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... has the note of disagreeableness, or of putrefaction, been struck—long duration. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... just as the logic of its opponents' position ties them to a negative and protesting or merely insubordinate part. If the latter should prevail, their victory would become tantamount to national dissolution, either by putrefaction, by revolution, or ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly



Words linked to "Putrefaction" :   putridness, biology, biological science, immorality, decay, rottenness, degeneracy, putrefy, putrescence



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