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Ailment   /ˈeɪlmənt/   Listen
Ailment

noun
1.
An often persistent bodily disorder or disease; a cause for complaining.  Synonyms: complaint, ill.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Ailment" Quotes from Famous Books



... needs building up rather than tearing down, a remedy for an ailment rather than fault-finding, the greatest of men cannot be mere satirists. Shakespeare displays some fellow feeling for the object of his satire, but Jonson's satire is cold and ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... slightly deformed; at least, the memory to me is that of a small, delicate woman, with one shoulder "out." The expression of her countenance betokened suffering, having that peculiar "sharpness" which usually accompanies severe and continuous bodily ailment.[G] I saw more of her some years afterwards, and knew that her mind ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... himself to sleep and inactivity. With all this irregularity, he is a total stranger to lingering complaints, and to that numerous as well as fashionable class of diseases denominated "Nervous." That formidable ailment, Dyspepsia, which, like a fiend, has, for the last few years pervaded the whole land, is unknown to the Indian; having its origin in the abuses introduced by civilization and refinement. But ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister

... I ought to go now," answered Faith. "Aunt Henderson never complains for a slight ailment, and she might be ill again, to-night. I can take all I shall need before to-morrow in my little morocco bag. I won't keep you waiting a minute," she ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... Catholicism endeavors to impress her subjects with the miraculousness of latter day miracles, as she will hold up the bones of some supposed Catholic Saint, and declare to her benighted followers that if they worship these relics, they will work wonders and cure the ailment of any affliction they may ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg

... indisposition, ailment, affection, complaint, disorder, distemper, infirmity, malady.> (With this group contrast the ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... were huddled together, and it was not by any means surprising that Lady Lucy failed in her search for the original account, by which to rectify the error in her shoemaker's bill. In the hurry and nervous trepidation which had latterly become almost a constitutional ailment with her, she turned out the contents of the writing-desk into an easy chair, and then kneeling before it, she set herself to the task of carefully examining the papers. Soon she came to one letter which had been little expected in that place, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... disease is so subtle and slow that it is months in developing; and this feature renders it all the more deadly, through the spread of infection long before the ailment ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... of a dear man comes to me just here, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, of Boston, everybody's doctor, whose only ailment toward the end was being eighty years of age. He was a boy to the last. When Matthew Arnold died a few friends could not resist taking steps toward a suitable memorial to his memory. These friends quietly provided ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch—hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began indolently to study diseases generally. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... may not seem a serious thing to you, my precocious reader, who number your flirtations among the trivial affairs of life. Calf love, you will say, is not a matter worth bothering one's brains about. You will class that ailment perhaps with the whooping cough and the measles and sneer it out of existence. But I would remind you that Jerry's mind and character were quite mature. I had schooled them myself and I know. If Jerry had fallen in love with Marcia Van ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... the matter with me?" said I. "It appears that the ailment is with yourself and either in your crazed head or your dim eyes, for there is nothing ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... disorder, indisposition, sickness, ailment, distemper, infirmity, unhealthiness, complaint, illness, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... missed the deep tenderness of this supreme and subtlest touch in the work of the greatest among his fellows. Again, with anything but "damnable" iteration, does Shakespeare revert to it before the close of this very scene. Even Pistol and Nym can see that what now ails their old master is no such ailment as in his prosperous days was but too liable to "play the rogue with his great toe." "The king hath run bad humours on the knight": "his heart is fracted, and corroborate." And it is not thus merely through the eclipse of that brief mirage, that ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... decency and love of cleanliness, and so may the pearl be still accepted as the embodiment of purity. Though all its little soul be dirt, the pearl is pure, and but for the dirt or the germ of a filthy ailment it would ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... dispelled for her. A young man falls in love with her, but on discovering that he is not a believer she endeavours to convert him, and goes moonlight walks with him. Moonlight is sometimes dangerous for young girls, and, after one of these sentimental and theological strolls, she has a mysterious ailment. . ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic

... who is a generalist cannot excel in any one branch of medicine, or compete with the specialist who devotes all his time and study and practice towards one point and towards the treatment of a specific ailment. The merchant who sells everything cannot compete with the man who makes it his business to sell one class of goods. This is an age of specialists, and what we considered a specialist twenty-five ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter

... even at the present day our faith-cure professors reap their richest harvest among people commonly supposed to belong to the intelligent classes. In the treatment of wounds the Cherokee doctors exhibit a considerable degree of skill, but as far as any internal ailment is concerned the average farmer's wife is worth all the doctors ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney

... lord, you have discovered that which I have endeavoured to conceal from you: that I am so badly treated by you that I am afflicted with a burning ailment, of which my dignity would not allow me to complain, but which needs secret dressing in order to assuage the influence of the vital forces. To save my honour and your own, I am compelled to come to my good Lady Miraflor, who consoles me in ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... patient. Sometimes he was firm, sometimes gently bantering. He seized every opportunity for a little humorous by-play. One might almost say that he tactfully teased some of his patients, giving them an idea that their ailment was absurd, and a little unworthy; that to be ill was a quaint but reprehensible weakness, which they should quickly get rid of. Indeed, this denial of the dignity of disease is one of the characteristics of the place. No homage is paid to it as a Dread Monarch. It is gently ridiculed, its ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks

... occurs frequently the child should be subjected to a thorough physical examination, because it may be one evidence of a serious ailment. ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague

... fear of her I went with my brother outside the city and stayed there till evening closed in upon us; and indeed I am in fear of her; and now by Allah, O my father, say nothing to her of this or it may add to her ailment!" When I heard what-my child said I knew that the slave was he who had foully slandered my wife, the daughter of my uncle, and was certified that I had slain her wrong. fully. So I wept with exceeding weeping and presently this old man, my paternal uncle and her father, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... any man. Yet the road is never too rough, the way too far, for one neighbor to go to the aid of another in time of sickness or death. I knew a little boy who was dangerously sick with a strange ailment that primitive home remedies could not heal. Neighbor boys made a slide, a quilt tied to two strong saplings, and carried their little friend some ten miles over a rough mountain footpath to the nearest wagon road. There, placing ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... warfare against the throat ailment. Ruth and Alice were untiring in attendance on their father. They saw to it that he used the medicine faithfully, and they even got pads and pencils that he might write messages ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope

... appeared to rise even fiercer and hotter than ever this morning. I have been very anxious for the last few days about Baby, who has been cutting some teeth and has suffered from a rash. Muriel has been bitten all over by mosquitoes, and Mabelle has also suffered from heat-rash. Just now every little ailment suggests small-pox ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... quinquennial period, or before they pass their twenty-fifth year, 539 in the second, 673 in the third, and 854 in the fourth,—making 2,784, or more than one-quarter of the whole, discharged for disability or chronic ailment, before they complete their twenty years of military service and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various

... the disease to which the term is most commonly applied, and is by far the more serious and important ailment. It is one of the diseases due to altered metabolism (see METABOLIC DISEASES). It is markedly hereditary, much more prevalent in towns and especially modern city life than in more primitive rustic communities, and most common ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... was quite unconscious of bodily ailment, either present or likely to come. What could Aunt Frances mean? But Mr Roberts saw, what Pandora did not, a very significant look in his sister's eyes, which said, more plainly than her words, that danger of some kind lay in wait for her niece if she ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt

... "For each ailment that is visited upon man, earth offers a cure," he answered. "Life would be a mock could ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... the disease is absolutely cured thereof, physicians impress upon these patients two injunctions: first that they shall take the known remedies for the disease one or two months in every year, and second that they shall confide to every physician whom they may consult for any chronic or obscure ailment, the fact that they have been infected with syphilis. This latter injunction is especially important; for nearly all disorders produced by syphilis can be promptly checked by certain remedies; yet many of these disorders affecting internal organs of the body, may not be identified ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various

... told you, I did not cry; I couldn't. I was too anxious about mother, and wrote at once to Dr. Haynes, but received no answer. I waited a while and wrote again, with the same result. Then I remembered Dr. Alling, who had attended me for some slight ailment, and wrote to him, with the result you know. Some one has taken my mother away. Who was it, and where is she? I feel as if I were going mad when I ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes

... her writhe at first; but when she had remonstrated, he assumed an injured air, after which she silently endured the infliction for fear of wounding him. And it was the same with regard to his patients. The first time he described the ailment of a lady patient, and made gross comments ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... accompanied by L'Isle, Cranfield, and half a dozen gentlemen more, including the young surgeon of the —— regiment, who was always imagining that Lady Mabel had a cold, headache, or some other little ailment, that he might have the pleasure of prescribing for it. Irreverently turning their backs on the old church, without one prayer to the saints within, or those depicted on its windows of stained glass, they walked out of town down into the narrow valley lying ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... The walking was resumed in the afternoon. A physician, consulted ten years before, had spoken of hypertrophy because she had suffered from suffocation. Ever since, this word had been used to describe the ailment of the baroness. The baron would say "my wife's hypertrophy" and Jeanne "mamma's hypertrophy" as they would have spoken of her hat, her dress, or her umbrella. She had been very pretty in her youth and slim as a reed. Now she ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... look'd at her, and press'd her hand, And said, "Art thou so pale, who wast so bland And merry in our meadows? How is this? Tell me thine ailment: tell me all amiss!— Ah! thou hast been unhappy at the change 520 Wrought suddenly in me. What indeed more strange? Or more complete to overwhelm surmise? Ambition is no sluggard: 'tis no prize, That toiling years would put within my grasp, That I have sigh'd for: with so ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats

... whilst from Fornovo Charles's retreat was more in the nature of a flight. Thus he won back to France, no whit the better for his expedition, and the only mark of his passage which he left behind him was an obscene ailment, which, with the coming of the French into Italy, first manifested itself in Europe, and which the Italians paid them the questionable compliment of calling "the French disease"—morbo gallico, or ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... elder aunt, Mrs. Goldbrook, did not share her sister's character as a human rest-cure; most people found her rather disturbing, chiefly, perhaps, from her habit of asking unimportant questions with enormous solemnity. Her manner of enquiring after a trifling ailment gave one the impression that she was more concerned with the fortunes of the malady than with oneself, and when one got rid of a cold one felt that she almost expected to be given its postal address. Probably her manner was merely the defensive outwork of an innate shyness, but she was not a woman ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki

... cheek, the dark rim under her eyes, and the other indefinable signs, indicated some radical ailment. In the quick glance that I had of that pair, while the woman was smiling, a feeling of pity came over me. I have never detected the exact cause of that emotion. Perhaps in the woman's face I read the trace of past bodily and mental ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens

... is really sick," explained the boy; "and there's no humbug about his ailment, either. I heard the doctor tell my mother that it was partly due to a lack of substantial food for years. You see, the woman herself was ill for a long time, and her husband worked himself to skin and bone trying to provide for her. Then ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson

... the slightest touch of snow-blindness on the southern journey, although the spectacles were perfectly open and allowed the light to enter freely everywhere. It will perhaps be suggested that I am less susceptible to this ailment than others, but I know from personal experience that such is not the case. I have previously had ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... had ever been ill, and if one or the other ever felt the slightest indisposition they would both drink some concoction made of lime-flower, rub warm oil on their stomachs, or drop hot candle grease on the soles of their feet and the little ailment would soon pass over. They spent their days exactly alike. They got up late, drank chocolate in tiny cups shaped like small mortars (tea, they declared, came into fashion after their time), and sat opposite one another chatting ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... Again casting a speculative eye over the field, she discerned a new shop in the alley, the sign of which announced that the owner dealt in "Bungs and Fawcetts." On the evening of the same day the chronic ailment from which the kitchen sink had suffered for two years was declared to be acute, and Mr. Snawdor was called ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... native asked me for medicine for his brother. I tried to find out the nature of the ailment, and decided to give him calomel, urging his brother to take it to him at once. The man had eaten a quarter of a pig all by himself, but, of course, it was said that he had been poisoned. His brother, instead of hurrying ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... the spirits of the dead are thus invited to help their living relations and friends, they are also feared as the causes of sickness and disease. Any serious ailment is usually attributed to magic or witchcraft, and the treatment which is resorted to aims rather at breaking the spell which has been cast on the sick man than at curing his malady by the application of physical remedies. In ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... to come and be nursed. The women had from six to a dozen peasants a day, tinkling the bell for treatment. Some came out of curiosity. To these was fed castor-oil. One dose cured them. They came with every sort of ailment. A store-keeper, who kept on selling rock candy, had a heel that was "bad" from shrapnel. One mite of a boy had his right hand burned, and the wound continued to suppurate. He dabbled in ditch-water, and always returned to Hilda ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason

... will give you a piece of advice, which should convince you of my generosity. For the last ten years I have been troubled with a little ailment which has resisted all attempts at treatment. You exerted yourself to such an extent to prove how well you loved me that you must have caught the complaint. I advise you, then, to put yourself under treatment at once to weaken the force of the virus; but above all ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... be recently cured of the scurf, and to have just arrived from Sainte-Reine, where they had been miraculously delivered of their ailment. ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... yellow, almost dusky, with dark rings round his eyes, with scowling brow and unshaven chin—he did not look much like a bridegroom! I tried to go away.... But they would not let me go, and even made tea. I spent anything but a cheerful evening. Musa, it is true, had no ailment, and was less shy than usual too, but she was obviously vexed, angry.... At last she could not restrain herself, and, as she handed me a cup of tea, she whispered hurriedly: 'You can say what you like, you may try your utmost, ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... an evil hour, had recourse to the advice of our adventurer, for some ailment under which she had long laboured, and found such relief from his skill as very much prepossessed her in his favour. She was no less pleased with his obliging manners than with his physic, and found much entertainment in his conversation, so that the acquaintance proceeded to a degree of intimacy, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... bed was Lorenzo the Magnificent, who at the beginning of the year had been attacked by a severe and deep-seated fever, to which was added the gout, a hereditary ailment in his family. He had found at last that the draughts containing dissolved pearls which the quack doctor, Leoni di Spoleto, prescribed for him (as if he desired to adapt his remedies rather to ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... her, and we soon made friends. She told me she was an orphan, and brought up by a very old man distantly related to her, who had been in some small trade and now lived in a crowded lane in the heart of the town. He was very kind to her, and being confined himself to the house by age or ailment he sent her out to play in the fields on summer Sundays. She had no companions of her own age. She said she did not like the other little girls in the lane; and the only little girl she liked at school had a grander station in life, and was not allowed to play with her, and so she came out ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Jack; "it's the person who is continually calling upon a doctor for every little ailment who lives to an old age, for instead of letting disease creep upon him, he calls for medical assistance as soon as he experiences any derangement of his physical system. If all the people would follow this plan, it would increase ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin

... the boys had used all of that big box of carbolic salve which used to be kept in a corner of the mess-box; and was carbolic salve good for sun-blisters? He told himself gloomily that if there was any of it left, and if it were good for his ailment, there wouldn't be half enough of it, anyway. He estimated unhappily that he would need ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... every other boy brings honey to his nurse, you bring none to me." Patrick afterwards carried off a bucket to the water, and filled it, and blessed the water, so that it changed into honey; and it healed every disease and ailment to ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various

... limped. Her engine misfired continuously, and Barlow lacked the mechanical knowledge to remedy its ailment. He was satisfied to let it pound away, so long as it would revolve at all. So the boat moved slowly through that encompassing smoke at less than half speed. Outwardly the once spick and span cruiser bore every mark of hard usage. Her topsides were foul, her decks splintered ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... situation, and full of grief and self-reproach for the poor young Master of Angus, never dozing off for a moment without fancying she saw him dying and upbraiding her, and for the most part tossing in a restless misery that required the attendance of one or both. She had never known ailment before, and was thus all the more wretched and impatient, alarming and distressing Eleanor extremely, though Madame de Ste. Petronelle declared it was only a matter of course, and that the lassie would ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... power for the future, thus bringing back the law to the state in which it had been previous to the year 1796. Other features of the bill, he explained, consisted in simplifying the law of settlement and removal; in rendering the mother of an illegitimate child liable for its support, and, for its ailment, to save from imprisonment the putative father to whom she might swear it. The great principles of the proposed plan, therefore, went to stop the allowance system; to deprive the magistracy of the power of ordering out-door relief; to alter, in certain cases, the constitution ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... its rocket motors, the great vessel lifted itself laboriously from the ground, squatting on flame, filling Fletcher Monk's mind with the first real sense of fear since he learned the grim facts of his ailment in Rostov's office. ...
— Heart • Henry Slesar

... five children in Cornwall, but, unfortunately, four of the children died—suddenly. With the remaining child the pair moved to Mary's native county. They had hardly settled down in their new home when the fifth child also died. It died, curiously enough, of the ailment which had supposedly carried off the ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... highly recommended for strengthening the stomach though they should not be used immediately after a meal. I referred to their value in the chapter on constipation in connection with the treatment of this ailment. After a long trial this system of increasing the internal strength is highly recommended, and will be found of special value as a means of varying the health-building methods that may be adopted for securing throbbing vitality. They are not a necessary part of the plan of body building especially ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden

... combined under one roof. Near by was the blacksmith shop, and across from it was the inevitable saloon. Far up in the hills was the Judson Centre Sanitarium, a worthy institution of some years standing, where every human ailment from tuberculosis to fits was more or less ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed

... beforehand the health of the patient. This manner of knowing future events exists in the angels, and by so much the more than it does in us, as they understand the causes of things both more universally and more perfectly; thus doctors who penetrate more deeply into the causes of an ailment can pronounce a surer verdict on the future issue thereof. But events which proceed from their causes in the minority of cases are quite unknown; such as ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... them, I produced a bottle of methylated spirits (which I used for my hypsometrical apparatus). This they readily drank, apparently appreciating its throat-burning qualities, and asked for more. The Tarjum complained of an ailment from which he had suffered for some time, and the doctor was able to give him a suitable remedy, and all the other officers received ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... thought that the affair was none of our business; and indeed we cared little as individuals. We were only concerned as members of a corporation, for each of whom the mental or physical ailment of one of his fellows might have far-reaching effects. It was thought best that Harold, as least open to suspicion of motive, should be despatched to probe and peer. His instructions were, to proceed by a report on the health of our rabbits in particular; to glide gently into a discussion on rabbits ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... spring-time, in May, just after the news had reached Skvoreshniki of the death of Lieutenant-General Gavrogin, a frivolous old gentleman who died of a stomach ailment on the way to the Crimea, where he was hastening to 'join the army on active service. Varvara Petrovna was left a widow and put on deep mourning. She could not, it is true, deplore his death very deeply, since, for the last ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... all the misbelieving Jinn; and Allah hasten their souls to the fire and dwelling-place dire; and none shall be saved but those who worship Allah the One the Victorious! But do thou send Sahim back to the city of Oman, so haply he may be healed of his ailment." For Sahim was sick. So Mura'ash cried to the Marids, saying, "Take ye up Sahim and these treasures and bear them to Oman city." And after replying, "We hear and we obey," they took them and made for the land of men. Then ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... are with your generation. Just as every age has its prevailing disease of the body so has it its characteristic spiritual ailment. To-day we are in the throes of travail. In our arms is the child of our ever-delving intellect, but another deliverance is about to be and the suffering is great. After science comes the philosophy of ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London

... we might take the field to cure a fashionable ailment. I know a quack doctor who has built himself a house with nothing but mercury, as the motto ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... was grasping it nervously, but he said nothing, as Felix helped him up and Lance held his crutch for him. It was his first entrance into a place of worship. They had intended to have accustomed him a little to the sights and sounds, but the weather and his ailment had prevented them. He was drawn to the porch, and there Felix partly lifted him out and up the step, while Lance took his hat for him, and as they were both wanted for the choir procession that was to usher the Bishop into church, they had to ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... died on March 9th. He had taken cold on March 3rd, and on the 7th a chronic ailment of the kidneys from which he suffered became worse, he could not sleep, his strength began to ebb, and it was clear the end was near. On the 6th, however, he was able to speak for a few minutes with Prince William, with Bismarck, and with his only daughter, the Grand ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... office with the name of Dr. Merriam on the door. See! I have written it on this card, so that there may be no mistake about it. That office is open to patients from ten in the morning until twelve at noon. During these hours any one can enter there; but to awaken no distrust, he should have some ailment. Have you not some slight disorder concerning which you might consult ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)

... phlegmatic humours, vinegar will remove them. Is your brain laden with vapours, throw vinegar on a hot shovel, and inhale its fumes, and you will obtain instantaneous relief. Have you the headache, wet a napkin in vinegar, and apply it to your temples, and the pain will cease. In short, there is no ailment that vinegar will not cure. It is the grand panacea; and may be termed the elixir of ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... recalcitrance and her mother's ailment contributed to disturb Mr. Egremont, and bring him home. His agent, by name Bulfinch, a solicitor at Redcastle, came to him with irrefragable proofs of gross peculation on the part of the bailiff who managed the home farm which supplied the house and stables, and showed him that ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... quick pulse, and no appetite. It is not known that the digestive organs have been overtaxed. The case may prove—anything. A local inflammation not yet made manifest by local pain; the commencement of continued, or remittent, or exanthematous fever; in a word, there is scarcely any ailment of children of which this may not be the commencement. If, on careful examination, no local disease can be made out, we have no correct indication for special treatment. Give nature fair play. Put the child into a warm bed in a warm room, keep it quiet, stop the supplies of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various

... had pulled almost all of her hair out by the roots, from a fashion she had of twisting and winding it tightly around a tin spoon, or a match stem, to "pull her palate up." The colored people suffer from a mysterious ailment known as "having your palate down," for which the one specific is to take a wisp of your hair and wrap it as tightly around a tin spoon, or a match stem, as you can twist it; that pulls your palate up. It is, of course, absolutely necessary for you to have your palate up, ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... marriages to wealthy men for the benefit of their impoverished families. And though science had made great strides, conquering the realms of the telescope and invading those below the level of the microscope, finding cures for almost every disease the flesh of man was heir to, there was one ailment it had ...
— The Indulgence of Negu Mah • Robert Andrew Arthur

... said Frank, 'that he did not admit that it was his daughter who had taken the handkerchief, and excuse her on the ground of her ailment.' ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford

... vindication of his country's rights cost Otis, in the responsibility he felt and the solicitation he manifested, especially in the middle and later stages of his strenuous career, for the cause he had so keenly at heart. Pathetic is the story of the ailment that clouded his closing years; and only exculpatory can be the judgment now passed upon the man and his work when we consider what the strain was that he had long and anxiously borne and that revealed its effects in periods of sad mental alienation ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... a dangerous neighbour, as well as a serious financial burden. Yet many contended that all such attempts were useless. It was like trying different kinds of soap to whiten the skin of a negro. The patient was incurable. Her ailment was nothing but natural perversity, aggravated by religious delusions; and the root of her disorder could never be known till she was subjected to a post mortem examination, for which it was hoped emigration, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... have observed, Anasuya, that Sakoontala has been indisposed ever since her first interview with King Dushyanta. Depend upon it, her ailment is to be ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... La crin (the horsehair) La desazon (the ailment) La imagen (the image) La razon (the reason) La sinrazon (the injustice) La sarten (the frying-pan) La ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano

... A nymph who loved Epimenides gave him a draught in a bull's horn, one single drop of which would not only cure any ailment, but would serve for ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... Master Doctor he pays me ten dollars every month, gives me board and my sleeping place just like always, and when I gets sick there he is with the herb medicine for my ailment ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various

... wrought the change, for it took old and young into its arms, and for a little while they played like children in their mother's lap. No falsehood could withstand its rough sincerity; for the waves washed paint and powder from worn faces, and left a fresh bloom there. No ailment could entirely resist its vigorous cure; for every wind brought healing on its wings, endowing many a meagre life with another year of health. No gloomy spirit could refuse to listen to its lullaby, and the spray baptized it with the subtile benediction of a cheerier mood. ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott

... Ger had had but few aches and pains save such as followed naturally upon falls or fights, but he knew that if this interview was to be prolonged he must have something, so he hazarded an ailment. ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker

... began suffering from a dental ailment and was compelled to visit a dental surgeon. The dental surgeon suggested that she visit a medium and seek some comforting message ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... been almost glad to have some ailment. She had called it aneurism, and believed it made her look refined and interesting. If it would only have made her pale! But it had not done that: she had remained ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee

... sickness itself ever recovered; but there were many others who, falling ill of overwork or some other feverish ailment, were accounted to have caught the distemper, and many of these did amend, though all sickness at such a time seemed to get a firmer hold upon its victims. But Father Paul and both his young assistants had escaped unscathed, though they had ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... and looked about me, and very much to my surprise discovered that the diligence was not moving, but standing very peaceably in a very crowded congregation of other similar and dissimilar conveyances, all of which seemed, I thought, to labour under some physical ailment, some wanting a box, others a body, &c., &c. and in fact suggesting the idea of an infirmary for old and disabled carriages of either sex, mails and others. 'Oh, I have it,' cried I, 'we are arrived at Mt. Geran, and they are all at dinner, and from ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... quart Alcohol, two ounces Tincture Arnica, one ounce Oil Hemlock, one ounce Oil of Spike. Mix well and let stand twenty-four hours. This will cure any burn, scald, bruise, sprain or any like ailment; also aches and pains of all kinds. Apply by wetting a flannel cloth and wrapping it around the ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus

... things.' They were good if put to the proper uses. I do not think that there was ever much real 'effeminacy' to be knocked out of him. It is too harsh a word for the slowness with which a massive and not very flexible character rouses itself to action. His health was good, except for a trifling ailment which made him for some time pass for a delicate child. But the delicacy soon passed off and for the next fifty years he enjoyed ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... fatigue, may show itself either in the form of physical collapse, so that the patient lacks resistance, and, becoming anemic and run down, falls a prey to any and every little ailment, or in the form of mental collapse. An exhausted brain then gives way to depression, to ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... He had a racial terror of physical ailment. He saw that something was wrong, but his knowledge went no further. He had never seen a woman faint, so limited had been ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... the small trim figure on the large chestnut with expanded eyes, but she answered evenly enough: "He has some ailment and is remaining ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton

... impressionable people, a nervous disorder which music will relieve; nothing tells us that a profuse perspiration, resulting from a very energetic dance, is not likely to diminish the discomfort by diminishing the cause of the ailment. So far from laughing, I reflect and enquire, when the Calabrian peasant talks to me of his Tarantula, the Pujaud reaper of his Theridion lugubre, the Corsican husbandman of his Malmignatte. Those Spiders might easily deserve, at ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... scientific and literary societies, and was ready for anything from the Royal, if his turn ever arrived, to opening a Mechanics' Institute in his neighbouring town. Lady Hampshire was an invalid; but her ailment was one of those mysteries which still remained insoluble, although, in the most liberal manner, she delighted to afford her friends all the information in her power. Never was a votary endowed with a faith at once so lively and so capricious. Each year she believed ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... William Cowper, son of a clergyman, was born at Berkhampstead, Hertfordshire, Eng., Nov. 15, 1731, and died at Dereham, Norfolk, April 25, 1800. Through much of his adult life he was afflicted with a mental ailment inducing melancholia and at times partial insanity, during which he once attempted suicide. He sought literary occupation as an antidote to his disorder of mind, and besides a great number of lighter pieces which diverted him and his friends, composed "The Task," ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... we were dead tired and needed to go to bed early and to stay long. She's sleeping yet, the dear kid, and I hope she'll sleep till lunch time. There isn't anything the matter with us but the war; but that's enough, Heaven knows. It's the worst ailment that has ever struck me. Then, if you add to that this dark, wet, foggy, sooty, cold, penetrating climate—you ought to thank your stars that you are not in it. I'm glad your mother's out of it, as much as we miss her; and miss her? Good ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... to show how thoroughly and readily a disease or ailment of a tree or shrub is called blight where in reality not the slightest sign of it can ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various

... amid the harmonious surroundings of her brother's home, was not so readily displaced. Nevertheless, he reached in several weeks a point from which he could consider her as one thinks of a dear one removed by the hand of death, or smitten by some incurable ailment of mind or body. Erelong, he fondly believed, the recovery would be so far complete that he could consign to the tomb of pleasant memories even the most thrilling episodes of his ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... technically termed—has to be clean in dress and person and not under five feet in height. Two householders who have known him personally for three years must give him a good character. A doctor is required to certify that he does not suffer from any ailment, that he is sufficiently active, that he does not smoke or drink excessively, and that he is fitted for his duties by temperament. After this he will be permitted to undergo examinations in fitness and knowledge of driving. It is a ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot

... that the doctor had told him he had heart trouble, but as he did not know what kind, he wanted him to go to the hospital for a week when he thought he would be able to locate the ailment. After hearing what he had to say, I said to him, "I'll tell you what your trouble is and how you feel when you are sitting on the gang plow, plowing: You feel you are going to fall off in front of the plow and get killed and that makes you nervous and ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag

... very kind, Mrs. Murdoch," replied George, "but I have no bodily ailment. If I could get a change of thought, that is the best physic for ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder

... near that envied circle, anxious to pick up some stray pearl of speech from those lovely lips. The women forgot to be envious, because she never for one moment forgot or ignored them. Even gouty Mrs Masterman found that her ailment had been remembered, and was sympathetically enquired about in a way to which she was entirely unaccustomed. The poet talked as if he drew in inspiration with every glance from those starry eyes, the musician at ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)

... hilltop again, dripping with the heat of noonday, I was permitted to sit on an adobe brick in the sacred shade. The colonel was sleeping. He recovered from that tropical ailment in time, and a rumor came floating out that he was soon to honor us with his distinguished presence. The soldiers made frantic signs to me to rise to my feet. Like Kingslake before the Turkish pasha, I felt that the honor of my race and my own haughty dignity were better served ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... their sick and dying friends to death. The chance of a gentleman or lady with a given mortal ailment to live a certain time is as good again as that of the common sort of coarse people. As you go down the social scale, you reach a point at length where the common talk in sick rooms is of churchyards and sepulchres, and a kind of perpetual vivisection ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... Dr. Dobie. Mrs. Temple had even gone so far as to write privately to this physician, telling him as much of the ease as was prudent, and asking his advice. Not being aware of the darker sides of my brother's ailment, Dr. Dobie replied in a less serious strain than seemed to us convenient, but recommended in any case a complete ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner

... with them, as well as Sir Walter's body-servant, Cotterell, and a Frenchman named Manourie, who had made his first appearance in the Plymouth household on the previous day. Stukeley explained the fellow as a gifted man of medicine, whom he had sent for to cure him of a trivial but inconvenient ailment by which ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... aristocratic, kind, good-hearted, unbusinesslike man, and was brother to a baronet. He professed a knowledge of medicine and brought a bottle, a bolus or a plaster, whichever he deemed best, whenever any of us complained of cold or cough, of headache or backache or any ailment whatever. When he left we all received from him a parting gift. Mine was a handsome, expensive, red-felt chest protector. I wore it constantly for a year or two and, for aught I know, it may be that by its protecting influence against the rigour of Glasgow winters, the ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow

... simple to more complicated forms of difficulty is so rapid, that it cannot be traced or anticipated. Perhaps some slight ailment may imperceptibly introduce the higher impediment or some evil example may draw the ill-mastered utterance at once into the vortex of ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue

... cries and struggles, which only aggravates the trouble. The worst part of the attack is, commonly, soon over, so that as a rule the doctor arrives after it is past. While it does last, however, the household is more alarmed than, perhaps, by any other common ailment. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various

... on for some time, until I was accustomed, if not exactly inured, to it, and was really rather looking forward to the time when, on returning to London, I could trump up a sufficient ailment to call upon my double in Wigley Street and scrutinize him with my own eyes. But last night my friend had something of a set-back, which may possibly, by deflecting his conversation to other topics, give me relief. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various

... approve of the modern sympathy with invalids. I consider it morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others. Health is the primary duty of life. I am always telling that to your poor uncle, but he never seems to take much notice . . . as far as any improvement in his ailment goes. I should be much obliged if you would ask Mr. Bunbury, from me, to be kind enough not to have a relapse on Saturday, for I rely on you to arrange my music for me. It is my last reception, and one wants something that will encourage conversation, particularly at the end of the season ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde

... suddenly grew into a stately tree. The infant never cried, and was noted for the preternatural sweetness of its temper. When at Naples he is said to have studied medicine, and cured Augustus's horses of a severe ailment. Augustus ordered him a daily allowance of bread, which was doubled on a second instance of his chirurgical knowledge, and trebled on his detecting the true ancestry of a rare Spanish hound! Credited ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... very common character "the village impostor." After having been turned away by half a dozen different farmers, because he never did a stroke of work, he manages to get on the sick-list at the "great house." Long after his ailment has been cured he will be seen daily going up to the manor house for his allowance of meat; somehow or other he "can't get a job nohow." The fact is, he has got the name of being an idle scoundrel, and no farmer will take him on. It is some time before you are able to find him out; for as he ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... dyspepsia or any other ailment, it will also be found to be a great boon, as it can be cut and eaten in the solidified state with great satisfaction. On sea voyages and excursions of any kind it will be ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne

... been dying; dying by inches. In one of her confinements she had been stricken with an ailment from which she suffered severely. She refused to let any one, even the King, know what was the matter with her. She had the strongest objection to being regarded as an invalid; and she feared, too, that ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... them that was hatched out, some took to takin' the gaps, and some the pip, and one ailment or other, till they most all ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... Caleb's ailment based itself chiefly on broken habit and the lack of something to do, and in a manner the trouble at Gordonia was a tonic. What a man beloved of his kind, and loving it, could do toward damping the fierce fires of passion and hatred and ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... surround the walls of the chest either in part or entirely; and modern medicine teaches that a medicinal tincture of the Buttercup, if taken in small doses, and applied, will promptly and effectively cure the same troublesome ailment; whilst it will further serve to banish a neuralgic or rheumatic stitch occurring in the ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... like the exhibit are inclined to treat her as if she were a new historical type. The reassuring fact is, that ferment of mind is no newer thing in woman than in man. It is a human ailment. Its attacks, however, have always been unwelcome. Society distrusts uneasiness in sacred quarters; that is, in her established and privileged works. They are the best mankind has to show for itself. ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell

... home, Sir Austin sickened. He burned with fever, anguish consumed him. Physicians were called to the bedside of the rich man. They could not diagnose his ailment or help him. He screamed for water. When it was brought, his throat locked and he could not swallow. He raved of Desire Michell, beseeching her mercy. In his times of sanity, he begged and commanded his wife ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram

... old ladies and one young man. My right-hand neighbor is Mrs. Lilly. She is one of those people who seem to take a gruesome pleasure in detailing all their many aches and pains and sicknesses. You cannot mention any ailment but she says, shaking her head, 'Ah, I know too well what that is'—and then you get all the details. Jonas declares he once spoke of locomotor ataxia in hearing and she said she knew too well what that was. She suffered from it for ten years and was ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... leading doctor to me when I quoted this; "we get about three half-pence for a consultation, and we find them the most impossible people in the community to satisfy. As they get medical advice for nothing they run from one doctor to another, and consult a dozen about some simple ailment that a student could set right. We all suffer from them." So that is the ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... Sir Dominic Corrigan (1802-1880), the first Catholic to occupy the position of President of the College of Physicians in Dublin, an authority on heart disease, and the first adequate describer of aortic patency, a form of ailment long called "Corrigan's Disease". "Colles's Fracture" is a familiar term in the mouths of surgeons. It derives its name from Abraham Colles (1773-1843), the first surgeon in the world to tie the innominate artery, as ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... feel like a sympathetic diary with no destination, she had rather enlarged on him. He had been admiring her at disconnected intervals ever since she first met him. He had not been able to get in the army because of some mysterious neurasthenic ailment about which he preserved a hurt silence, as to details, but mentioned a good deal in a general way. It kept him from making engagements, it made him unable to go long distances; Marjorie had described all the scattered hints about it in her ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer



Words linked to "Ailment" :   pip, ail, kinetosis, motion sickness, upset, disorder



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