"Putrefaction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... malady called the mal de la terre; otherwise scurvy, as I have since heard from learned men. There were produced, in the mouths of those who had it, great pieces of superfluous and drivelling flesh (causing extensive putrefaction), which got the upper hand to such an extent that scarcely anything but liquid could be taken. Their teeth became very loose, and could be pulled out with the fingers without its causing them pain. The superfluous flesh was often cut out, which caused them to eject much blood ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... when they appear, face to face with such abundant nourishment. When they emerge from the envelope the young larvae find themselves in the presence of this stored food, which has been softened by putrefaction and rendered more easy of digestion. If the treasure has not fallen on a spot easy to dig, the Necrophorus quickly recognise the fact, and do not waste time in useless labour. Endowed with considerable strength relatively to their size, three or four of them creep beneath the prey, and ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... pumped. The dead 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 features are ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... that saltpetre hardens meat, is entirely erroneous:—it tends greatly to prevent putrefaction, but will not make it hard; neither will laying in brine five or six weeks in cold weather, have that effect, but remaining in salt too long, will certainly draw off the juices, and harden it. Bacon should be boiled in a large quantity of water, and ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph
... (this is a mistake, for they will eat greens when boiled); its stomach digests bones; it uses the tops of grass as a vomit; is fond of rolling in carrion; voids its excrements on a stone; its dung (the album graecum) is one of the greatest encouragers of putrefaction; it laps up its drink with its tongue; makes water side-ways, by lifting up one of its hind-legs; is most diuretic in the company of a strange dog, and very apt to repeat it where another dog has done the same: Odorat anum alterius, ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... has very 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 it is the writer who ought to answer their questions; ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... for numerous mistakes that have 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 all the growth to be husbanded ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... Adad-adaula established an enormous institution with a staff of twenty-four medical officers. The great physician Rhazes is said to have selected the site for one of these hospitals by hanging pieces of meat in various places about the city, selecting the site near the place at which putrefaction was slowest in making its appearance. By the middle of the twelfth century there were something like sixty medical institutions in Bagdad alone, and these institutions were free to all patients ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... creatures: nearly every bladder you examine under a microscope contains either minute crustaceans or larvae, worms, or lower organisms, some perhaps still alive, but most of them more or less advanced toward putrefaction - a stage hastened, it is thought, by a secretion within the bladders; for the plant cannot digest fresh food; it can only absorb, through certain processes within the bladder's walls, the fluid products of decay. The little insectivorous sundew (q.v.), on the contrary, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... had made him, had in the same degree created Essie; 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
... after I had arrived within the thick nabbuk and high grass, I came to the conclusion that 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 on extreme caution; therefore ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... might do so," I observed; "but in this hot climate I doubt whether we could get the salt in with sufficient rapidity to stop putrefaction. However, of course, it would assist in ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... free from putrefactive bacteria, and do not readily undergo decay either in the body or outside of it. Meats, on the other hand as found in the markets, are practically always in an advanced stage of putrefaction. Ordinary fresh, dried or salted meats contain from three million to ten times that number of bacteria per ounce, and such meats as Hamburger steak often contain more than a billion putrefactive organisms to the ounce. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... alkaline, and so stops the action of the gastric juice, and 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
... that I commanded the above-said Morphew to give it in his orders to his whole army, that every one, who did not surrender himself to be disposed of by the upholders, should use the same method to keep himself sweet during his present state of putrefaction. ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... Latin element. 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 ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... 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 of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... 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
... and circulation of the blood, 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, ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... 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 ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... about 300 shad fish. The shads they use but the herrings are left upon the shore useless for want of salt. Such immense quantities of this fish is left upon the shore to rot, I am surprised it does not bring some epidemic disorder to the inhabitants by the nauseous stench arising from such a mass of putrefaction. ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... 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
... 6000 souls. The inhabitants are active in the cultivation of cotton, which is of a very fine quality. The capsules of the cotton-tree, when separated from the woolly substance, are carefully burnt; as those husks if thrown into the river, and exposed to putrefaction, yield noxious exhalations. The culture of the cacao-tree has of late considerably diminished. This valuable tree bears only after eight or ten years. Its fruit keeps very badly in the warehouses, and becomes mouldy at the expiration of a year, notwithstanding all the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... the most offensive state of putrefaction, and already so much decayed that we could not even distinguish the persons, except by the smaller frame of Bombelli. The body of the bullock-driver lay under the cart, where he had been accustomed to sleep; that of Bombelli about four feet from ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... is saturated with these excrements of the cells in the form of uric acid and many other kinds of acids, alkaloids of putrefaction, xanthines, ptomaines, etc. The organism of the meat eater must dispose not only of its own impurities produced in the processes of digestion and of cell metabolism, but also of the morbid substances that are already contained ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... occasion to repeat it, I learned from him that heat is not necessary; and he has moreover added an useful purpose to which this property of magnesia may be applied; I mean the sweetening of water at sea, with which lime may have been mixed to prevent its putrefaction. ...
— Experiments upon magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other Alcaline Substances • Joseph Black
... the 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 eruptions, and increased every kind ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... who was the greatest surgeon in his time. I shall forbear to tell you how the juice or sap thereof, being poured and distilled within the ears, killeth every kind of vermin that by any manner of putrefaction cometh to be bred and engendered there, and destroyeth also any whatsoever other animal that shall have entered in thereat. If, likewise, you put a little of the said juice within a pail or bucket full of water, you shall see the water instantly ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... 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 ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... cheerful fire on the hearth, it contains materials for making food for the cottager's tables and new faggots for his fire. The wick of every burning lamp draws up the carbon of the oil to be made into carbonic acid at the flame. All matters in process of combustion, decay, fermentation, or putrefaction, are returning to the atmosphere those constituents, which they obtained from it. Every living animal, even to the smallest insect, by respiration, spends its life in the production of this material necessary to the growth of plants, and at death gives up ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... only. When she fell sick shortly afterwards, he was quite unconcerned about visiting her in her illness; and when she died, after promising to attend her funeral, he deferred his coming for several days, so that the corpse was in a state of decay and putrefaction before the interment; and he then forbad divine honours being paid to her, pretending that he acted according to her own directions. He likewise annulled her will, and in a short time ruined all her friends and acquaintance; not even sparing those to whom, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... time is a point, and the substance is in a flux, and the perception dull, and the composition of the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of judgment. And, to say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and vapor, and life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... but the influence they may exert over living tissues has only lately become the subject of earnest attention. So long as they were not known to have any practical bearing upon human welfare, they interested almost nobody, but when, however, it was shown that putrefaction of meat is due to the agency of the bacterium termo, and the decomposition of albumen to the bacillus subtilis; when anthrax in cattle and sheep was found to depend on the bacillus anthracis, and that in human beings it caused malignant pustules; when ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... 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; ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... a moment the more tangible accomplishments of Empedocles, we find it alleged that one of his "miracles" consisted of the preservation of a dead body without putrefaction for some weeks after death. We may assume from this that he had gained in some way a knowledge of embalming. As he was notoriously fond of experiment, and as the body in question (assuming for the moment the authenticity of the legend) must have been preserved ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... prey? Must that divinest form, Which 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... grotesques, nay, even insanity might have given them some inventive horror. But the pure mortiferousness of this mind, capable neither of patience, fidelity, grace, or wit, in any place, or from any motive,—this horrible apathy of brain, which cannot ascend so high as insanity, but is capable only of putrefaction, save us the task of all analysis, and leave us only that of examining how this black aqua Tophana mingles with other ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... adds, that, to complete the imitation, he was shut up with a dead cock; and condescends to wonder how the Barbarian could endure the confinement and putrefaction. This absurd tale is unknown to the Latins. * Note: The Greek writers, in general, Zonaras, p. 2, 303, and Glycas, p. 334 agree in this story with the princess Anne, except in the absurd addition of the dead cock. Ducange has already quoted some instances ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... tradition still dear to them (the name of Napoleon) and that they put no faith in the Socialistic prophets. Wise or unwise they may be accordingly; but an affection and an apprehension can't reasonably be said to amount to a 'putrefaction,' ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... the loathsomeness 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 angels come from ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... 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 ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... and Russian soldiers under the military police were engaged in picking up the corpses, there still lay everywhere around the horribly mutilated bodies of the fallen in the postures in which they had been overtaken by a more or less painful death. An almost intolerable odour of putrefaction filled the air, and mingled with the biting, stifling smoke of the funeral pyres upon which the ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... sail to a fine breeze, and steer for the coast before the wind at the rate of about three miles an hour. But it was not until they had gained half a mile from the bank that they were no longer annoyed by the dreadful smell arising from the putrefaction of so many bodies, for to bury them all would have been a work of too great time. The last two days of their remaining on the island, the effluvia had become so powerful as to be a source of the greatest horror and disgust ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... mistake - a newfangled notion altogether - to suppose that there is any natural antagonism between putrefaction and health. They know better than that, in the Common Council. You may talk about Nature, in her wisdom, always warning man through his sense of smell, when he draws near to something dangerous; but, that won't go down in the City. Nature very often don't mean anything. Mrs. Quickly says that ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... and this moose it was hoped that there might have been a breed; but their inequality of height must have always been a bar to any commerce of the amorous kind. I should have been glad to have examined the teeth, tongue, lips, hoofs, etc., minutely, but the putrefaction precluded all farther curiosity. This animal, the keeper told me, seemed to enjoy itself best in the extreme frost of the former winter. In the house they showed me the horn of a male moose, which had no front antlers, but only a ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... seeing Val, "do you smell the death-damp yet, that you're here? Is the putrefaction of my filthy old carcase on the wind yet? Here Lanty, you imp," he said turning his eyes on the ripe youth as he brought in a large jug of the "Boyne"—in other words of St. Patrick's Well water—"I say ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... efforts? Solitude sent me to nature, and nature to love. Standing in the street of Mental Observation, I saw myself pale and wan, surrounded by corpses, and, drying my hands on my bloody apron, stifled by the odor of putrefaction, I turned my head in spite of myself, and saw floating before my eyes green harvests, balmy fields, and the pensive harmony of the evening. "No," said I, "science can not console me; rather will I plunge into this sea of irresponsive nature and die there myself by drowning. I will not war against ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... circumstances it seems probable, that the matters secreted by the new vessels formed in all kinds of phlegmons, or pustles, are not contagious, till they have acquired something from the atmosphere, or from the gas produced by putrefaction; which will account for some phenomena in the lues venerea, cancer, and of other contagious secretions on the skin without fever, to be mentioned hereafter. See Class II. 1. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... young and enthusiastic mind it seemed that in ozone we had a means of stopping all putrefaction, of destroying all infectious substances, and of actually commanding and destroying the causes which produced the great spreading diseases; and, although increase of years and greater experience have toned down the enthusiasm, I ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... 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
... London — I am pent up in frowzy lodgings, where there is not room enough to swing a cat; and I breathe the steams of endless putrefaction; and these would, undoubtedly, produce a pestilence, if they were not qualified by the gross acid of sea-coal, which is itself a pernicious nuisance to lungs of any delicacy of texture: but even this boasted corrector cannot prevent ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... 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 flesh ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... the multitude Elm trees. Stalk along the road towards them and mind and keep yourself concealed as my mother brings a blood-stained stiletto which she purposes to make you bathe in the lifeblood of your enemy. Never mind the Death-demons and skeletons dripping with the putrefaction of the grave, that occasionally may blast your straining eyeballs. Persevere even though Hell and destruction should ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... corpse unburied in the house 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 ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... let him be still discontented, and let him (if it might be) see the merits and not the faults of his rivals, and he may swarm at last to the top-gallant. There is no other way. Admiration is the only road to excellence; and the critical spirit kills, but envy and injustice are putrefaction on its feet. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... chief source of his unpopularity, while it affords good reasons against cultivating him 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 do not recommend its ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... animal that has been inoculated with a deadly dose of the diphtheritic poison; if it saves the little creature from death, it is assumed to be potent enough for use on human beings, and, handled with all possible precautions against putrefaction or any contamination with pathogenic bacteria, it is furnished to physicians, its degree of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... brought into existence by sheer necessity. but that it was further 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 the ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... Penn would have expected in the circumstances. It was the result of a tumultuary flood, which had brought together in our northern region the floating carcasses of the animals of all climates, to sink in unwonted companionship, when putrefaction had done its work, into the same deposits. He had, however, unluckily overlooked the fact, that comparative anatomy is in reality a science; and further, that it is a science of which men such as Cuvier and Owen know a great deal more than the men who never studied it, however ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... 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 ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... sinews, and covered with feathers. Let us consider; can there be more wanting to complete the Meditation on a Pudding? If more is wanting, more may be found. It contains salt, which keeps the sea from putrefaction: salt, which is made the image of intellectual excellence, contributes to the formation of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... almost proof against decay. Thus, about seventy years ago, a huge animal was found imbedded in the ice in Siberia: from a comparison of its skeleton with those of existing species, Cuvier inferred that this animal must have been antediluvian; and yet, so completely had the cold prevented putrefaction, that dogs willingly ate of the still existing flesh. At St Petersburg, when winter is approaching, the fish in the markets become almost like blocks of ice, so completely are they frozen; and in this state they will remain sound for a lengthened period. Dead poultry, and other articles ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... leprosy, where it is said, "If the whiteness have overspread the flesh, the patient may pass abroad for clean; but if there be any whole flesh remaining, he is to be shut up for unclean;" one of them noteth a principle of nature, that putrefaction is more contagious before maturity than after; and another noteth a position of moral philosophy, that men abandoned to vice do not so much corrupt manners, as those that are half good and half evil. So in this ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... and horrors of noisome dungeons. Even the prison of Newgate was rendered so infectious by the uncommon crowds of confined felons stowed together in close apartments, that the very air they breathed acquired a pestilential degree of putrefaction. It was this putrefied air, which, adhering to the clothes of the malefactors brought to trial at the bar of the Old Bailey, in May, produced among the audience a pestilential fever, which infected and proved fatal to the lord mayor ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... would sooner bring myself to put a man to immediate death for opinions I disliked, and so to get rid of the man and his opinions at once, than to fret him with a feverish being, tainted with the jail-distemper of a contagious servitude, to keep him above ground an animated mass of putrefaction, corrupted himself, and ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... among a clump of trees that skirted the road. Some flakes of snow were winging through the air—driven now by the breeze, or lingering over our heads as if afraid to be soiled by the earth, which we were bent to open where the dead then lay—or some time before lay—a mass of putrefaction; yet dear to the feelings of the bereaved, and sought now with greater avidity than when the body was arrayed in the smiles of beauty, and filled with living, breathing love. The husband spoke nothing; and George was silent, save for the deep sobs that burst from him as he looked upon the woe-worn ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... 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 ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... is perfectly true," she said, "that a young man called Graham has invented an entirely new explosive, the formula for which he brought to Henry's with him that day. It isn't only what happens when the shell explodes, but a sort of putrefaction sets in all round, and they say that everything within a mile dies. There were spies down even watching his experiments. There were spies following him up to London, there were spies in Henry's Restaurant when like a fool he gave the thing away. Fischer was the ringleader of this lot, and he meant ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... minutes since was such a house, as that that soul, which made but one step from thence to heaven, was scarce thoroughly content to leave that for heaven; that body hath lost the name of a dwelling-house, because none dwells in it, and is making haste to lose the name of a body, and dissolve to putrefaction. Who would not be affected to see a clear and sweet river in the morning, grow a kennel of muddy land-water by noon, and condemned to the saltness of the sea by night? and how lame a picture, how faint a representation ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... court only by passing through foul pools of stagnant urine and excrement. This is the first court on the Irk above Ducie Bridge—in case any one should care to look into it. Below it on the river there are several tanneries which fill the whole neighbourhood with the stench of animal putrefaction. Below Ducie Bridge the only entrance to most of the houses is by means of narrow, dirty stairs and over heaps of refuse and filth. The first court below Ducie Bridge, known as Allen's Court, was in such a state at the time of the cholera that the sanitary police ordered it evacuated, swept, and ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... of Egypt having remarked that the putrefaction of dead bodies became in their burning climate the source of pestilence and diseases, the custom was introduced in a great number of States, of burying the dead at a distance from the inhabited districts, in the desert ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... strife of daily life. There is no more contemptible and impotent thing on the face of the earth than morality divorced from love, and religious thoughts divorced from a heart full of the love of God. Quick corruption or long decay, and in either case death and putrefaction, are the end of these. You and I need that lesson, my friends. It is of no use for us to condemn Pharisees that have been dead and in their graves for nineteen hundred years. The same thing besets us all; we all of us try to get away from the centre, and dwell ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... colour, shape, activity, many ways. We find means to make commixtures and copulations of divers kinds, which have produced many new kinds, and them not barren, as the general opinion is. We make a number of kinds of serpents, worms, flies, fishes of putrefaction, whereof some are advanced (in effect) to be perfect creatures, like beasts or birds, and have sexes, and do propagate. Neither do we this by chance, but we know beforehand of what matter and commixture, what kind of those creatures ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... Nicholas, "displayed upon every occasion a more uncomplying spirit of independence than any of the other chiefs. It is customary with the New Zealanders to preserve from putrefaction, by a curious method, the heads of the enemies they have slain in battle; and Pomaree had acquired so great a proficiency in this art that he was considered the most expert at it of any of his countrymen. The process, as I was informed, consists of taking out the brains, ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... anxious to explain them. First, then, in all known chemical changes in which oxygen gas is absorbed and carbonic acid gas formed, heat is produced. I could mention a thousand instances, from the combustion of wood or spirits of wine to the fermentation of fruit or the putrefaction of animal matter. This general fact, which may be almost called a law, is in favour of the view of Dr. Black. Another circumstance in favour of it is, that those animals which possess the highest temperature consume the greatest quantity ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... is a fascinating 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 long spurred legs; or at grips ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... 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 passed through metal pipes, conveyed underground ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... 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 temptations ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... foundation for a lifelong ailment. The excess of food remains in the stomach or bowels undigested. If you remember that this mass of undigested matter is confined in a small space which is both warm and damp, it will be easily understood that putrefaction is the inevitable outcome. As a result of this putrefaction there are produced certain ptomaines and leucomaines. These poisons are carried through the body, causing "auto-intoxication" which upsets and irritates the child's nervous system ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... may be the examples of existence without thought, it is certainly a state not much to be desired. He that lives in torpid insensibility, wants nothing of a carcass but putrefaction. It is the part of every inhabitant of the earth to partake the pains and pleasures of his fellow-beings; and, as in a road through a country desert and uniform, the traveller languishes for want of amusement, so the passage of life will be tedious and irksome to him who does not beguile ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... is not able to do more than 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, therefore, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... fruits of his victory. Shortly after occurred his 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 ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... languished in want of every necessary comfort and accommodation. They were destitute of 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 their miseries. What served ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... by the name of jail or hospital-fever*. But whether the scurvy alone, or this fever combined with it, were the cause, it is not at present material to inquire, since both, arising from foul air and other sources of putrefaction, may now in a great measure be obviated by the various means fallen upon since Lord Anson's expedition. For in justice to that prudent as well as brave commander, it must be observed that the arrangements ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... of intestinal putrefaction with local inflammation of the cecum and, as the history of the ease has pointed out, was located in that part of the cecum giving attachment to the appendix, for the autopsy showed that the appendix was ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... another 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 or combustion. ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele
... off their attention, not only from the government, but from their governors; that the stream of public vigilance, far from clearing and enriching the prospect of society, would by its stagnation consign it to barrenness, and by its putrefaction infect it with death. You have aimed an arrow at liberty and philosophy, the eyes of the human race; why, like the inveterate enemy of Philip, in putting your name to the shaft, did you not ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... truths, the 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 its inevitable doom. ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... naturally larded with lumps of fat, it is soon subject to corrupt, so that (though abounding within fourty miles) London Poulterers have no mind to meddle with them, which no care in carriage can keep from Putrefaction. That Palate-man shall pass in silence, who, being seriously demanded his judgment concerning the abilities of a great Lord, concluded him a man of very weak parts, 'because once he saw him, at a great Feast, feed on CHICKENS when there were WHEATEARS on the Table.' I ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... disgusting sights and odours that had met her on the occasion of her 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
... fired at, and, adds Mr. J., never ... "heard of after;" from which it may be presumed she was wounded. It is fortunate for the inhabitants of that country, that tigers seldom survive any wound; their blood being always in a state predisposing to putrefaction, consequence of the extreme heat, and their living entirely ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... together of Particles. Hardening by 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 and ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... linen bag, suspend it in the beer or ale, while it is fermenting, from two to six or eight hours, and then take it out. Wormwood ought not to be infused so long; three or four hours will be sufficient, or it will become nauseous, and soon turn to putrefaction. The same is to be understood in infusing any sort of well-prepared herbs, and great care is required in all preparations of this kind that the pure properties are neither evaporated, nor overpowered by the bad ones. Beer, ale, or any other liquor in which herbs ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... morbid secretion in the intestines of 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
... 'The thing has not life enough in it to keep it sweet;' Johnson, 'The creature possesses not vitality sufficient to preserve it from putrefaction.'"—MATT. HARRISON, on the English Language, p. 102. ANALYSIS.—What is the general sense of this passage? and what, the chain of connexion between the words Swift and putrefaction? The period is designed to show, that Swift preferred words of Saxon origin; and Johnson, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... 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 ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... 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 of ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... significance than can be attributed to uric acid alone. For the impaired function would affect other processes which are normally accomplished by that organ, and the possibilities for entrance into the general circulation of toxic substances, of intestinal putrefaction, for instance, would be increased. The liver performs a large number of oxidations and syntheses designed to keep toxic substances from reaching the body tissues, and if alcohol, in the moderate quantity which caused the increase in uric acid excretion, impairs ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... instance in which from strangulation the head of a fetus was in a state of putrefaction, the funis being twice tightly bound around the neck. Cleveland, Cuthbert, and Germain report analogous instances. Matthyssens observed the twisting of the funis about the arm and neck of a fetus ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... abundantly illustrated in human history. After man fell into sin, and died, he was given fullest opportunity to recover himself and to demonstrate thereby that he was still spiritually alive. But the corruption of spiritual death worked until man was so far down in the filth of his moral putrefaction that the only way God could save the race from extinction was to save the one family that had accepted spiritual life from Him, and blot the rest of the race ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant
... products, albumen, milk, muscular fibre, and animal membranes, the acid or salt leaves the 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 hung up by the feet upon the gallows at Montfaucon.[1067] A great part of the capital had gone out to look upon the grateful sight. Charles the Ninth was of the number of the visitors, and, when others showed signs of disgust at the stench arising from the putrefaction of a corpse long unburied, is said to have exclaimed "that the smell of a dead enemy is very sweet."[1068] Great was the merriment of the low populace; copious were the effusions of wit. Jacques Copp de Vellay, in ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... has on each side of it three rows of iron bedsteads, for the most part filled with the dead and dying; an intolerable stench, arising from putrefaction, which it is impossible by any means to get rid of, salutes his descent; and to this is added the groans of lingering sufferers. He may chance, God help him, to be lowered down at the very hour of the inspecting surgeon's visits. The latter is seated by a bed, having probably just ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... and it should come with equal force from each nostril 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 ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... cause I suspect to have been, that certain of those authors possessed grace:—do not take me for a disciple of Lord Chesterfield, nor Imagine that I mean to erect grace into a capital ingredient of writing; but I do believe that it is a perfume that will preserve from putrefaction, and is distinct even from style, which regards expression. Grace, I think, belongs to manner. It is from the charm of grace that I believe some authors, not in Your favour, obtained part of their renown; Virgil in particular: and yet I am far from disagreeing with you on his subject ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... to keep the bowels regular, as protracted constipation leads to many painful affections, such as headaches, piles, and even inflammation of the intestine, the various products of putrefaction being absorbed and carried through the blood stream. A daily motion should invariably be solicited at a regular hour. On rising, before the morning bath, is a good time, though some prefer just before retiring to bed, and more, probably, go immediately ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... in punishment therefor with the pride of a soldier who takes the medaille militaire in recompense for his valour); noted the increasing pallor of her flesh, watched the skin gradually assume a distinct greenish tint (a greenishness which I cannot describe save that it suggested putrefaction); heard the coughing to which she had always been subject grow thicker and deeper till it doubled her up every few minutes, creasing her body as you crease a piece of paper with your thumb-nail, preparatory to tearing it in two—and I realised fully ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... power of sanctity, the power that flows from lives steeped in meditation and prayer. They constitute that remnant which is the depository of the hopes of Israel and the saving salt which prevents the utter putrefaction of ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... possible into a small pond, but the pond was nearly dry and only had in it some filthy salt water densely mixed with camel refuse. It was of a ghastly green with patches of brown, and some spots of putrefaction in circular crowns of a whitish colour. The surface was coated with a deposit of sand, ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... find a convenient opportunity for disposing of the bodies, they carry them for many miles, until they come to a spot secure from intrusion, and to a soil adapted to receive them. If fear of putrefaction admonishes them to use despatch, they set up a large screen or tent, as other travellers do, and bury the body within the enclosure, pretending, if inquiries are made, that their women are within. But this only happens when they fall in with a victim unexpectedly. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay |
