"Spinal column" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with the central system and the specialized end-organs of the senses. The sympathetic system, which is found as a double chain of nerve connections joining the roots of sensory and motor nerves just outside the spinal column, does not seem to be directly related to consciousness and so will not be discussed here. A brief description of the nervous system will help us better to understand how its parts all work together in so wonderful a way to accomplish their ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... shores of the Mediterranean, excavations of the Vence Cave (Alpes-Maritimes) brought to light a number of dead arranged in a circle as if about to take a meal in common. The bodies were crouching in the position of men sitting on their heels; the spinal column was bent forward and the head nearly touched the knees. In the centre of this strange group were noticed some fragments of pottery and the remains of a large bird, a buzzard probably. Perhaps its death among the corpses was a mere accident.[288] The dolmens of Aveyron yielded some flint-flakes and ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... A similar idea occurred to the illustrious Marshall Hall, who advised the application of a strong infant to the breast. Fomentations of warm milk to the breasts and the corresponding portion of the spinal column, and the use of the breast-pump two or three times a day, just before the menstrual period, have also been recommended by good medical authorities. Horseback exercise, carried to fatigue, seems occasionally to have conduced ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... killed me, but I forgive you,' and then rolled around, and frothed at the mouth, cause I had a piece of soap in my mouth to make foam. Well, Pa was all broke up. He said, 'Great God, what have I done? I have broke his spinal column. O, my poor boy, do not die!' I kept chewing the soap and foaming at the mouth, and I drew my legs up and kicked them out, and clutched my hair, and rolled my eyes, and then kicked Pa in the stummick as he bent ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... as well have been killed as poor Tolliver was, for he'll never be any use again, the doctors say. Some injury to the spinal column, and with it a curious affection of the throat and tongue. He can neither swallow nor speak. Nourishment has to be administered by tube, and ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... silently, inch by inch, he bent the banker's body over his knee, driving his great fingers into his throat, until the spinal column snapped with ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... acute hydrocephalus, vomiting, constipation, etc., have lasted for some time, the abdomen gradually decreases in size, becomes wrinkled and collapses until it finally assumes a scaphoid shape and by slight pressure the large iliac artery can be felt on the spinal column. ...
— Prof. Koch's Method to Cure Tuberculosis Popularly Treated • Max Birnbaum
... a solemn creature the Gothic ghost was! How little originality and initiative he showed and how dependent he was on his own atmosphere for thrills! His sole appeal was to the spinal column. The ghost of to-day touches the funny bone as well. He adds new horrors to being haunted, but new pleasures also. The modern specter can be a joyous creature on occasion, as he can be, when he wishes, fearsome ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... spine, spinal column, rachis, chine. Associated Words: vertebrae, Vertebrata, vertebra, vertebral spinal. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... that ranges from almost imperceptible degrees to the most loathsome extent that it is possible for animal tissue to harbor. Its brain may be so invaded by the syphilitic parasites that it can never attain any degree of mentality; its spinal column maybe so involved that paralytic conditions will surely result; and if these nerve centers escape special involvement, other organs may be affected, such as the stomach, bowels, and liver; if these escape, the bones may be so deficient in vitality as to be incapable of sustaining the ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... with the Russian law, this instrument should weigh from five to six pounds. It strikes like a triple lash upon the naked back of the sufferer. It does not plough or tear up the flesh like the knout, but the skin of course breaks under the heavy blows inflicted upon the spinal column and the sides. Phthisis is a common complaint with those who have been subjected to the punishment of the plete, the strokes frequently detaching the viscera from their living walls. In order to give more force to the blow, the executioner takes a leap and run, only striking ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... after him, you jealous old sore-head,' says I. 'Go on!' I says, as he started to argue the point, 'or I'll spread your nose all the way down your spinal column!' The only time to say 'no' to me is when I'm not meaning what I say, so away goes Wind-River, and they made it up all right in no time. Well, Shadder had to pull for England to take a squint at the ancestral estates, and all of us was right here at this station to see him off—Lord! it seems ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... the bullet had entered the chest in the fourth left intercostal space and had taken an oblique course downward and backward, piercing both the heart and lungs. The left lung was collapsed, and the exit point of the ball had been found in the muscles of the back to the left of the spinal column. It was improbable that such a wound had been self-inflicted, and its oblique downward course pointed to the fact that the shot had been fired from above. In other words, as the murdered man had been found dead at the ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a case where the blow on the head, or the succession of blows on the spinal column as the boy slid down the stairs, might have been the cause of the trouble. More probably, it was the combined injury, undoubtedly resulting in a severe nervous shock from which the boy probably did not recover ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... now," he said through clenched teeth. "Your neck's broken, and all I've got to do is twist enough to sever your spinal column. You'll be crippled for as long as Vulcan ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... important item of all, probably, although it made so little show, was a certain broomstick, on which Mother Rigby had taken many an airy gallop at midnight, and which now served the scarecrow by way of a spinal column, or, as the unlearned phrase it, a backbone. One of its arms was a disabled flail which used to be wielded by Goodman Rigby, before his spouse worried him out of this troublesome world; the other, if I mistake not, was ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... tire picking them up that fills me with lynx-eyed vigilance and alarm; it is the dreaded possibility of taking a header among these awful vegetables that unnerves one, starts the cold chills chasing each other up and down my spinal column, and causes staring big beads of perspiration to ooze out of my forehead. No more appalling physical calamity on a small scale could befall a person than to take a header on to a cactus-covered greensward; millions of miniature needles would fill ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... by the by, if we stop to analyze for a moment, is the stroke that comes straight from the heart, tingling up the spinal column, down the arm, and straight to the finger-tips. Ole Bull had it when his violin echoed a full orchestra; Paderewski has it when he rings clearly and sharply some note that vibrates through you for hours ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... adapting the animal for an active existence in the sea. The different joints of the backbone (vertebrae) also show the same adaptation to an aquatic mode of life, being hollowed out at both ends, like the biconcave vertebrae of Fishes. The spinal column in this way was endowed with the flexibility necessary for an animal intended to pass the greater part of its time in water. Though the Ichthyosaurs are undoubtedly marine animals, there is, however, reason to believe that they occasionally ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... all wear one uniform, which will consist of white satin slippers, pantalons of cashmere, with feather pillows worn as a protection strapped over the knees, a bolster being wound round the body to safeguard the chest, ribs, and spinal column. A broad gay, coloured satin sash with a cocked hat and ostrich feathers completes the costume. The last to indicate, owing to the risks and dangers in which the combatants may be involved, its association with le vrai champs de bataille, to which, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... vital organs are well sustained, is essential. One cannot even breathe properly unless one stands well. The weight should be mainly upon the balls of the feet, and the crown of the head so positively elevated as to secure the erectness of the spinal column. This will involve the proper elevation of the chest, the essential freedom of respiration, and the right sustaining tension of the ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... in a short time, especially if that time is ill-spent," he said, airily. "That is why the virtuous are such poor company; they have no backbone to their past. With the others—'nous autres'—it is the evil deeds that form a sort of spinal column to our lives, rigid and strong, upon which to lean in old age when virtue ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... has no creative skill. Memory makes no discoveries. But the imagination is a wonder-worker. One day, chancing upon a large bone of the mammoth in the Black Forest, Oken, the German naturalist, exclaimed: "This is a part of a spinal column." The eyes of the scientist saw only one of the vertebrae, but to that one bone his imagination added frame, limb and head, then clothed the skeleton with skin, and saw the giant of animals moving through the forest. In that hour the imagination ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... again. The ball had evidently missed the vertebrae and spinal column. His crashing, thunderous roar of pain smothered instantly the reechoing report of the rifle and stifled the instinctive cry that had come to Ben's lips. He was a forester; and he had known of old what havoc a mortally wounded bear can wreak in a few seconds of life. ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... the practice of some careless nurses, of carrying the child quite upright a part of the time, almost without any support at all. There can be no doubt that the spinal column of many a child is injured for life in this way. There can be no apology for ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... engine (vide page 361). A small circular saw is fitted to the hand piece. The bones of the skull are cut through and the whole of the vault removed, exposing the entire vertex of the brain. Similarly all the spinous processes can be removed in one string by running the saw down first one side of the spinal column and then the other. In this way ample space for the removal of the nervous tissues is obtained with a minimum ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... studied by Elliot Smith, Wood Jones, Ruffer and Rietti. The majority of the lesions appear to have been the common osteo-arthritis, which involved not only the men, but many of the pet animals kept in the temples. In a much higher proportion apparently than in modern days, the spinal column was involved. It is interesting to note that the "determinative" of old age in hieroglyphic writing is the picture of a man afflicted with arthritis deformans. Evidences of tuberculosis, rickets and syphilis, according to these authors, have ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... kingdom consists, first, of a sub-kingdom of animals which possess a spinal column, or backbone, and which are known as vertebrate animals. Such are all beasts, birds, reptiles, and fishes. There are also a variety of remotely allied marine organisms known as tunicates, sea-squirts, or ascidians ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... organic existence is a protozoan, about 1-125 inch in diameter; at another stage of development he is a tiny sac-shaped mass of cells without blood or nerves, the gastrula; at another stage he is a worm, with a pulsating tube instead of a heart, and without a head, neck, spinal column, or limbs; at another stage he has as a backbone, a rod of cartilage extending along the back, and a faint nerve cord, as in the amphioxus, the lowest of the vertebrates; at another stage he is a fish with a ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... for some time, until the doctor, who, from his height, was obliged to stoop at a very acute angle, suddenly sprang upright; and with one hand propping his spinal column, exclaimed, "Oh, that one's joints were but provided with holes to drop ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... rolled in luxury at home all the time, and that it was a common thing for us to have our boots blacked by menials. When I left the car this porter brushed my clothes till the hot flashes ran up my spinal column, and I told him that he had treated me square, and I rung his hand when he held it out toards me, and I told him that at any time he wanted a good, cool drink of buttermilk, to just holler through our telephone. We had the sociable at our house ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... the big, stiff shoes, to which he was not accustomed, had chafed the flesh until the blood came. He was not strong; his spinal column felt as if it were one long raw sore, although the knapsack that had caused the suffering was no longer there, and the weight of his piece, which he kept shifting from one shoulder to the other, seemed as if it would drive all the breath from his body. Great as his physical distress ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... other royal family or individual, past or present, has ever produced. Hum, hum! Our people mean well; but curiosity and imitation will not die out of the human race till an inch or two more of the spinal column ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... the highly decorated species—that is, animals marked by alternate dark or light bands or spots, such as the zebra, some deer, or the carnivora—we find, first, that the region of the spinal column is marked by a dark stripe; secondly, that the regions of the appendages, or limbs, are differently marked; thirdly, that the flanks are striped or spotted along or between the regions of the lines of the ribs; fourthly, that the shoulder and hip regions are marked by curved lines; ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... branch of a tree and cause the sap to run out, felt that he was not grasped by human hands, but was in the hug of a bear. He also felt that if it were not for the cost of mail which he had on, in case of having to fight with the sword, the German giant would have crushed his ribs and perhaps the spinal column too. The young knight lifted him a little from the ground, but Arnold lifted him up higher still, and gathering all his strength he tried to throw him to the ground so that he might not be able ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... of the general plan on which the body is constructed, let us imagine its division into perfectly equal parts, one the right and the other the left, by a great knife severing it through the median, or middle line in front, backward through the spinal column, as a butcher divides an ox or a sheep into halves for the market. In a section of the body thus planned the skull and the spine together are shown to have formed a tube, containing the brain and spinal cord. The other parts of the body form a second tube (ventral) in front of the spinal ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... moment, he seemed over sixty years of age, though he was only fifty; and this premature old age had destroyed the honorable likeness. His tall figure was slightly bent,—either because his labors, whatever they were, obliged him to stoop, or that the spinal column was curved by the weight of his head. He had a broad chest and square shoulders, but the lower parts of his body were lank and wasted, though nervous; and this discrepancy in a physical organization evidently once perfect puzzled the mind which endeavored to explain this anomalous ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... divided and subdivided into smaller and smaller portions, until it is reduced to an aggregation of granules not too large to build withal the finest fabrics of the nascent organism. And, then, it is as if a delicate finger traced out the line to be occupied by the spinal column, and moulded the contour of the body; pinching up the head at one end, the tail at the other, and fashioning flank and limb into due salamandrine proportions, in so artistic a way, that, after watching the process ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley |
