"Vertebral" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... only the pelvis before us, to make reliable statements concerning the position of the bones of the lower extremities of *this individual. And we shall be able to say just what the form of the thorax and the curve of the vertebral column were. This, also, we shall have in our power, more or less, to ground on the child-bearing function of woman. But we might go still further and say that this individual, who, according to its pelvic cavity, was a woman, must have had a comparatively smaller skull, and although ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... are, in a state of nature almost continually in action both by night and by day. They either walk, creep, or advance rapidly by prodigious bounds; but they seldom run, owing, it is believed, to the extreme flexibility of their limbs and vertebral column, which cannot preserve the rigidity necessary to that species of movement. Their sense of sight, especially during twilight, is acute; their hearing very perfect, and their perception of smell less so than in the dog ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... conclude this chapter by a brief view of the Fauna of the higher vertebral animals. In the region of the coast I have found twenty-six species of mammalia, only eight of which belong exclusively to the coast. Sixteen of the other species are to be found in the mountains or in the forests. The relation of this number to the whole of the mammalia ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... the stable-boy, who had accompanied them carrying a spade, set to work to dig the grave. Several carcasses of animals lay scattered about close at hand, partly hidden by the snow—among them two or three skeletons of horses, picked clean by birds of prey; their long heads, at the end of the slender vertebral columns, peering out horribly at them, and their ribs, like the sticks of an open fan stripped of its covering, appearing above the smooth white surface, bearing each one its little load of snow. The comedians observed these ghastly surroundings with a shudder, as ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... form. Take off the skins from some dozen air-breathing vertebrates, place the bodies in an upright attitude, and they are in general structure identical. The position of the head, eyes, and ears, the neck, the central vertebral column, the fore legs, which are arms in that position, the pelvis, the hind legs, all bear a close resemblance. Of course there are material differences; but they are evidently moulded upon one general plan. If there were a special creation for each species, why should they all necessarily ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... Christ descended under the weight of Pilate's judgment, and which all Christians must for ever ascend on their knees; before you is the city gate which opens upon the Via Appia Nuova, the long gaunt file of arches of the Claudian aqueduct, their jagged ridge stretching away like the vertebral column of some monstrous mouldering skeleton, and upon the blooming brown and purple flats and dells of the Campagna and the glowing blue of the Alban Mountains, spotted with their white, high-nestling towns; ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... consideration must dispose of small anomalies, such as the acceptance, without cant, of certain forms of the shop, euphemized as the store, but containing the same old vertebral counter. Not all forms. Dry-goods were held in respect and chemists in comparative esteem; house furnishings and hardware made an appreciable claim, and quite a leading family was occupied with seed grains. Groceries, on the other hand, were harder to swallow, possibly ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... portion is formed by the larynx and pharynx, the horizontal by the mouth. The length of the resonator, from the vocal cords to the lips, is about 6.5 to 7 inches (vide fig. 12). The walls of the vertical portion are formed by the vertebral column and the muscles of the pharynx behind, the cartilages of the larynx and the muscles of the pharynx at the sides, and the thyroid cartilage, the epiglottis, and the root of the tongue in front; these structures form ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... of the Crocodilia, is represented, at the early part of the Mesozoic epoch, by species identical in the essential characters of their organization with those now living, and differing from the latter only in such matters as the form of the articular facets of the vertebral centra, in the extent to which the nasal passages are separated from the cavity of the mouth by bone, and in the ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... completely wrong side out and poisoning the legs are wired, wrapped with tow or cotton in the same manner as other small animals. One hind leg wire is cut long enough to reach through the body and head and to this the other leg wires are twisted. Some claim that to leave the vertebral column attached to the skin of the back is an invaluable aid in giving ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... the heat of passion, being mistaken for an empty one, probably,) had been hurled by some treacherous hand upon the unsuspecting Tom, striking him midway between the root of the tail and the base of the brain, causing instant suspension of his vertebral communications, "Poor thing! You were the victim of a Catastrophe. You were also the victim of the bottle. The 'Rye' was too heavy for you, and should have been drawn milder." This said, I turned sadly away to find a burial spade, and it then occurred to me that this ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... of the dorsal chord in its embryological development, he shows that a certain parallelism exists between the comparative degrees of development of the vertebral column in the different groups of fishes, and the phases of its embryonic development in the higher fishes. Farther on he shows a like coincidence between the development of the system of fins in the different groups of fishes, and the gradual growth and differentiation of the fins ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... genus, a family or a class, but which was continued into whole Phyla of animals, with continual fresh adaptations to the special conditions of each species, family, or class, yet with persistence of the fundamental elements. Thus the feather, once acquired, persisted in all birds, and the vertebral column, once gained by adaptation in the lowest forms, has persisted in all the Vertebrates from Amphioxus upwards, although with constant readaptation to the conditions of each particular group. Thus everything we can see in animals is adaptation, whether of to-day, or of yesterday, or ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... the same lesson of relation and recurrence of line. The bones of all vertebrate animals, from fish to man, illustrate the constant repetition in different degrees of the same character and direction of line. The vertebral column itself is an instance, and the recurring spring of the ribs from it, like the branches from the stem of a tree, further expressed in the ramification of the jointed bones of the limbs and extremities. The principle may be followed out in the structure ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... turn its energies to its attainment. The system of anatomy which has immortalized the name of Oken, is the consequence of a flash of anticipation, which glanced through his mind when he picked up, in a chance walk, the skull of a deer, bleached by the weather, and exclaimed—'It is a vertebral column!'" ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... the existence of the fishes to which they belong, throw scarce any light on their structure, it is from the ganoids of this second age that the palaeontologist can with certainty know under what peculiarities of form, and associated with what varieties of mechanism, vertebral life existed in the earlier ages of the world. In my new-found deposit—to which I soon added, however, within the limits of the parish, some six or eight deposits more, all charged with the same ichthyic remains—I found I had work enough ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... and priest-hunter sitting upon the hard form, his head hanging down upon his breast, or, indeed, we might say much farther; for, in consequence of the almost unnatural length of his neck, it appeared on that occasion to be growing out of the middle of his body, or of that fleshless vertebral column which passed ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... or more of the vertebrae which go to make up the spinal column, thus exerting pressure on the neighboring nerves. This shuts off the vitality of the organs supplied by the affected nerves, hence disease results. These displacements, called "vertebral subluxations," are best "adjusted" by means of manipulations in the form ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... spine of the scapula. 4, The latissimus dorsi muscle. 5, The deltoid muscle. 7, The external oblique muscle. 8, The gluteus medius muscle. 9, The gluteus maximus muscle, 11, 12, The rhomboideus major and minor muscles. 15, The vertebral aponeurosis. 16, The serratus posticus inferior muscle. 22, The serratus magnus muscle. ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... joyousness, and the small, warped figure, so low that it walked under my dropped and level hand, acquiring security of step and erectness of bearing. I knew little of the treatment required for spinal disease, but common-sense taught me that, in order to effect a cure, the vertebral column must be relieved as much as possible from pressure, and allowed to rest. So I persuaded him to lie down a great part of the time, and contrived for him a little sustaining brace to ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... but that of the elephant is extremely trying after a few miles, and is so injurious to the human frame that the Mahouts (drivers) never reach an advanced age, and often succumb young to spine-diseases, brought on by the incessant motion of the vertebral column. The broiling heat of the elephant's black back, and the odour of its oily driver, are disagreeable accompaniments, as are its habits of snorting water from its trunk over its parched skin, and the consequences of the great bulk of green food ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... all its beautiful contour, but only dimly veiling a ghastly death's-head below. There was the whole bony structure of the head and the eyeless sockets; even the graceful, swan-like neck showed the articulated vertebral column that supported it in all its hideous reality. The beautiful shoulders were there, dimly as in a dream—but beneath was the empty clavicle, the knotty joint, the hollow sternum, and the ribs ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... Anna, settling herself firmly on the limb, raised her club with both hands and delivered a slashing blow on the neck of her foe, breaking, as they afterward found, his vertebral column. ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... considered how much air so enormous an animal must consume, and determined upon despatching him, that I might have more for my own immediate wants. I took out my knife, and inserting it between the vertebral bones that joined his head to his neck, divided the spinal marrow, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... the legs have become marked—the fore and hind limbs are more heterogeneous. Again, the greater ratio which the cranial bones bear to the facial bones illustrates the same truth. Among the vertebrata in general, progress is marked by an increasing heterogeneity in the vertebral column, and more especially in the segments constituting the skull: the higher forms being distinguished by the relatively larger size of the bones which cover the brain, and the relatively smaller size of those which form the jaws, &c. Now this characteristic, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... Allophryne cannot be understood without a re-analysis of some of the features used as major criteria in frog classification (the nature of an intercalated cartilage; the nature of the sternal complex; the relative value of cranial osteology; the vertebral structure; and the thigh musculature). Some of these features have been investigated by other workers, most notably Griffiths, but others have not and need re-examination. A re-analysis of some of the major criteria used in frog ...
— Systematic Status of a South American Frog, Allophryne ruthveni Gaige • John D. Lynch
... as they often did, in a state of refraction. 'Why, Juniper,' they'd say, 'what's amiss? Are you grieving after Mr Frank?' I could only nod dissent; my heart was too full. But I mustn't be too long, a- keeping you too, sir, under the vertebral rays of an Australian sun. I just couldn't stand it no longer—so I gets together my little savings, pays my own passage, sails across the trackless deep to the southern atmosphere—and here I am, to take my chance for good fortune or bad fortune, if I may only now ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... without being able to justify such mistakes. The skin of our bodies did not serve us as a covering like the fur of an animal. How could we then believe it? Why were nipples given to human males, if they were of no use for milk giving? Why was the vertebral column at the back of the body as in quadrupeds, when it would have been more logical, in creating a man who stands on his feet, to place it in the centre of the body as a strong support, thus avoiding the curvatures and weakness of the ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... our backbone, however perfectly developed, is rapidly drying up for want of those functions which minister vitality to the whole system, and is only fit to be hung up in a museum to show what a rigid, lifeless thing the strongest vertebral column becomes when separated from the organisation by which alone it can receive nourishment. We must realise the one focus of our individuality as clearly as the other, and bring both into equal balance, if we would develop all our powers and rise ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... centricalness^, center; middle &c 68; focus &c 74. core, kernel; nucleus, nucleolus; heart, pole axis, bull's eye; nave, navel; umbilicus, backbone, marrow, pith; vertebra, vertebral column; hotbed; concentration &c (convergence) 290; centralization; symmetry. center of gravity, center of pressure, center of percussion, center of oscillation, center of buoyancy &c; metacenter^. V. be central &c adj.; converge &c 290. render central, centralize, concentrate; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... development of the skull soon grew out of it. It was no less a man than our greatest German poet who first answered this question, and propounded the theory that the skull was neither more nor less than the modified foremost end of the vertebral column, and that the separate groups of bones which lie behind one another in the human skull, as in that of all the higher vertebrata, answer to the separate modified vertebrae. This "vertebral theory" of the skull, which Von Goethe and Oken ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... ligature of the innominate along with the right carotid and (after secondary haemorrhage) the right vertebral, in a mulatto aged thirty-two, for a subclavian aneurism, has been put on record by Dr. Smyth of New Orleans, in the American Journal of Medical ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... cerebral impressions may be transmitted from the brain to the skin: one, by way of the spinal cord and the pairs of nerves arising from it and known as spinal nerves; the other, by two nerves running close to the vertebral ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... all the rest, like health or fine weather.) Essentially these lead the inherent list of the high average personal born and bred qualities of the young fellows everywhere through the United States, as any sharp observer can find out for himself. Surely these make the vertebral stock of superbest and noblest nations! May the destinies show it so forthcoming. I mainly confide the whole future of our Commonwealth to the fact of these three bases. Need I say I demand the same in the elements and spirit and fruitage of ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... collecting of autographs. Which superinduces the other is a question for pathology. It is a fact that one out of every eight applicants for a specimen of penmanship bases his or her claim upon the possession of some vertebral disability which leaves him or her incapable of doing anything but write to authors for their autograph. Why this particular diversion should be the sole resource remains undisclosed. But so it appears to be, and the appeal to one's ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... type laid down right along the axis of the body. The spinal column and the skull start from the same primitive condition, whence they immediately begin to diverge. It may be true to say that there is a primitive identity of structure between the spinal or vertebral column and the skull; but it is no more true that the adult skull is a modified vertebral column than it would be to affirm that the vertebral ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... early and institute proper treatment. A posterior curvature of the spine is often associated with a bad case of rickets. It is of temporary duration, and usually clears up when the symptoms of rickets have been eradicated. It involves only the back muscles—not the vertebral bones. ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... all points where he discovers himself to be in the wrong. Instead of going through life in political leading-strings, bending to the will of one man, and gulping down the opinions of another, he will stand upon his own feet, put his own vertebral column to its legitimate use of sustaining his body, and his own mind to its legitimate use of directing the ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... doubtless great weight; but does it reach far enough to explain to us the fact, (if it be a fact, and as such Calmeil accepts it,) that a girl, bent back so that her head and feet touched the floor, the centre of the vertebral column being supported on a sharp-pointed stake, received, day after day, with impunity, directly on her stomach and bowels, one hundred times in succession, a flint stone weighing fifty pounds, dropped suddenly from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... finally obtained by the Revolution of 1830. In his heart he hated the aristocrats, and in religion he was indifferent; he was as much or as little of a bigot as Bonaparte was a member of the Mountain; yet his vertebral column bent with a flexibility wonderful to behold before the noblesse and the official hierarchy; for the powers that be, he humbled himself, he was meek and obsequious. One final characteristic will describe him for those who are accustomed to dealings with all kinds of ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... numbered twelve members all told, but only six were on board: the remainder were to join the ship at Lyttelton, New Zealand, when we made our final embarcation for the South. Of those on the ship Wilson was chief of the scientific staff, and united in himself the various functions of vertebral zoologist, doctor, artist, and, as this book will soon show, the unfailing friend-in-need of all on board. Lieutenant Evans was in command, with Campbell as first officer. Watches were of course assigned immediately ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... when the pending sacrifice between his teeth shall be burned out; his feet upon the familiar corner of the mantel at that automatically calculated altitude which permits the weight of the upper part of the body to fall exactly upon the second joint from the lower end of the vertebral column as it rests in the comfortable depression created by continuous wear in the cushion of that particular chair to which every honest man who has acquired the library vice sooner or later gets attached ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... more remarkable for perceiving resemblances and differences than Oken. This is the poetical side of the scientific mind; and he shares with Goethe the honor of that startling and far-reaching discovery, the vertebral character of the bones of the cranium. At this very time the four vertebral cranial bones recognized by Owen are the same Oken has described. But notwithstanding the generous tribute of Mr. Agassiz to his great merits, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Goethe and Vicq d'Azyrs discovered at the same time the intermaxillary bone. Goethe and Von Baer discovered at the same time Morphology. Goethe and Oken discovered at the same time the vertebral system. The Penny Cyclopaedia and Chambers's Journal were started nearly at the same time. The invention of printing is claimed by several contemporaries. The processes called Talbotype and Daguerreotype were nearly simultaneous discoveries. Leverrier ...
— 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.
... why should not a giant have a tail as well as a dragon? Linnaeus admitted the homo caudatus into his anthropological catalogue. The human embryo has a very well marked caudal appendage; that is, the vertebral column appears prolonged, just as it is in a young quadruped. During the late session of the Medical Congress at Washington, my friend Dr. Priestley, a distinguished London physician, of the highest character and standing, showed me the photograph ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... against some supporting substance, that seems as hard as rock. I cannot tell what it is. I cannot even see my own person—neither breast nor body—neither arms nor legs—not an inch of myself. The fastening over my face holds it upturned to the sky; and my head feels firmly set—as if the vertebral column of my neck had become ossified ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid |
