Blood is thicker than water

“ You see, then, how death is caused in drowning; the air is shut out by the water, and the blood is not changed in the lungs; so the blood goes back to the heart dark instead of red, and is sent all over the body. ”

“ This experiment shows that the veins swell below the ligature not with attenuated blood, or with blood raised by spirits or vapours, for the{139} immersion in the cold water would repress their ebullition, but with blood only, and such as could never make its way back into the arteries, either by open-mouthed communications or by devious passages; it shows, moreover, how and in what way those who are travelling over snowy mountains are sometimes stricken suddenly with death, and other things of the same kind. ”

“ Now, when cold water is sucked into the lungs and comes in contact with their delicate and sensitive mucous membrane, it must cause an instant and powerful contraction of the capillaries, and obstruct the current of blood from the right side of the heart, thus indirectly damming back the venous blood in the brain. This state of things brings on unconsciousness rapidly, preceded by the pleasurable tingling sensations, rapid succession of ideas, and flashes of light and color, so often described by persons who have been rescued from drowning. ”

“ You know when the blood don’t circulate down in your feet they get cold and kind of dead, and then if you put ‘em into a pail of hot water or even cold water, and then rub ‘em hard with a towel, they get prickly and red, and you can feel the blood comin’ back to ‘em and feel ‘em wake up again. ”

“ Here am I, a little animal called a man—a bit of vitalized matter, one hundred and sixty-five pounds of meat and blood, nerve, sinew, bones, and brain,—all of it soft and tender, susceptible to hurt, fallible, and frail. I strike a light back-handed blow on the nose of an obstreperous horse, and a bone in my hand is broken. I put my head under the water for five minutes, and I am drowned. I fall twenty feet through the air, and I am smashed. I am a creature of temperature. A few degrees one way, and my fingers and ears and toes blacken and drop off. ”

“ Was blood, his own. 'Well, blood is dirt,' I said.
'Blood's dirt,' he laughed, looking away,
Far off to where his wound had bled
And almost merged for ever into clay.
'The world is washing out its stains,' he said.
'It doesn't like our cheeks so red:
Young blood's its great objection. ”

“ I will feel the blood in my body like fire, and the strength of a hundred will rush into my limbs, and I will grasp my weapon and slay—slay—till my heart is sick and my head faint; and still there will be the same awful, insatiable thirst that nothing can slake. ”

“ The Blood is the Life—never be Bled!—"He who loses a pint of blood, loses a pint of his life. Of what is the body composed? Is it not of blood, and blood only? What fills up the excavation of an ulcer or an abscess? What re-produces the bone of the leg or thigh, after it has been thrown off dead, in nearly all its length? what but the living BLOOD, under the vito-electrical influence of the brain and nerves! How does the slaughtered animal die? ”

“ The heart beats with violence, the lungs gasp for more air, they have not pressure enough; the blood begins to ooze out of the minute vessels ramifying through the tissue of their delicate cells; blood issues from the nose, the eyes, the ears; the slightest exertion becomes oppressive—a mile or two higher, and death is inevitable. ”

“ To livid paleness turns the glowing red.
His blood, scarce liquid, creeps within his veins,
Like water which the freezing wind constrains. ”

“ Here, as elsewhere, the blood is preeminently the life; and even when poured out on the earth, the blood does not lose its vitality. It still has its intelligent relations to its Author and Guardian; [429] as the world has been accustomed to count a possibility, down to modern times. ”

“ In these ceremonies, it is evident that the Zuñis, like the Orientals, [307] recognize the blood as the life, the heart as the epitome of life, the liver as a congealed mass of blood, and the transference of blood as the transference of life. Moreover, there is here a trace of that idea of the revivifying, by blood-bathing, of a being that had turned into stone ”

“ Do you not weep? Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out. The element of water moistens the earth, But blood flies upwards and bedews the heavens. ”

“ Your cold blood cannot be worked into a fever—your veins are full of ice-water—but mine are boiling, and the sight of such chillness makes them dance." ”

“ We have previously seen that the blood is the life, and that the loss of it is the loss of so much life. Deluded by strange theories, and groping in physiological darkness, our fathers' physicians were too often Sangrados. Nourishing food, pure air, and hæmatized blood were stigmatized as the friends of disease and the enemies of convalescence. ”

“ Yet as a drop of blood is a quivering, living, flashing ruby beside the dead, pale pearl of a stagnant pool, so is one drop of feeling a shining thing, a living thing, beside the deadness of the intellect which judges while the heart is stone ”

“ When those veins are full of the melancholy blood, then the conduits of nature are opened, and the blood issues out once a month, like women’s terms. Those men who have this course of blood, are kept from many infirmities, such as the dropsy, plague, &c. ”

“ His suffering, too, is chiefly mental, but he experiences the additional discomforts of exhaustion, cold, and hunger, if his struggle for life is a prolonged one.
It is believed that the rapidity and painlessness of death by drowning are due chiefly to the speedy obstruction of the circulation of the blood through the lungs. In ordinary asphyxia, by the simple deprivation of air, the blood throughout the body becomes charged with carbonic acid, and the arteries as well as the veins become filled with venous blood. ”

“ Wedges are brilliant in the sun; ribbons of wet wood dry and blow away. Black reddish blood. Pouring for crude-boned soft-skinned life, who set you flowing? Blood suckers of the War would spin in a frenzy of dizziness if they drank your blood. ”

“ Indeed, the blood nourishes, fosters, and keeps alive all the parts which it constructs and adjoins to itself, even as the heavenly bodies above, especially the sun and moon, impart life to what is below, while they continue in perpetual circulation. Since, therefore, the blood acts beyond the powers of the elements and is potent with those virtues aforesaid, and also is the instrument of the supreme workman, no one ever will give praise enough to its wonderful and divine faculties. ”

“ And farther, in youthful subjects still growing, and in aged individuals declining and falling away, the relative quantity of blood continues the same, and is in the ratio of the flesh that is present, as if the blood were a part of the body, but not destined solely for its nourishment; for if it were so, no one would die of hunger so long as he had any blood left in his veins, just as the lamp is not extinguished whilst there is a drop of inflammable oil left in the cruise. ”

“ I have always had an insurmountable horror of blood; when I was a boy, the sight of an open wound affected me so much that I would fall into a swoon, which on more than one occasion nearly cost me my life. ”

“ Blood, human blood, was on our hands,
And mingled oft with ocean's wave."
Shudd'ring, the mother cried: "My son,
Though you are steeped in human gore,
There is a fountain filled with blood,
That can your purity restore. ”

“ Not but that blood is as necessary as breath for respiration, and food for nourishment of the body; but too much blood is as dangerous to the life of the animal body, as too great a piece of food, which cannot be swallowed down, but doth stick in the throat, and stop the breath, or so much quantity as cannot be digested, for too great a fulness or abounding makes a stoppage of the blood, or which is worse, causes the veins to break, and an evil digestion, makes a corruption, or at least such disorder as to indanger the whole animal Figure. ”

“ There is, indeed, nothing in the animal body older or more excellent than the blood; nor are the spirits which are distinguished from the blood at any time found distinct from it; for the blood without heat or spirit is no longer blood, but cruor or gore. ”

“ Maxim paused to consider. “That is a very difficult matter; but I will try. I will begin by describing to you something with which you are [209] perfectly familiar, and that is blood. Blood courses through the veins, but it cannot be seen. It circulates through the body, diffused by the heart, which is constantly throbbing, beating, and burning with sorrow or joy. When a sudden thought occurs to you, or when from dreams you awake trembling and weeping, it is because the heart has given a more rapid impulse to the blood, and sent it coursing in bright streams to the brain. ”

“ The blood is the carrier of life to the physical body and it is breath, not food, that keeps the blood flowing in our veins. It is breath not food, that purifies the blood streams and keeps new, fresh, red, oxygenated blood going the rounds of the human tide. ”

“ But that which makes the blood wonderful above all other fluids is its vitality. Our common expression, "life's blood," is no idle phrase. The blood is indeed the very throne of life. If its springs are pure and bountiful, if its currents flow strong and free, muscle, bone and brain grow in symmetry and power, and there is cunning to devise and the strong right arm to execute. ”

“ In order, therefore, to relinquish its seat of origin, and enter constricted and colder places, and move in opposition to its bent, [261] the blood has need not only of violence but of an impeller, such as is the heart alone, and after the fashion described already. ”

“ But when the blood is driven with violence from the veins into the arteries, forthwith there is disease; and the blood is poured the wrong way into the arteries, and there withstands and dashes itself against the breath of life coming from the heart, and turns the course of it—and this forsooth is fever. ”

“ But if this happens in the dead body, with the blood dead and coagulated, the frame stiffened with the chill of death, the passages all compressed or blocked up, it is easy to perceive how much more apt it will be to occur in the living subject, when the blood is alive and replete with spirits, when the pores are all open, the fluid ready to penetrate, and the passage in every way made easy. ”

“ Blood to the modern mind speaks of death, and usually of a violent and painful death. To the ancient mind, heathen or Israelite, blood stood for and symbolised life. “The Blood makes atonement by the Life that is in it.” ”

“ The little discomfort which the flowing of blood causes me, compared with the other pain, is like a fresh breeze after a blast from the infernal regions. It does me a real good to see my blood pouring forth: let it flow, it does me extreme good."
The stranger watched with an expression of delight the blood pouring from the wound, and the doctor was obliged to insist on binding up the hand. ”

“ Spouting blood, bleeding its huge life away, shivering in great convulsions, means only for us forty barrels more of grease, and a couple of hundred pounds of bone to manufacture death-dealing, rib-compressing, liver-squeezing corsets from. ”

“ Blee, blē, n. (Mrs Browning) complexion, colour. [A.S. bléo.]
Bleed, blēd, v.i. to lose blood: to die by slaughter: to issue forth or drop as blood: to have money extorted from one: to feel great pity for, as in the phrase, 'the heart bleeds:' to be as red as blood.—v.t. to draw blood from, esp. surgically: to extort sums of money from:—pa.t. and pa.p. bled.—n. Bleed′ing, a discharge of blood: the operation of letting blood.—adj. full of compassion: emitting sap: terribly weakened by war: (Shak.) bloody. [A.S. blédan. See Blood.] ”

“ But if the blood is thus continually being made rich by things, it must also as continually be getting rid of things. The things with which it parts are not, however, the same as those which it takes. The blood, as we have said, is fuel for the muscles, for the brain, and for other parts of the body. These burn the blood, burn it with heat but without light. But, as you have learnt from your Chemistry Primer, Art. 4, burning is only change, not destruction; in burning nothing is lost. ”

“ Again, I imagine that in many persons death is caused by the coagulation of the blood, which freezes and hardens in their veins, as it happens with those who have eaten hemlock, or who have been bitten by certain serpents; but there are others whose death is caused by too great an ebullition of blood, as in painful maladies, and in certain poisons, and even, they say, in certain kinds of plague, and when people die a violent death, or have been drowned. ”

“ Blood must flow, for blood alone can cleanse. Blood alone can cleanse.”
A young soldier was caught as he climbed the stairs of a small house. He was brought into the street and told to kneel. “I have heard of your Jesus and his forgiveness,” he said; “now I know.” He knelt with a sort of dignity, the dignity that death brings to the brave, and his head fell.
His words struck through the blood fever to the heart of the man in black. For a second he closed his eyes and when he opened them again he saw with his old clearness. He knew that blood is blood and shame came over him. ”

“ The ground is alive with serpents, even the spirits of our valiant dead, and they speak. They speak but one word and that is ‘Blood! Blood—blood—blood!’” repeated the frightful monster. “Blood must flow! blood! blood!” And uttering a series of deafening howls she fell prone to the earth in frightful convulsions.
Not one of the spectators moved. ”