Excision

“ A bone from the leg or thigh of a man who had died a violent death, emptied of its marrow, and then filled with human ordure, closed up with wax, and placed in boiling water, compelled the unfortunate ejector of the excrement to evacuate just as long as the bone was kept in the water, and it could even be so used that he would be compelled to defile his bed every night. ”

“ Certainly, everybody will answer, in cases where there is a palpable organic change brought about, as when a blow on the head produces insanity. Fools! How long will it be before we shall learn that for every wound which betrays itself to the sight by a scar, there are a thousand unseen mutilations that cripple, each of them, some one or more of our highest faculties? ”

“ A suction so powerful, felt along radii so vast, and a consciousness, at the same time, that upon other radii still more vast, both by land and by sea, the same suction is operating, night and day, summer and winter, and hurrying forever into one centre the infinite means needed for her infinite purposes, and the endless tributes to the skill or to the luxury of her endless population, crowds the imagination with a pomp to which there is nothing corresponding upon this planet, either amongst the things that have been or the things that are. ”

“ The sufferer was stretched and made fast upon a large wheel, when the executioner, with a heavy iron bar, proceeded to break every bone in his body; beginning with the toes and fingers, and proceeding to crush those bones that the least affected life, and ending by crushing the skull into the brains. ”

“ If a knife were thrust into the flesh, in corresponding locations and to the same depth, in twenty people, no two would feel the incision to the same degree, and the difference in sensations would be simply the difference of mental constitutions, that is, it would be wholly mental. ”

“ Others on the contrary groan and howl, never remaining a moment without struggling or endeavouring to escape. Every incision that is made, every laceration, every pull is instantly followed by a shock which interferes with the result of the experiment.... ”

“ For Examples, a wicked Chyrurgion that would out of evil design exhaust his Patients vital Blood, and yet not be seen to intend or permit it, needs but find out some small Wen, Wart, or Kernel, for the extirpation whereof some incision is necessary ”

“ At the appointed moment a screw is suddenly turned by the executioner, stationed behind the condemned, and instantaneous death follows. This would seem to be more merciful than hanging, whereby death is produced by the lingering process of suffocation, to say nothing of the many mishaps which so often occur upon the gallows. ”

“ In thee have they taken gifts to shed blood; thou hast taken usury and increase, and thou hast greedily gained of thy neighbors by extortion, and hast forgotten me, saith the Lord God. Behold, therefore I have smitten mine hand at thy dishonest gain which thou hast made, and at thy blood which hath been in the midst of thee. Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the days that I shall deal with thee? ”

“ A newspaper gives an account of a man who "was driving an old ox when he became angry and kicked him, hitting his jawbone with such force as to break his leg." "We have been fairly wild ever since we read the paper," writes a contemporary, "to know who or which got angry at whom or what, and if the ox kicked the man's jaw with such force as to break the ox's leg, or how it is. Or did the man kick the ox in the jawbone with such force as to break the ox's leg, and, if so, which leg? ”

“ The term _exfoliation_ is sometimes employed to indicate the separation or throwing off of a superficial sequestrum. The edges and deep surface of the sequestrum present a serrated or worm-eaten appearance due to the process of erosion by which the dead bone has been separated from the living. ”

“ Eccentric fixation is a symptom of strain, and is relieved by any method that relieves strain; but in some cases the patient is cured just as soon as he is able to demonstrate the facts of central fixation. ”

“ The name of this sacrifice,-- "the _murder_ of the OX,"--the pains taken by each person who had a hand in the slaughter to lay the blame on some one else, together with the formal trial and punishment of the axe or knife or both, prove that the OX was here regarded not merely as a victim offered to a god, but as itself a sacred creature, the slaughter of which was sacrilege or murder. ”

“ The executioner’s argu­ment was, that you couldn’t cut off a head unless there was a body to cut it off from: that he had never had to do such a thing before, and he wasn’t going to begin at his time of life. ”

“ If any man strike the eye of his manservant or maidservant, and leave them but one eye, he shall let them go free for the eye which he put out.
21:27. Also if he strike out a tooth of his manservant or maidservant, he shall in like manner make them free.
21:28. If an ox gore a man or a woman, and they die, he shall be stoned: and his flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner of the ox shall be quit. ”

“ I was taking a walk in the Tuileries, not thinking any more of my female extortioner, when a small man, with his hat cocked on one side of his head and a large nosegay in his button-hole, and sporting a long sword, swaggered up to me and informed me, without any further explanation, that he had a fancy to cut my throat. ”

“ Are you ready to accept these humiliating conditions, and to be branded as traitors and cowards?’
“‘Never,’ we answered; ‘never! Rather proscription, ruin and death.’
“‘My friends,’ he added, ‘exile is ruin; it is despair, it is desolation. Pause a while and reflect, before forming your resolve.’
“Not one of us flinched, and without hesitancy, we all cried out: ‘Rather than disown our mother country and become apostates, let exile, let ruin, let death, be our lot.’
“‘Your answer is noble and generous, my good friends, and your resolve is sublime,’ said he; ‘then let exile be our [Pg 57] lot. ”

“ Displacement or partial extrusion of the dead bone may cause complications, as when a sequestrum derived from the trigone of the femur perforates the popliteal artery or the cavity of the knee-joint, or a sequestrum of the pelvis perforates the wall of the urinary bladder. ”

“ All being ready at a signal the executioner enters and as soon as he gets immediately behind the prisoner gives his sword a whirl and bringing it down with full force severs the head from the body, except a small piece of skin which connects it with the torso. ”

“ Any force falling on any part not adapted to bear it, must either cause local destruction of tissue, or must, without destroying the tissue, continue to change it until it can change it no further; that is—until the modified reaction of the part has become equal to the modified action. ”

“ A physiological dissection, like that which transfusion of blood may be said, in some sort, to perform upon the glandular, nervous, and muscular systems, how complete soever it may be, has no value, unless the results of the analysis are combined; the experimental cutting up of the human body ought to end by recomposing the whole of it. ”

“ There is nothing more improbable in the notion that the sensible undulation was created at the observer's eye, with all the pre-requisite undulations prochronic, than in the notion that blood was created in the capillaries of the first human body. ”

“ You will perpetually hear vigorous protests against the justice of some particular sentence, but you will very rarely (but for the fear of such a negative I should say never) find men saying ‘just or unjust, the cruelty of the execution is so revolting that I protest against it.’ Men believed something with regard to the whole doctrine of expiation, of penal arrangements which they have not described to us and which we cannot understand save through the glimpses, sidelights, and guesses through what they imagine to be their plainest statements. ”

“ But if, even then, he do not better himself—if he understands how great the penalty is —he shall be subject to excommunication. But, if he is a wicked man, he shall be given over to corporal punishment.
24. What ought to he the measure of the excommunication. According to the amount of the fault the measure of the excommunication or of the discipline ought to be extended: which amount of the faults shall be determined by the judgment of the abbot. If any brother, however, be taken in lighter faults, he shall be prevented from participating at table. ”

“ Then there is a cement to the whole people, subtler, more underlying, than any thing in written constitution, or courts or armies—namely, the cement of a death identified thoroughly with that people, at its head, and for its sake. ”

“ It was the extreme but logical outcome of this manner of despising the body to subject it to all the penances, and to treat it with all the rigor, of the most rigid asceticism—to neglect it, to starve it, to scourge it, to mortify it in every possible way. One holy ascetic would never wash himself, or cut his toe-nails, or wipe his nose ”

“ Every time that he lifted a rock, she gave some sign of a fiercer wrench of pain, as when the executioner gives another twist to the rack; sometimes she thrust one hand against the window sill and swung part way around, as though about to fall ”

“ If grisly Death, all bones and scythe, had come stalking along it before their eyes at that moment, they would have shrieked, no doubt, and fallen flat, but he would have no more than answered to their feelings and fulfilled their expectations. ”

“ Story of the king who replaced the flesh.33
A foolish king saw from his palace two men below. And seeing that one of them had taken flesh from the kitchen, he had five palas of flesh cut from his body. When the flesh had been cut away, the man groaned and fell on the earth, and the king, seeing him, was moved with compassion, and said to the warder: “His grief cannot be assuaged because five palas of flesh were cut from him, so give him more than five palas of flesh by way of compensation.” The warder said: “When a man’s head is cut off, does he live even if you give him a hundred heads?” ”

“ With the system of exegesis then in vogue, it was not difficult to discover an emphatic command to this effect in John, XV. 6. "If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch and is withered; and men gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned." ”

“ The breeze was keen and so cutting, that one felt as if that part of the person exposed to it had undergone the process of excoriation, and when a stronger blast than usual swept over the naked and desolate-looking fields, its influence actually benumbed the joints, and penetrated the whole system with a sensation that made one imagine the very marrow within the bones was frozen. ”

“ We conceive extension penetrable as easily as impenetrable, empty or full, white or green, with properties by which it can be placed in relation with our organs, as easily as without them. We can conceive extension in a body acting on another body, or in pure space; in the sun which enlightens and warms the world, or in the vague dimensions of an empty immensity. ”

“ Art thou ignorant of that most ancient law of this thy country, whereby it is decreed that no one whatsoever, who hath chosen to fix there his dwelling, may be sent into exile? For truly there is no fear that one who is encompassed by its ramparts and defences should deserve to be exiled. ”

“ REPERCUSSION The principle of sympathetic vibration mentioned above also provides the explanation of the strange and little-known phenomenon called repercussion, by means of which any injury done to, or any mark made upon, the materialized body in the course of its wanderings will be reproduced in the physical body. ”

“ When the weapon is fixed superficially the extraction is made by pulling it back, and in like manner when it is lodged deep, but the opposite parts, if wounded, would occasion danger from hemorrhage or sympathy. ”

“ As soon as they are nearly marriageable, an incision is made in the under-lip, and a bone passed through it, which is exchanged from time to time for a thicker one, that the opening may be continually widened. ”

“ He first advances a step or two towards the corpse, shakes the reed over it, and immediately steps back; he then asks a variety of questions, to which assent is signified by the corpse impelling the bearers, as is supposed, towards the man with the reed, while a negative is implied by its producing a kind of rolling motion. ”

“ They have the power of sentencing to fine, to imprisonment, to corporal punishment, and to exile, independently of the spiritual power they possess, and which they not rarely exercise, of excommunication. ”

“ I will that mine executors do ordain XX comely torches of wax to burn at the time of mine exequies, and to be holden about my corpse by poor men. And on that four comely tapers of wax to be holden by four poor men in likewise ... I will that in nowise mine executors keep any solemn month’s mind in such manner as oftentimes it is used, but that which shall be done for me, I will it be done at my burying, and that without any hault or sumptuous manner of charge to be done. ”

“ An unwearied application, which commenced in the dawn and failed not till the very extinction of the last gleam of life, gave constancy and energy to the exertion of faculties far exceeding such as are entrusted to the majority. ”

“ A thing may be as firmly affixed to the land by gravitation as by clamps or cement. Its character may depend much upon the object of its erection. Its destination, the intention of the person making the erection, often exercises a controlling influence ”

“ When a cut is made in the skin they are borne to the breach by the flow of blood and there pile up and coagulate, forming a new skin to protect the raw flesh, somewhat as a breach in a rampart is hastily filled in with sand bags. ”

“ I only saw one case of a man who had been so punished, but many are those who have the tendons of arms and legs cut—a favourite punishment which gives the most dreadfully painful appearance to those who have undergone it. ”

“ Interdicts and excommunications, weapons in themselves so terrible, would, he foresaw, be armed with double force, when employed in a cause so much calculated to work on the human passions, and so peculiarly adapted to the eloquence of popular preachers and declaimers. ”