Laying on of hands

“ If she could hold his head in her hands—for she had fine, silken hands that adjusted themselves with a rare pressure, wrapping his weakness up in life—then his head would gradually grow healed, and he could rest. ”

“ Their shambling gait and crippled figures,—the terrible evidence of their malady,—twisted limbs, contorted into every horrible variety of lameness, hands with deficient fingers, faces without noses, are the ordinary symbols. ”

“ Behold him sitting on a chair; he is not sitting, but braced upon its angles, as if his bones were of iron and his nerves steel; every nerve is drawn, his hands are closed like a miser's—it is his lips and head that speak, not his tongue and heart. ”

“ To sit beside a pregnant woman or a patient under medical treatment with clasped hands, says the grave Pliny, is to cast a malignant spell over the person, and it is worse still if you nurse your leg or legs with your clasped hands, or lay one leg over the other. ”

“ Every limb seems relaxed with laziness; his hands are partly closed—for it would be labour to hold the fingers extended; his knees are turned to rest upon the earth—for to bear their own weight would be impossible ”

“ No position can be retained long; you lose your balance and whirl over, first on your back and then on your face, and so on. You can lie comfortably, on your back, with your head out, and your legs out from your knees down, by steadying yourself with your hands. ”

“ If the room is not warm enough for you to do this, it is a good thing for you to strip to your waist and then to swing your arms about, much as you did in the morning, only not quite so long, and to rub your arms and neck and shoulders all over with your hands. ”

“ If the face or head is held, crying results, quickly followed by screaming. The body stiffens and fairly well coördinated slashing or striking movements of the hands and arms result; the feet and legs are drawn up and down ”

“ So you, who are untrained of touch, do not recognize a hand by the grasp; and so, too, any description I might give would fail to make you acquainted with a friendly hand which my fingers have often folded about, and which my affection translates to my memory. I cannot describe hands under any class or type; there is no democracy of hands. Some hands tell me that they do everything with the maximum of bustle and noise. Other hands are fidgety and unadvised, with nervous, fussy fingers which indicate a nature sensitive to the little pricks of daily life. ”

“ The eyes being of small use, he must touch with his hands. Those hands are the most distinctive feature of his person; they are full of expression; tenderly groping hands, that hesitate and fumble in wistful fashion like the feelers of some sensitive creature of night. There is trouble, too, in that obese and sluggish body; trouble to which the unhealthy complexion testifies. ”

“ Thus, the muscles which move the arms and legs become relaxed before those which support the head, and the latter before those which maintain the erectness of the back. This, however, is not always the case, for, as we have already seen, individuals will occasionally walk, and keep their position on horseback, while in a sound sleep, and all of us have seen persons slumbering in church, their heads dropping on their breasts, but yet firmly holding their prayer-books in their hands under the pretense of going through the services. ”

“ The light shone bright on crooked backs, slightly distorted limbs, the pallor of sickness, the stains of rough weather; on girls meekly folding hands that daily scrub and scour; on laboring men stooping the shoulders that habitually carry weights; on spectacled old women with eyes worn out by incessantly peering at the tiny stitches of their untiring needles ”

“ As ill luck would have it, I was underneath; but, in spite of the shock of the fall, I still managed to keep hold of his wrists, though I had some trouble to prevent him from biting my hands and face. ”

“ He has a strange method of frequently twirling his fingers, and twisting his hands. His body is in continual agitation, see-sawing up and down; his feet are never a moment quiet; and, in short, his whole person is in perpetual motion. ”

“ She wondered how long he would be able to hold the beast—to hang on? She remembered having heard that, after a time, the strain of pulling against a runaway becomes too much for human nerves and muscles, and that a man’s hands grow numb—and helpless! ”

“ Is it really necessary to struggle? Wouldn't it be better to put my head in my hands and drop into the softness and restfulness of my new armchair?
When we came here a little while ago, it was he who was the first to experience this sort of trouble. We had been looking over our home and when the tour was ended he took me in his arms, and I felt the warm flesh of his kiss under my chin. A blow seemed to strike my bowels. I tightened up into a ball, my muscles tense, thrown on the defensive. An evil fear made me shiver. He raised his head. I had never seen him look so tragic. ”

“ I had placed her on my one knee as before, with her hands resting on the other, on which lay our chains. One arm was round her form, the other hand gripped the chains lest they should slip. She slumbered. The stars grew dim; I was awakened by a wild shriek and a jerk at my fetters. I had fallen asleep, the hand relaxed its hold, a movement of hers had thrown the chains from my knee towards the ground. The whole weight of the united mass was jerked on her slender wrists. What wonder that wild scream of anguish! She had fainted. I carried her to the fountain to bathe her bleeding arms. ”

“ Weakness of the arms is far less frequently observed; but occasionally we hear complaints that on the performance of domestic duties, needlework, etc., which previously could be carried out quite easily, the arms and hands are now speedily fatigued, and rendered functionally incapable. ”

“ The man lying stretched out on his back, the woman sits down upon his member with her back to the man's face, who presses her sides between his thighs and legs, whilst she places her hands upon the bed as a support for her movements, and stooping her head, her eyes are turned towards the buttocks of the man. ”

“ They bite their hands, tear the bed-clothes, bury their nails in their faces disfigured with rage. Then they rise to escape, and fall heavily backwards into bed, exhausted, pallid, with distorted face, a rattling in the throat, and their eyes rolling in the most awful despair. ”

“ All these messages are sent at the rate of one hundred feet a second, and the eye, face, hands, feet, and tongue all feel sorry for the burnt finger, and do all they can to help it.
Every part of the body, the bones, muscles, stomach, heart, and lungs, has these useful little nerves to let the master know when anything is wrong with them. ”

“ All the muscles of the body may become rigid, or may be thrown into convulsive movements. The hands are alternately clenched and opened, often with a twitching movement. The arms may be protruded, as if to avert some dreadful danger, or may be thrown wildly over the head. ”

“ He could have flung his arms about her hips and held her still, for his arms were trembling with desire to seize her and only the stress of his nails against the palms of his hands held the wild impulse of his body in check. ”

“ In stench, in heated rooms, amid the constant whirling of a thousand wheels, have little fingers and little feet been kept in ceaseless action, forced into unnatural activity by blows from the heavy hands and feet of the merciless overlooker, and the infliction of bodily pain by instruments of punishment invented by the sharpened ingenuity of insatiable selfishness.... ”

“ There he remains a moment, then, flexing his arms until his rigid body rests on hands and toes, he regains the original position by performing the same movements in reverse order, repeating the exercise as long as piety, the weight of his sins, or his dread of evil spirits suggests. ”

“ It will become a fixed mannerism, and a bad one, for the hands are thus concealed, the shoulders and head may droop forward, and the hands may be so tightened together behind the back as to cause nervous tension in the body and in the voice. ”

“ Should the feeling to be expended be still greater in amount—too great to find vent in these classes of muscles—another class comes into play. The upper limbs are set in motion. Children frequently clap their hands in glee; by some adults the hands are rubbed together; and others, under still greater intensity of delight, slap their knees and sway their bodies backwards and forwards. ”

“ Hence some have persisted in sitting or standing for years together in one unvaried posture; supporting an almost intolerable burden; dragging the most cumbrous chains; exposing their naked bodies to the scorching sun, and hanging with the head downward before the fiercest fires. ”

“ Shoulders are bent, spines are curved, the blood, lacking its supplies of oxygen, loses vitality and creeps sluggishly through the veins, carrying no vivid color to the cheek and lips, giving no activity to the brain, no fire to the eye. Let women throw away their fancy work, dispense to a degree with ruffles and tucks, and, in a dress that will admit of a long breath, walk in the clear bracing air. ”

“ He stands with his hands stretched out in a constrained position, every muscle tense, his breast heaving and voice trembling from the effort, and the natural result is that before he is done praying his fingers begin to twitch involuntarily and thus cause the beads to move. ”

“ We can mingle with the deep breathing simple exercises of lifting each arm slowly and heavily from the shoulder, and then letting it drop a dead weight, and pausing while we feel conscious of our arms resting without tension in the lap or on the couch.
But all this has been with relation to the body, and it is the mental and moral dust of which I am writing. The physical work for quiet is only helpful as it makes the body a better instrument for the mind and for the will. ”

“ We raise our hands when we want to jump up; we elevate our eyebrows when we look up, to see further into the distance; we slap our foreheads in order to stimulate the muscles of our legs, dormant because of long sitting; we lay the palms of our hands on our mouths and turn the trunk because we discover in the course of life rather more disagreeable than pleasant things and hence we try to keep them out and to turn away from them. ”

“ He sat looking down at his hands—his fine strong unscarred hands. Suddenly, and unreasonably he thought of another pair of hands—his mother’s—with the knuckles enlarged, the skin broken—expressive—her life written on them. Scars. She had them. ”

“ Your hand seeks his little legs, and you dare not touch his chest, which you have kissed so often, for fear of encountering that ghastly leanness which you foresee, but the contact of which would make you break out in sobs. ”

“ Out of policy you strive to obey for a while longer, but every muscle in your eager body rebels. You twist and toss; you stick up one knee, and then the other, and then both at once; and finally a leg dangles to the floor over the outer edge of your unhappy bed. ”

“ Still keeping his head within her arms, she rises slowly to her knees, and then the men, careful to humor her, so lift the body that she—even when she has gained her feet—has still this dear burden in her keeping. ”

“ You sink farther and farther into your chair and debate with yourself [Pg 55] whether you ought to run like a coward or stay and die like a hero. One of your legs goes to sleep and the rest of you envies the leg. You can feel your whiskers growing, and you begin to itch in two hundred separate places, but can't scratch. ”

“ If rough work is done the soft and delicate hand is pained; if, however, the work is persevered in, the hand ceases to be so sensitive, the skin grows thick and horny, so that rough surfaces, and even hot coals, can be handled with impunity ”

“ The arms dangle from the shoulders; as if they were almost cut away, and hung by shreds. The legs totter and bend at the knees, as ready to sink under the weight of the reeling body. And a general incapacity, corporeal and mental, exhibits human nature sunk below the brutal. ”

“ Her white forefinger quivering aloft
At greatest arm’s-length of her dainty arm,
In menace sweeter than a kiss could be
And terribler than sudden whispers are
That come from lips unseen, in sunlit room. ”

“ It is equally annoying to have one's hand clutched aloft in grotesque affectation and shaken violently sideways, as though it were being used to clean a spot out of the atmosphere. What woman does not wince at the viselike grasp that cuts her rings into her flesh and temporarily paralyzes every finger? ”

“ It sounds little better than a mockery to speak of deeds of valour and personal prowess, whilst we submit to confine our limbs in garments that cramp the frame and resist every healthy movement of the body. ”

“ I move now quickly, now slowly. When I am at home I go with my legs naked as far as the ankles. I am slack in duty and reckless in speech, and specially prone to show irritation over anything which may disgust or irk me. ”

“ At a somewhat earlier age than that in which habit spasms become common, and before bed wetting appears as a formidable difficulty, we meet with another group of habitual actions which yet retain their voluntary character. Among such habitual actions are thumb sucking, thigh rubbing, and air swallowing. ”

“ The hand and foot are usually the only lost parts very distinctly felt, the intervening tracts seeming to disappear. A man, for example, whose arm was cut off at the shoulder-joint told me that he felt his hand budding immediately from his shoulder. ”