Negress

“ You send for a negress, who picks at your foot for a few minutes with a common pin—they won't use a needle or any other instrument, because if they did the bag would break, and the eggs would get into your blood—and presently, with a little hurting, she triumphantly holds it up at the end of the pin, puts on a soothing ointment, and you are all right at once. ”

“ In other words it is necessary that there should be a drop or fall, or at least the weight of the body, to produce the characteristics of hanging. The jerk of the fall or sudden dependence of the body upon the ligature causes a much greater constriction of the ligature on the neck, and in a different direction, than in strangulation; and also a much greater pressure on the blood-vessels and nerves of the neck. ”

“ Immediately a dull, sickening pain becomes apparent at the base of the neck, and insensibility rapidly ensues. This arises from the affection of the respiratory nerve centre. In a short space of time the face becomes dark and congested through the veins being gorged with blood, and the heart ultimately ceases to beat. ”

“ The almost stagnant blood beginning to circulate again through nearly collapsed veins and arteries, inflicts tortures upon every nerve—tortures unheard of in the cruelest inquisition. Red-hot needles seem to be piercing every nerve of the body and pore of the skin. It is an agony that even the torpor of the brain does not overcome. ”

“ Some time after the soup, about eight o'clock, the Fighting Sheeney and The Trick Raincoat suddenly set upon Jean le Nègre à propos of nothing; and began pommelling him cruelly. The conscience-stricken pillar of beautiful muscle—who could have easily killed both his assailants at one blow—not only offered no reciprocatory violence but refused even to defend himself. ”

“ It seemed to the desperate man that hours passed as he clung doggedly to the huge trunk which trembled and shivered and plunged wildly at the pounding impact, when suddenly it brought up against a half-submerged rock, stopped dead, grated and jarred at the crash of following logs, poised for an instant, and then slanted into deeper water, while up the man's leg shot a twisting, wrenching pain, sickening—nerve-killing in its intensity. ”

“ This change, as I have seen in my practice of medicine, passes up the nerves towards the centres, and occasions a more or less constant irritation of the nerve-fibres, producing neuralgia, which is usually referred to that part of the lost limb to which the affected nerve belongs. This pain keeps the brain ever mindful of the missing part, and, imperfectly at least, preserves to the man a consciousness of possessing that which he has not. ”

“ Along with the phenomena of fixed spinal tenderness, without distinct neuralgia of any particular nerve, we not unfrequently observe the development of more or less decided tenderness of some of the internal surfaces of the body. I have recently had under my care a young woman in whom a very tender point was developed over the second cervical vertebra, and who suffered from such persistent tenderness of the whole posterior part of the pharynx, that I was for some time seriously apprehensive of the existence of spinal caries and post-pharyngeal abscess. ”

“ Howbeit no further harm came to them beyond this, so that the next morning they went their way in peace; and I warrant you Master Neckbone got no kicks that day from them, departing. [Footnote: This incident of the Neckbone is very much like the common nursery tale of Teeny Tiny, in which an old woman takes home a human bone and puts it in the cupboard. It torments her all night by its cries.] ”

“ The poison has been proved—the hand is sure:—he shall die!—and Nevers—the hated Nevers, whose life I dare not attempt, shall feel my deadly revenge—nor shall any thing stop my vengeance! I shall make my country bleed in--" He stopped, as if exhausted by his fury and revenge.
During the time that the King was speaking, the lady drew from her bosom a phial filled with bright red liquor, and gave it to the Negerss, who rubbed the temples of the King of Navarre with it; after which he sat as if transfixed to the tripod. ”

“ If the neck of the victim be broken by the alleged shrewd arrangement of knot and noose, and by the alleged shrewd calculation of the weight of the victim and the length of slack, then why do they manacle the arms of the victim? Society, as a whole, is unable to answer this question. But I know why; so does any amateur who ever engaged in a lynching bee and saw the victim throw up his hands, clutch the rope, and ease the throttle of the noose about his neck so that he might breathe. ”

“ I happened at the time to be back in the cottage where we had slept, helping Jenkins to concoct a stew for lunch. It was pitiful to see the terror of the old peasant woman and her husband, who sat dumbly in their kitchen, waiting for one of the great projectiles to come and wreck their home. As each shell [Pg 127] fell the old woman lifted her hands and gave a little pitiful gasp. It was all more than she could understand, and no efforts of Jenkins or myself could calm her. ”

“ The pathological effects of hanging are partly those of strangulation, to which must be added the effects of the weight or fall of the body, sustained as it is only by some form of ligature around the neck. ”

“ I expect, in short, to convince most readers that the essential seat of every true neuralgia is the posterior root of the spinal nerve in which the pain is felt, and that the essential condition of the tissue of that nerve-root is atrophy, which is usually non-inflammatory in origin. ”

“ The first attacks in all forms of neuralgia are often comparatively light, and the severity of the pain gradually increases as the attacks multiply. We have frequently had patients unacquainted with anatomy, map out the distribution of a nerve very perfectly, simply describing the portion of the body in which the pain was experienced. ”

“ There is nothing more sickening than the pressure of water on a bleeding wound. He laid his head on his arm and the world went round a great deal too fast. But it seemed impossible to get one’s hand out of the water that hurt so. ”

“ Spinal irritation, in my sense, includes all those conditions in which, without any special mental affection, and without any single nerve being definitely affected, there are sensations varying between mere cutaneous tenderness, often of a large and irregular surface, and acute pain approaching neuralgia in character, together with fixed tenderness of certain vertebræ on deep pressure. ”

“ A seton perhaps was not so bad as the punishment with sticks, but it was very painful too. The patient’s skin, as much as one can grip in the hand, is pinched up behind the neck and all of it stabbed through with a knife which produces a long and wide wound all over the back of the neck. ”

“ When the necks are thoroughly cured in the sun, turn them right-side-out again and place them on your children's shoulders. Then they will find it does not hurt them to swallow.'
"I thanked the great Doctor and returned home, where I did as he had told me. For the last three days the necks of not only my children but of my wife and myself, as well, have been hanging on the bushes to be cured; so we could not possibly have eaten your plum-pudding. Indeed, it was only an hour ago when I finished putting the neck on the last of my children, and at that moment your soldiers came and arrested me." ”

“ The perverted condition of the membranous covering of the nerves gives rise to pressure within the sheath of the nerve, and to pain as a consequence. To the pain thus excited the term neuralgia is commonly applied, or 'tic;' or, if the large nerve running down the thigh be the seat of the pain, 'sciatica.' Sometimes this pain is developed as a toothache. ”

“ My thighs all smothered with blood, seemed to adhere to the thighs of my enemy; it felt as though our two bodies were melting into one. My temples were throbbing, my nerves overstrung to breaking point. The vigorous pushing, and its rapidity, burnt my inside so terribly that I thought red-hot iron was thrust into my vitals. ”

“ The general tenderness is so far merely cutaneous that deep pressure is ordinarily borne better than the lightest finger-touch. But besides this there are usually one or several spots in which the tenderness is more profound and genuine. There is almost sure to be some point in the spinal column where firm pressure not merely evokes a complaint of pain, but also induces secondary objective phenomena connected with distant organs, such as nausea and vomiting when the cervical vertebræ are tender, severe gastric pain when the dorsal vertebræ are tender, etc. ”

“ A very important point is to be noted in connection with these sub-inflammatory swellings in connection with neuralgia. Pressure on them will, frequently, not merely excite the neuralgic pains in the branches of the affected nerve, but send a powerful reflex influence through the cord to distant organs, causing vomiting, for instance, or affecting the action of the heart in a very perceptible manner. I shall show, when I come to speak of the phenomena of so-called spinal irritation, that this circumstance has led to erroneous influences in many [85] cases. ”

“ I noticed that each face bore a look of unconcern and of defiance, each carefully hid a rusty dagger beneath its vestments, and on their shoulders they bore triumphantly a large chopping-block still dyed with dark stains of blood. And on this block leant a man with a drunken face and tottering legs, grotesquely supporting himself on the worn-out handle of an axe. ”

“ Her elbows and wrists [310] were grazed against the rough edge of the window-ledge—the sheet twisted at her weight, and jarred her shoulder heavily against the house wall. Her arms seemed to be tearing themselves from their sockets. But she clenched her teeth, felt with her feet for the twisted ivy stems on the side of the house, found foothold, and the moment of almost unbearable agony was over. She went down, helped by feet and hands, and by ivy and sheet, almost exactly as she had planned to do. ”

“ Thus, if we suppose a neuralgia to depend on morbid action within the spinal cord, then we may galvanize the spine, taking care to make the current come out through any vertebra over which we detect tenderness. If we suppose the seat of the disease to be in the nerve-root in the mere ordinary sense of the word, then we apply the positive pole to the vertebra opposite the highest nerve-origin that can be concerned, and we stroke the negative pole down by the side of the spinous processes, some forty times in succession. ”

“ The first and most obvious effect of the Neilgherry climate on invalids is to repel the blood from the surface, and to throw it on the internal organs, by constricting the vessels of the skin and decidedly checking perspiration and transpiration. The liver, viscera, head and lungs are affected by this unequal distribution of the circulation, the effect being increased in the case of the respiratory organs by the rarefaction of the mountain air. ”

“ The other strikes of veins from between east and south to the region between west and north are esteemed more or less valuable, according to whether they are nearer or further away from the above-mentioned strikes, but with the same hanging- wall, footwall, and outcrops. But the veins having their strike from north to south, their hangingwall toward the west, their footwall and their outcrops toward the east, are better to work than veins which extend from south to north, whose hangingwalls are toward the east, and footwalls and outcrops toward the west. ”

“ This Negus evidently is not so sweet as usual: a little punch-in' his head would do him some good. At all events this Negus must be stirred up and taken down pretty sharply.
THE TOWN MOUSE'S TRIALS.
[Dr. Milner Fothergill has published a pamphlet on The Effects of Town Life upon the Human Body.]
O Doctor Milner Fothergill, it's hard to hear you state,
That people who must dwell in towns will all deteriorate;
We all live at too fast a rate, and ought to be more placid,
And, like the Ichthyosaurus, we develop too much acid. ”

“ His neck was now in a straight line between the bed-posts, bent backward, and as he breathed, he emitted from his lips little hoarse noises that seemed to struggle out protestingly from his strained throat. He knew that he could not strangle himself to death, for as soon as unconsciousness came, he would relax his hold. ”

“ Drunken and otherwise helpless persons have been strangled by falling forward with the neck against a firm substance.
STRANGULATION. Symptoms and Treatment.
The symptoms and post-mortem appearances in strangulation will vary, according as the deprivation of air is sudden or gradual, partial or complete; and whether there is coincident pressure on the great arteries, veins, and nerves of the neck. ”

“ Even as he spoke the pulses in the old man’s forehead were seen to throb, and the veins in his neck to swell as they had swollen after he had swallowed the poison; then once more they shrank to their natural size. ”

“ But, the only evidence that they afford as to the situation of the mischief is, that they uniformly point to the central end of a particular nerve; and accordingly I have already shown, in the chapter on Pathology, that the attentive study of these very complications furnishes us with some of the most powerful arguments upon which rests my theory that in neuralgia there is always centric mischief. ”