"Irritant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to go right down and jump off the dock when this counter-irritant blistered me and her tonic bitters were poured into my lethargic circulation. Stimulation brought a reaction of brighter views, however. Mrs. Dewey's old-fashioned drubbing held the mirror so that I could behold a life-sized burro every time I looked into ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... Heyward. They proved an increasing diversion of her thoughts, and slowly dispelled the morbid, leaden grief under which she had been sinking. Her new anxiety in regard to her lover's fortune and possible fate was a healthful counter- irritant. Half consciously she yielded to the influence of his strong, hopeful spirit, and almost before she was aware of it, she too began to hope. Chief of all, his manly tenderness and unbargaining love stole into her heart like a subtle balm; and responsive love, ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... food of the nourishing kind. Less than two weeks were required for all those ulcers to become covered with a new membrane: but for full three weeks only those liquid foods were given that had no rubbish in them to prove an irritant to the new, delicate membrane covering the ulcers. For a time after the third week there was only one light daily meal, with a second added when it seemed safe to ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... thrown off its bearings or left without an object, and immediately uneasiness takes possession of the mind. But in every novel or unclassified experience this is just what occurs; we do not know what will come next; and novelty per se becomes a mental irritant, while custom per se is a mental sedative, merely because the one baffles while the ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... temporizing, "try him with a little—just a little slap? Only a little one," she added hastily, for the mother looked at her oddly, "only as a sort of counter-irritant. And it needn't be really ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... expressed it, to push on with Arabic so as to be able to talk to the natives and understand things Mohammedan, but the very fact that Arabic was not going to help her to read Egyptian hieroglyphics, or understand anything at all about ancient Egypt, acted as an irritant to her brain, ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... is so hopelessly sick that he is unconscious of his pain and suffering. We had to describe to women their own position, to explain to them the burdens that rested so heavily upon them, and through these means, as a wholesome irritant, we roused public opinion on the subject, and through public opinion, we acted upon the Legislature, and in 1848-49, they gave us the great boon for which we asked, by enacting that a woman who possessed property previous to marriage, or obtained ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... rejected it. The more subtle people amongst us actually do reject it even now. The coarsifying of everything aesthetic.—Compared with Goethe's ideal it is very far behind. The moral contrast of these self-indulgent burningly loyal creatures of Wagner, acts like a spur, like an irritant and even this sensation is turned to account in ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... astounded ourselves by more originality than we had been accustomed to believe was left in the world altogether—while something put into our conversation just the right amount of polite friction to act as a counter-irritant, so that, when we left the table, each felt that he had been at his best—had been brilliant, in fact, and shone with lustre enough to make any ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... few such characters as John, who was not successful even in crime. He may be regarded roughly as the royal poultice who brought matters to a head in England, and who, by means of his treachery, cowardice, and phenomenal villany, acted as a counter-irritant upon the malarial ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... time as a devil, at another as a ghost or a were-wolf in order to frighten the sleepers, but he always ended by slipping into the room of Mademoiselle Jeanne de Lespoisse. The good seigneur of Montragoux was not overlooked in these games. The two sons of Madame de Lespoisse put irritant powder in his bed, and burnt in his room substances which emitted a disgusting smell. Or they would arrange a jug of water over his door so that the worthy seigneur could not open the door without the whole of the water being upset upon his head. In short, they played on him all sorts of practical ...
— The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard - 1920 • Anatole France
... stretch of road, and a grey dress vanishing. He set his teeth. Had he gained on her at all? "Monkey on a gridiron!" yelped a small boy. Hoopdriver redoubled his efforts. His breath became audible, his steering unsteady, his pedalling positively ferocious. A drop of perspiration ran into his eye, irritant as acid. The road really was uphill beyond dispute. All his physiology began to cry out at him. A last tremendous effort brought him to the corner and showed yet another extent of shady roadway, empty save for a baker's van. His front wheel suddenly shrieked ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... and as a detergent is probably equivalent to a slight excess of caustic soda. Glycerin, although originally considered an emollient, probably on account of its source and physical properties, is in reality, to some skins at least, a slight irritant. It is, in fact, an alcohol, not a fat. It does not pre-exist in fats, but is formed when the fat is decomposed by alkali ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... squire hastily. 'I was low last week, and read the Church papers by way of a counter-irritant. You have been starting a new religion, I see. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The baby has had so much milk that it is unable to digest all of it. A part of the milk spoils in the digestive tract. This fermented material is partly absorbed and irritates the whole system. A part of it remains in the alimentary tract where it acts as a direct local irritant to the intestines. When these are irritated, the blood-vessels begin to pour out their serum to soothe the bowels and the result is diarrhea. The sick child is fed often. Digestive power is practically absent. The additional ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... own language. But the class whence Mrs. Tufton proceeded is out of my social ken. She was stale-drunk; she had, doubtless, a vile headache; probably she felt twinges of remorse and apprehension of possible police interference. As a counter-irritant to this, she had worked herself into an astounding temper. She would give up none of her husband's belongings. She would have the law on them if they tried. Bad enough it was for her husband to come home after a year's desertion, leaving her penniless, and the moment he set eyes on ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... of human life, as all poets have agreed, I shall need no other argument to justify my choice in this imitation. One advantage the drama has above the other, namely, that it represents to view what the poem only does relate; and, Segnius irritant animum demissa per aures, quam quae sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus, as ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... cheesy secretions from the glands back of the head of the penis collect, and if the organ is not frequently cleansed these accumulated secretions may serve as an irritant. Such local irritation is one of the most prevalent causes of ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... to work, as he always ways did when actually hand in hand with war. Warfare was an art to him, neither a sport nor a counter-irritant; he was never impetuous over it. For a week he satisfied himself with a close investiture of the town on all sides. No supplies could get in nor fugitives out. Then, when everything was according to his liking, he advanced his engines, brought forward his towers, set ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... Great War," said Brown, "I went down with pneumonia. They painted my chest yellow, and, when I asked the Sister why, she said it was a counter-irritant. That's what you want to use now, my lad. Stand up to your little friend and beat him at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... versatile journal. The feature of most interest to the lay reader is the political homilies of the editor himself. Not only are they deeply interesting to the hoi polloi, but invaluable from a therapeutical standpoint, being successfully employed in cases of itch, smallpox, etc. as a counter irritant. I opine that one of these read in a loud voice to an Egyptian mummy would result in its immediate resurrection. If it had the faintest conception of humor it would wake up long enough to laugh, and if it hadn't it would come to life for the express purpose of hitting Jay Jay Lawrence, ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... he, "I spoke once about securing some thugs to act as a counter-irritant against Stone, but I have neglected it. How long will it take ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... digestion in five or ten minutes. An insufficiently cooked grain, although it may be palatable, is not in a condition to be readily acted upon by the digestive fluids, and is in consequence left undigested to act as a mechanical irritant. ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... almost continual head winds and with the lowest water in years, that discouraging prophecy invaded me and was repulsed. And that is why we have pessimists in the world. A pessimist is merely a counter-irritant. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... unchanged. Dr. Max Kassowitz, professor in the University of Vienna, said, after Dr. Atwater's statement had been published: "For the animal and human organism, alcohol is not both a food and a poison, but a poison only, which like other poisons is an irritant when taken in small doses while in larger ones it produces paralysis." In connection with the fact that alcohol is simply a poison, it may be worth stating, that the original meaning of the word "intoxicated" was "poisoned." After reading Dr. Atwater, the ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... bow before the facts which he excels in discovering" (7/19.), he has also been able to make direct application of the marvels of entomology to some of the problems of hygiene and medicine. He has shown that the irritant poison secreted by certain caterpillars, "which sets the fingers which handle them on fire," is nothing but a waste product of the organism, a derivative of uric acid; he does not hesitate to perform painful experiments on himself ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... form of neuritis, is not an uncommon affection among smokers. There is also often an irritant effect on the mucous membranes of eyes from the direct effect ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... Whether this new irritant—and everything seemed to annoy her now—had begun to tell on our beautiful Kate, or whether the gayety of the winter both at home and in Washington, where she had spent some weeks during the season, had tired her out, certain it was that when the spring came the life ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... states, rejects Moroccan administration of Western Sahara; the Polisario Front, exiled in Algeria, represents the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic; Algeria's border with Morocco remains an irritant to bilateral relations, each nation accusing the other of harboring militants and arms smuggling; Algeria remains concerned about armed bandits operating throughout the Sahel who sometimes destabilize southern ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... certain beetles make their horny wing-cases of that. I believe one man did think he had discovered a solvent for it in the gastric juice of the beaver, but that view is not widely entertained. So far as it exists in opium it can only act as a foreign substance and a mechanical irritant to the human bowels. Next come two inert, indigestible, and very similar gummy bodies, mucilagin and bassorine. Sugar, a powerfully active volatile principle, and a fixed oil (probably allied to turpentine) are the only other invariable constituents ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... strike organisations by the law, will avert this gathering storm? The Spectacle of Pleasure, the parade of clothes, estates, motor-cars, luxury and vanity in the sight of the workers is the culminating irritant of Labour. So long as that goes on, this sombre resolve to which we are all awakening, this sombre resolve rather to wreck the whole fabric than to continue patiently at work, will gather strength. It does not matter that such a resolve is hopeless ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... allies contain a large amount of starch. In subjecting this starch to heat it becomes paste-like in character. This starch paste acts in the same manner as the insoluble mucilage. It prevents the free movement of the crystals and in this way all irritant action is precluded. In heating the Indian turnip and other corms, it was found that the heat applied must be sufficient to change the character of the starch or the so-called acridity ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... mine lately analysed the results of his benevolent exertions upon a young man who had been seen to drink some dreadful liquid out of a bottle, and was carried to his surgery, writhing in most artistic agonies. He found not only no poison, but not the slightest trace of any irritant whatever. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... her chin. It was evident that something was wrong, and Myrtella became so concerned that she at last decided to take action. The panacea she applied to all ailments, moral or physical, was a counter-irritant. ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... the pupils and enlargement of the palpebral fissure, with some protrusion of the eyeball. The influence of the sexual system upon the eye appears to be far less potent in men than in women.[156] Sexual desire is, however, by no means the only irritant within the sexual sphere which may thus influence the eye; morbid irritations may produce the same effect. Milner Fothergill, in his book on Indigestion, vividly describes the appearance of the eyes sometimes seen in ovarian disorder: "The glittering ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... auxiliary in epilepsy connected with distemper; it is a counter-irritant and a derivative, and its effects are a salutary discharge, under the influence of which inflammation ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... supernatural powers—witches, in fact, and such was the belief in their power that, "without resistance, all immediately acquiesce in their demands." They also had physicians who used cold water, plasters of herbs, whipping with nettles (doubtless the principle of the counter irritant), the smoke of certain plants, and incantations, with a great deal of general, all-around ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... She had no home people of her own, and she pressed her nearest friends to make her "one of the family." "If," she would say, "you would let me share in any disappointments or troubles, I would feel more worthy of your love—I will tell you some of mine as a counter-irritant!" Many followed her behest with good result. "I'm cross this morning," wrote a young missionary at the beginning of a long letter, "and I know it is all my own fault, but I am sure that writing to you will put ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... should have been asleep, immersed in endless mathematical studies, and in solving, or attempting to solve, almost impossible problems. She found that the strenuous effort of the brain acted as a counter-irritant to the fretting of her troubles, and though it may seem an odd thing to say, mathematics alone, owing to the intense application they required, exercised a soothing effect upon her. But, as one cannot constantly sleep induced by chloral without paying for it in some ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... will do well to consider the probable result of the constant association with mental inferiors entailed by his work, and also to consider what counter-irritant is to be applied to balance, in ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... hastily held up the dress to be slipped on. She felt it was undoubtedly the moment, the moment sometimes called psychological, at which to introduce a counter-irritant. ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... her. She was finding a species of salve for her own disappointment in this irritant applied to another. "What does make you wear that ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... evening the bombardment on both sides was heavy. We had not fired during the night but began at seven in the morning and went on throughout the day. A message came in that the enemy would probably shell Batteries for four hours with gas shell, starting with irritant gas and going on to poison. He had already employed these tactics up north, as we learned later. Gas alert was on all night and we were listening strainedly for soft bursts. Heavy rain came down steadily all day, and ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... century, had killed the joy of art. He could not, however, altogether blot out the shadows of the sorrowful dream in which he had been cradled. He would not look behind him, but he well knew that the shadow was there. He was too healthy to seek a counter-irritant to his uneasiness in the lazy skepticism of the preceding epoch: he detested the dilettantism of men like Renan and Anatole France, with their degradation of the free intellect, their joyless mirth, their irony without greatness: a shameful method, fit for slaves, playing with the chains which ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... symptoms, according to their temperament and crisis, which they had from the stars and those celestial influences, variety of wits and dispositions, as Anthony Zara contends, Anat. ingen. sect. 1. memb. 11, 12, 13, 14. plurimum irritant influentiae, caelestes, unde cientur animi aegritudines et morbi corporum. [2538]One saith, diverse diseases of the body and mind proceed from their influences, [2539]as I have already proved out of Ptolemy, Pontanus, Lemnius, Cardan, and others as they ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... curtaining branches, and found its mark high on the bull's fore-shoulder. It penetrated—but not to a depth of more than two or three inches. And Grom, though elated by his good shot, realized that such a wound would be nothing more than an irritant. ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... as seen in (a) corrosive poisons; (b) irritant poisons, causing congestion and inflammation of the mucous membranes—e.g., metallic and vegetable irritants; (c) stimulants or sedatives to the nerve endings, as aconite, ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... intent, is generally in such a dose as to take immediate effect—although this is by no means necessary, as there are numerous substances which accumulate in the system, and when given in small and repeated quantities ultimately prove fatal—notably, antimony. The diagnosis of the effects of irritant poisons is not so difficult as it is in the case of narcotics or other neurotics, where the symptoms are very similar to those produced by apoplexy, epilepsy, tetanus, convulsions, or other forms of disease ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... as pernicious as its opposite. Singularly enough, it goes with it. One often finds inordinate self-esteem combined with the most abject condemnation of self. One can be played against the other as a counter-irritant; but this only as a process of rousing, for the irritation of either brings equal misery. I am not even sure that as a rousing process it is ever really useful. To be clear of a mistaken brain-impression, a man must recognize it himself; and ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... strange repulsiveness for the "solid man" of business. The look of a man with a cigar put in his mouth at a sharp upward angle and with a hat lurched like the cargo of a bad sailer, has a strong fascination for a young man. It is a strong irritant to the man whose companionship is an honor. You cannot do better than to frequent some church, rent a sitting, and have a positive engagement two or three times a week. You are a great gainer by this. It may cost you a little; but you will get all that back in moral capital—just ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... tubercles might be as readily absorbed as catgut ligature, and the germs, if any, fall to phagocytic prey. The Koch lymph is evidently not a poison to the germs, and probably has no other action on the affected organs than that of an irritant, having a selective affinity by virtue of the kinship with its contents. This theory of its action is supported by our common knowledge of the power of pyogenic agents to awaken old or slumbering inflammations, and the fact that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... organs" of England; and from this mine of wisdom he would on occasion quote. To most of us the views expressed by him seemed no more than comic oddities, but they were to myself so far a definite irritant that I devised, though I never showed them to him, a series of pictures called "The Radical's Progress," in which the hero began as a potboy in a public house, and ended as an overdressed ruffian, waving a tall silk hat and throwing rotten eggs at Conservative voters from a cart. A taste of Mr. ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... thither see Appendix B.] (678 ft.), on the River Tech, in the Eastern Pyrenees. A winter resort, with a dry, clear air, tonic and slightly irritant, and a mean temperature during the months of January, February, and March (taken collectively) of 48-1/3 deg. Fahr. The average number of fine days in the year is 210. The baths are naturally heated ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... quickly brought on her a tempest of anger. When the heart is burdened with a great anguish which cannot be expressed there is nothing like a burst of passion to relieve it. Tear-shedding is a weak ineffectual remedy compared with this burning counter-irritant ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... to be held by some to be violating its own stated policy."[16-87] To Kimball's successor, Robert B. Anderson,[16-88] Granger was even more blunt. The Steward's Branch, he declared, was "a constant irritant to the Negro public." He saw some logical reason for the continued concentration of Negroes in the branch but added "logic does not necessarily imply wisdom and I sincerely believe that it is unwise from the standpoint ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... "Ce livre n'est pas seulement stupide, mais c'est excessivement irritant, et absolument sans humeur." (Translation: "This book is not only charming, but it is excessively entertaining and ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... with extravagance of action as the symptom of intense religious conviction. And its influence on social development had been such that the susceptibility of the public mind to suggestions was as a raw wound in the presence of a powerful irritant. Such an institution as the Inquisition could only have maintained itself among a people thoroughly familiar with supernaturalism, and to whom its preservation was the first and ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... comparatively short time. So great was the need of him that he did not go home until after the Peace had been signed. He signed the Treaty under protest because he believed it was uneconomic and it has developed into the irritant that he prophesied it ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... proximity of poison ivy; still, it is unwise to dogmatize on such matters. Some people cannot eat strawberries—more's the pity!—while the rest of us get along with them very happily. Lately the Primula obconica has acquired an evil reputation as an irritant, so there is no telling what may not ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... consumption which is specially amenable to proper treatment. On the other hand, the soft, yellow, cheesy, tubercular matter, which is totally destitute of any vitality, is too often deposited in large quantities, acts on the adjacent lung tissue as an active irritant, causes inflammation, undergoes softening, forms cavities, defies treatment, and rapidly hurries the sufferers to a premature grave. These facts, taken in connection with the immunity from lung diseases enjoyed by those whose respiratory ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... seldom has real inflammation of the stomach. Gastric, or stomach, indigestion is the better name, because it actually signifies the true condition. It is indigestion that causes a child to vomit, though it is possible to have a true inflammation caused by the taking of irritant or corrosive drugs. ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... everything is the matter with him. He cannot sleep when he lies down, he cannot keep awake when he stands up. He cannot concentrate, but still he is pitifully worried about his life. The slightest irritant causes him to go off the handle. As he works himself up into his hysterical state as a reaction to a disagreeable person or problem, irregular blotches may appear on his face and neck. Generally, his hands and feet are clammy and perspiring, his face is abnormally flushed ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... that alcohol is an irritant poison, and that daily indulgence in its use originates dyspepsia, or indigestion, and many other serious complaints. Of all kinds of spirits the best as a tonic and ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... fleas, they may be employed for the purpose of absorbing the blood of animals. In the latter case, after the surface of the skin is pierced, a poison is forced down into the wound, for the purpose, it is thought, of making the blood more fluid. But this poison is of a highly irritant nature, and leaves a very painful feeling, accompanied by more or less inflammation ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Jude broke in with an eagerness that intensified the smile on Gaston's face, and bade the devil in him awake. The same devil that in boyhood days had made him such an irritant to the bullies ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... swore, and made his will in favor of that great man," Charles Townshend, whom, when in Boston, he had supplied with funds, and thus gained his objects. This Board soon became a severe and chronic local irritant. The foreign ways of its members, for most of them were strangers, supplied the wits of the town with material for satire, while its main acts were as iron to the soul of a high-spirited community. As it was created to collect taxes held to be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... virtue of his genial, ironical temperament, eminently clear brain, and undying achievements, belongs to the great poets of the ages. We to-day do not approve the timbre of his epoch: that impertinent, somewhat irritant mask, that redundant rhetoric, that occasional disdain for the metre. Yet he remains the greatest poete de l'amour, the most spontaneous, the most sincere, the most emotional singer of the tender passion that modern times ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Well, it happens that the fishermen's cracked hands have gaps across the inside bends of the fingers which reach the bone. The man goes to sleep with hands clenched; as soon as he can open them the skin and flesh part, and then you see bone and tendon laid bare for salt, or grit, or any other irritant to act upon. I have seen good fellows drawing their breath with sharp, whistling sounds of pain, as they worked at the net with those gaping sores on their gnarled paws. One such crack would send me demented, I know; but our men bear it all with rude philosophy. Ferrier learned ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... evil has been said of the stitch in the side; but it is nothing to the stitch to which we now refer, which the pleasures of the matrimonial second crop are everlastingly reviving, like the hammer of a note in the piano. This constitutes an irritant, which never flourishes except at the period when the young wife's timidity gives place to that fatal equality of rights which is at once devastating France and the conjugal relation. Every season ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... agitur res In scenis, aut acta refertur: Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem, Quam quae sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus, et quae Ipse sibi tradit spectator: non tamen intus Digna geri promes in scenam: multaque tolles Ex oculis, quae mox narret facundia praesens: Ill-humour'd, querulous; ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... that he mocked her. Her wrath was an effective counter-irritant for her trouble. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... tutors had expended themselves in vain. They came, full of optimism and self-confidence, to retire after a brief interval, shattered by the boy's stodgy resistance to education in any form or shape. To Mr. Pett, never at his ease with boys, Ogden Ford was a constant irritant. He disliked his stepson's personality, and he more than suspected him of stealing his cigarettes. It was an additional annoyance that he was fully aware of the impossibility of ever catching ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... or Zuleika, as it was first entitled, was written early in November, "in four nights" (Diary, November 16), or in a week (Letter to Gifford, November 12)—the reckoning goes for little—as a counter-irritant to the pain and ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... was the equivalent of charcoal iron, the processes following the smelting being conducted without contact with, or the use of, any mineral fuel; and that further blowing could be used to produce any quality of metal, that is, a steel with any desired percentage of carbon. Yet, the principal irritant to the complacency of the ironmaster must have been Bessemer's attack on an industry which had gone on increasing the size of its smelting furnaces, thus improving the uniformity of its pig-iron, without modifying the puddling process, ...
— The Beginnings of Cheap Steel • Philip W. Bishop
... had so complained of when we first came—that they weren't "feminine," they lacked "charm," now became a great comfort. Their vigorous beauty was an aesthetic pleasure, not an irritant. Their dress and ornaments had not a touch ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... mercifully interfered in his friend's behalf. He had no mind to defy a trustee, so, being of a diplomatic turn, determined to divert the tide of wrath by the simple expedient of producing a counter-irritant. He slipped out quietly from the line of culprits, and snatching up a well-packed snowball hurled it straight and true at the team standing in the road. The missile was a hard one, and the nervous young colts, their heads ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... roaring voice, like a strong gramophone with a blunt needle, submerged all argument. We have our dangerous men, but we have no one in the same class as Clemenceau. Such men enrage the people who know them, alarm the people who don't, set every one by the ears, act as a healthy irritant in days of peace, and are a public danger ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... active irritant to the skin, the bruised leaves blistering the hands, and causing a pustular eruption. Gerard says, "The wild Rue venometh the hands that touch it, and will also infect the face; therefore it is not to be admitted to meat, or medicine." It stimulates ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... arms and kissed her several times. Possibly she would have been really angered, deeply angered, had she realized that these cyclones were due, as a rule, not so much to appreciation of her as to the necessity of a strong counter-irritant to a sudden attack of awe of her as a fine lady and doubt of his own ability to cope with her. "Good-by, Rita," cried he, releasing her as suddenly as he had seized her and rushing toward the landing. "If I don't get back till the ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... Spaniard is quite adorably melancholy; there is something calm, severe, manly, and mysterious about him which interests me profoundly. His unvarying solemnity and the silence which envelops him act like an irritant on the mind. His mute dignity is worthy of a fallen king. Griffith and I spend our time over him as though he were ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... stood beside him. He laughed and jeered at Jerry with falsetto chucklings that were more like the jungle-noises of tree-dwelling creatures, half-bird and half-man, than of a man, all man, and therefore a god. This served as an excellent counter-irritant. Indignation that a mere black should laugh at him mastered Jerry, and the next moment his puppy teeth, sharp- pointed as needles, had scored the astonished black's naked calf in long parallel scratches from each of which leaped the instant blood. The black sprang ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to ...
— The Yellow Wallpaper • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... imperfect vision. "Fine chance we'd have had," he muttered, "if that happened to be a bulldog. Angel," he said, as the mate drew near, "hot coffee is good for moon-blindness, taken externally, as a blistering agent—a counter-irritant. We have no fly-blisters in the medicine-chest, but smoking-hot grease must be just as good, if not better than either. Have the cook heat up a potful, and you get me out ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... fresh group of girls are handling a black powder for another part of the detonator, and because of the irritant nature of the powder, are wearing white bandages round the nose and mouth. There is great competition for these rooms, the Superintendent says! The girls in them work on two shifts of ten and one-half hours each, and would resent a change to ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he said gravely; "I'd like to make you a present of these cardamom seeds. They do say they're the best thing goin' for the temper; kind o' counter-irritant, y' know; bite ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... were given in our honour. But the conviction grew upon me that Maude had no real liking for the social side of life, that she acquiesced in it only on my account. Thus, at the very outset of our married career, an irritant developed: signs of it, indeed, were apparent from the first, when we were preparing the house we had rented for occupancy. Hurrying away from my office at odd times to furniture and department stores to help decide such momentous questions as curtains, carpets, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... necessity, destroyed at a blow the literature of the street. Since the highwayman wandered, fur-coated, into the City, the patterer has lost his occupation. Robbery and murder have degenerated into Chinese puzzles, whose solution is a pleasant irritant to the idle brain. The misunderstanding of Poe has produced a vast polyglot literature, for which one would not give in exchange a single chapter of Captain Smith. Vautrin and Bill Sykes are already discredited, ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... Dorcas does us all a lot of good, as a counter-irritant. Whenever we begin to feel a little cross with each other, we all turn in and feel very cross with Dorcas. I was simply raging when Max and Bess sailed by in their purple and fine linen, but at least they hadn't pretended to ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... quell for the moment, but it does not moralise, nor abidingly deter. There must be an apparent proportion between the offence and the punishment. A Draconian code, visiting petty offences with the severity due to high misdemeanours, is more of an irritant than a represser of crime, because it ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... roach poison or in parlor matches, is sometimes eaten by children and has been willfully taken for the purpose of suicide. It is a powerful irritant. The first thing to be done is to give freely of magnesia and water; then to give mucilaginous drinks as flaxseed tea, gum water or sassafras pith and water; and lastly to administer finely powdered bone-charcoal, either in pill or in ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... may say with reasonable certainty that, in order to cure him completely, all that we need do is a simple and easy surgical operation—namely, to remove these irritant bodies." ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... to the fact that the movements are in the nature of defensive and protective movements of expression and mimicry and originally in reaction to some external irritant or as the result of some idea, and he proposed the name "mimische Krampfneurose" for them. This is somewhat allied to Breuer and Freud's ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... is nothing wrong with Reckitt's Blue except that it is not Reckitt's. Blue does not belong to Reckitt, but to the sky; black does not belong to Day and Martin, but to the abyss. Even the finest posters are only very little things on a very large scale. There is something specially irritant in this way about the iteration of advertisements of mustard: a condiment, a small luxury; a thing in its nature not to be taken in quantity. There is a special irony in these starving streets to see such a great deal of mustard to such very little meat. ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... laughed Jack. "One will act as a counter irritant to the other. And like curses like, you know. That's the new school of medicine. Who got up this little scheme ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... went away. Reflecting, she endeavoured to assure herself that the movement was an idle eccentricity, and no more. Yet, on the other hand, his subordinate position in an establishment where he once had been master might be acting on him like an irritant poison; and she finally ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... said he, "and how do you know that the spectacle of her grand insensibility might not with me be the strongest stimulus to homage? The sting of desperation is, I think, a wonderful irritant to my emotions: but" (shrugging his shoulders) "you know nothing about these things; I'll address myself to my mother. Mamma, I'm in ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... infection occurs, the surrounding parts become indurated, the ulcer assumes a crater-like appearance, not unlike that of a commencing epithelioma. If such an ulcer does not promptly heal on the removal of the irritant, a portion of the margin should be removed and submitted to microscopic examination to make sure that ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... annexing the Roumanian province of Bessarabia as a reward for their valiant support at Plevna, drove the Roumanians into the arms of Austria-Hungary, and for a whole generation not even the perpetual irritant of Magyar tyranny in Transylvania could avail to shake the entente between Vienna and Bucarest, strengthened as it was by the personal friendship of the Emperor Francis Joseph and King Charles. But the spell was broken ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... sleepiness, with slight redness of the conjunctiva. Sometimes constipation alternates with diarrhoea, the food being improperly commingled with the gastric and other juices, ferments, spoils, and becomes, instead of healthy blood-producing chyme, an irritant purgative. ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... wondered, indeed, that so puissant a star as Beulah Baxter should not be able to choose her own director, for surely the presence of this unlovely, waspishly tempered being could be nothing but an irritant in the daily life of the wonder-woman. Perhaps she had tolerated him merely for one picture. Perhaps he was ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... seem to be continually healthily irritant; the most important one of which is, to keep me a bachelor, and scare away all womankind from Rathelin Hall. He controls my servants, and helps me to spoil them. Such a set of heavy, bloated, good-for-nothing, impudent, and happy dogs, never before fed upon a baronet's substance, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... and idleness. At night they are attacked by a host of small black-beetles, one of which gets into Speke's ear and causes him fearful pain, biting its way in, and by no means can he extract it. It, however, acts as a counter-irritant, and draws away ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... is unendurable. The counter-irritant to grief is sanity, not emotion. When a woman is a little frightened the presence of the unafraid is what ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... it helps to dissipate one ridiculous popular fallacy about Meredith. Meredith, like most all the wits, has been accused of straining after image and epigram. Wit acts as an irritant on many people. They forget the admirable saying of Coleridge: "Exclusive of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms; and the greatest of men is but an aphorism." ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... sketches from text- 198:12 books. It is better to prevent disease from forming in mortal mind afterwards to appear on the body; but to do this requires attention. The thought of 198:15 disease is formed before one sees a doctor and before the doctor undertakes to dispel it by a counter-irritant, - perhaps by a blister, by the application of caustic or 198:18 croton oil, or by a surgical operation. Again, giving an- other direction to faith, the physician prescribes drugs, until the elasticity of mortal thought haply causes a 198:21 vigorous ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... to dissolve, so that practically little of it is digested. It serves a mechanical purpose in the digestive tract by helping to fill the organs and dilute the real food. If fibrous, it acts as an irritant and overcomes sluggishness of the intestines known as constipation. The outer coats of cereals are an example of coarse cellulose, as used in brown bread and some ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education
... opening made into the prepuce, the free ends being then welded together. Females were treated likewise, the ring including both labia. In some countries an agglutination of the parts induced by some irritant or a cutting instrument answered the purpose among females. Dunglison mentions that the prepuce was first drawn over the glans, and then that the ring transfixed the prepuce in that position; that the ancients so muzzled the gladiators to prevent them from ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... where the bedrooms are small and often dark, where the living room is also a kitchen, a laundry, and often a garment-making shop, are the growing children whose bodies cry out for exercise and play. They are often an irritant to the busy mother, and likely as not the object of her carping and scolding. The teeming tenements open their doors, and out into the dark passageways and courts, through foul alleys and over broken sidewalks, flow ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... the end of the first week just for some excitement. If you need a rest—and you are rather seedy—forget all about this Patterson business and plunge into something new. The best rest in the world is a counter-irritant." ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... to have legal force and recognition, and ought to govern expert testimony in the same way that the principles of evidence govern ordinary testimony. Without presuming to enumerate these, I will cite two or three for illustration. Certain substances, the so-called irritant poisons, such as arsenic, tartar emetic and the like, induce their toxic effects by causing irritation and inflammation of the alimentary canal. All authorities agree that poisoning by these substances cannot be proved, or even rendered, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... really meant to be unkind. There was of a truth no object to be gained by being brutal to her now. But that wallet, which she held so tightly clutched, acted as an irritant to his nerves. Never of very equable temperament and holding all women in lofty scorn, he chafed against all parleyings with his wife, now that the goal of his ambition was so ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... as the series of vital changes that occurs in the tissues in response to irritation. These changes represent the reaction of the tissue elements to the irritant, and constitute the attempt made by nature to arrest or to limit its injurious effects, and to repair the ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... gamecock, who may have fancied that he was being rocked in the branches of a pine-tree, bore the motion with greater fortitude than Latimer was able to command. A series of slaps directed at the pig's body were accepted more as an additional and pleasing irritant than as a criticism of conduct or a hint to desist; evidently something more than a man's firm hand was needed to deal with the case. Latimer slipped out of bed in search of a weapon of dissuasion. There was sufficient light in the room to enable the pig to detect this manoeuvre, ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... buttocks. If very large they are known as carbuncles, and if they occur on the fingers or toes they are described as whitlows. It is often the friction of a frayed-out collar or cuff, of tight waist clothing, or, in the case of whitlows, the introduction of some irritant or poison between the nail and the skin that determines the precise site ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... city, but it is in spite of the city. Gregariousness and individuality do not abide together; nor is external excitement the cause or the concomitant of thought. In fact this "mental massage" of the city is to real thinking about what a mustard-plaster is to circulation—a counter-irritant. The thinker is one who finds himself (quite impossible on Broadway!); and then finds himself interesting—more interesting than Broadway—another impossibility within the city limits. Only in the country can he do that, in a wide and negative ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... is some evidence to show that the poorer class of workmen do not consume a very large quantity of strong drink. But the vile character of the liquor sold to them acts on an ill- fed, unwholesome body as a poisonous irritant. We are told that "the East End dram-drinker has developed a new taste; it is for fusil-oil. It has even been said that ripe old whisky ten years old, drank in equal quantities, would probably import a tone of sobriety to the ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... mystery" man, and the best of his kind in New York, but the regular staff correspondent of his paper, the Leader, being ill, he had been sent in his place. He was a Harvard graduate and a gentleman with a taste for poetry, but he had a peculiar mind, upon which a murder mystery acted as an irritant—he could not rest until he had solved it—and his paper always put him on the great cases, such as those in which a vast metropolis like New York abounds. Now he was restless and discontented; the tour seemed to him the mere reporting of speeches and obvious incidents ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... applications will become painfully cold. Heating for a time is then effective, and cooling can again be given after the heating. Soapy lather on an inflamed part will do delightful service for a while, then it may become painful. Warm oil may then be used instead. When this becomes irritant, a return to the soap will cure. Or the hot bathing of a sore knee may be most effective for a while, and then may give rise to sore pain. In such a case, cease the bathing, and for a time apply the soapy lather. Do not despair because a thing "loses its effect." ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... European war was occupying most of the attention of the American people, but Mexico was a constant irritant. Carranza carried the Presidential art of biting the hand that fed him to an undreamed-of height. Wilson, Villa and Obregon had enabled him to displace Huerta, and Obregon had saved him from Villa. Yet he had quarreled with Villa, he was eventually to quarrel with Obregon; and ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... scrofula, consumption, or any similar disease can be transmitted by vaccination. In some infants, whose skin is very delicate, and especially in those, some members of whose family have been liable to eruptions on the skin, vaccination has seemed to act as an irritant, and to give occasion to an eruption, or aggravate an eruption already existing. Such cases, however, are not frequent, and the eruption is not more troublesome than those which often appear in teething children. The occurrence of actual erysipelas around ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... sneezing, and will relieve passive headache in this way. The leaves have been applied as a blister to the wrists in rheumatism, and when infused in boiling water as a poultice over the pit of the stomach as a counter-irritant. For sciatica the tincture of the bulbous buttercup has proved ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... from wakeful vigils seemed to give him no rest. His food, he thrust from him with the petulance of a child; and at every suggestion I could make, he sneered with a quiet, gentle insistence that was utterly discomfiting. To be sure, I had Father Holland's boisterous good cheer as a counter-irritant; for the priest had remained at Fort Douglas, and was ministering to the tribes of the Red and Assiniboine. But it was on her, who had been my guiding star and hope and inspiration from the first, that I mainly depended. As hard, merciless winter closed in, I could not think of those ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... silences, These hills that in the sunset melt and burn, This proud stern people, these dead seas and lakes, These sombre cedars, this intense still sky, To me, o'erwearied with life's din and strain, Are grateful as the solemn blank of night After the fierce day's irritant excess; Besides, a deep absorbing interest Detains me here, fills up my mind, and sways My inmost thoughts—has got, as 'twere a gripe Upon my very life, as strange as new. I scarcely know how well to speak of this, Fearing your raillery at best—at ...
— A Roman Lawyer in Jerusalem - First Century • W. W. Story |
