Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Amputation   /ˌæmpjətˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Amputation

noun
1.
A condition of disability resulting from the loss of one or more limbs.
2.
A surgical removal of all or part of a limb.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Amputation" Quotes from Famous Books



... from the depot and ought to get there in three days. What progress! We have two days' food but barely a day's fuel. All our feet are getting bad—Wilson's best, my right foot worst, left all right. There is no chance to nurse one's feet till we can get hot food into us. Amputation is the least I can hope for now, but will the trouble spread? That is the serious question. The weather doesn't give us a chance; the wind from N. to N. W. ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... the Theseus, immediately suffered the amputation of his arm; but, some mistake having occurred, in taking up one of the arteries, which is described as having been united with a nerve, by an ingenious French surgeon, he long felt the ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison

... returned, bleeding and in great pain, he would not go on board the Seahorse, saying that he would not have Mrs. Fremantle alarmed by seeing him in such a condition, without any news of her husband, who had accompanied the landing. The amputation of the shattered limb was therefore performed ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... belonging to the guns next to mine were wounded in the early part of the action, and I had to spring with all my might to keep three or four guns supplied with cartridges. I saw two of these lads fall nearly together. One of them was struck in the leg by a large shot; he had to suffer amputation above the wound. The other had a grape or canister sent through his ankle. A stout Yorkshire man lifted him in his arms, and hurried with him to the cock-pit. He had his foot cut off, and was thus made lame for life. Two of the boys stationed on the quarter-deck were killed. They ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... while dissecting infused a poison into his system that undermined his health. In May, while seeking restoration in the purer air of Bale, his horse fell with him, and his left leg was so badly broken that amputation became necessary. Until the autumn he seemed to be doing well, but then the poison imbibed at Frankfort declared itself once more, and a slow fever set in which terminated in death on the 26th ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... fact, we had many oars to pull. There were so many characters, that each of us took four at the least, and the future middy had six. He, this wicked little middy, [4] caused the greatest affliction to Sultan Amurath, forcing him to order the amputation of his head six several times (that is, once in every one of his six parts) during the first act. In reality, the sultan, though otherwise a decent man, was too bloody. What by the bowstring, and what by the cimeter, he had so ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... they were closeted with Max Marcus, senior member of the firm of Marcus, Weinschenck & Grab, and a lodge brother of Hymie Margolius. Max made a specialty of amputation cases. He was accustomed to cashing missing arms and legs at a thousand dollars apiece for the victims of rolling-mill and railway accidents, and when the sympathetic jury brought in their generous verdict Max paid the expert witnesses and pocketed ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass

... displayed here. In the window of the haberdasher, shirts—mere torsos with not a leg below or head above—yet disport themselves in gay neckwear. Despite their dismemberment they are tricked to the latest turn of fashion. Can vanity survive such general amputation? Then ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... principally concerns those husbands who have courage enough to enter into those paths of machiavelism, such as would not have been unworthy of that great king of France who endeavored to secure the happiness of the nation at the expense of certain noble heads. Here, the subject is the same. The amputation or the weakening of certain members is always to the advantage ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac

... of those in power, men were taken up and bastinadoed in the open streets until they died from sheer agony, and their relations did not dare to remove the bodies for burial until their tyrants had left the scene. Cruelty became almost the second nature of the people. Theft was checked by the amputation of the first joint of the fore-finger of the right hand for the first offence. For the second, the whole hand was sacrificed, and for the third, the head itself was forfeited. Sometimes, in cases of capital punishment, decapitation was performed by degrees! and other ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne

... corrupt, and gave reason to hope that there were means of reforming it. He collated the old copies, which none had thought to examine before, and restored many lines to their integrity; but, by a very compendious criticism, he rejected whatever he disliked, and thought more of amputation than ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... conveyed in my text as are expressed, in different imagery, by the solemn words that precede it. The 'salting with fire' comes substantially to the same thing as the amputation of the hand and foot, and the plucking out of the eye, that cause to stumble. The metaphor expresses a painful process. It is no pleasant thing to submit the bleeding stump to the actual cautery, and to press it, all sensitive, upon the hot plate that will stop the flow of blood. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... parchmentroll energetically) This book tells you how to act with all descriptive particulars. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Virag is going to talk about amputation. Our old friend caustic. They must be starved. Snip off with horsehair under the denned neck. But, to change the venue to the Bulgar and the Basque, have you made up your mind whether you like or dislike women in male ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... Clay cheerfully, "I may tell you that your unprofessional opinion is rot. Now, if I'd a brother sawbones here to perform amputation, I might have a chance—say, one in ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... said thoughtfully. "You mentioned the amputation of a pickpocket's hands. It seems to me that this technique is just as drastic, just as crippling to the person to ...
— Nor Iron Bars a Cage.... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... can I live?" inquired a fine-looking, florid-faced young man of two-and-twenty, with a shattered thigh, who had just been brought in and had learned from the Doctor that amputation ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong

... remedies, "cuncta prius tentanda," all lawful expedients must be used to avoid it. As war is the extremity of evil, it is, surely, the duty of those, whose station intrusts them with the care of nations, to avert it from their charge. There are diseases of animal nature, which nothing but amputation can remove; so there may, by the depravation of human passions, be sometimes a gangrene in collective life, for which fire and the sword are the necessary remedies; but in what can skill or caution be better shown, than preventing such dreadful operations, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... uprooted from the life of the country, who preened themselves on not sharing the prejudices and passions of the rest of humanity, or else made a mock of them. It is a fine sort of fame that is won by self-amputation from life, so as to be unlike other men! Let all such artists perish! We will go with the living, be suckled at the breasts of the earth, and drink in all that is most profound and sacred in our people, and all its love from the family and the soil. ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... amputation is the only thing to be done, there's always a chance. Personally, I'm very hopeful, though I've been called a dreamer more than once. But we've got him chirked up a lot, and he's getting his nerve back, and ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed

... their own sisters and their aunts; Set popes and cardinals agog, To play with pages at leap-frog. 360 'Twas he that gave our Senate purges, And flux'd the House of many a burgess; Made those that represent the nation Submit, and suffer amputation; And all the Grandees o' the Cabal 365 Adjourn to tubs at Spring and Fall. He mounted Synod-Men, and rode 'em To Dirty-Lane and Little Sodom; Made 'em curvet like Spanish jenets, And take the ring at Madam [Bennet's] 370 'Twas he that made Saint FRANCIS do More than the Devil could tempt him to, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... like their master, was that each lacked a part of his body—one an ear, another an eye, this one the nose, that one the hand. Not one was whole. That is because they apply only two kinds of punishment in Kazounde—mutilation or death—all at the caprice of the king. For the least fault, some amputation, and the most cruelly punished are those whose ears are cut off, because they can no longer wear ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... one of his forced walks of some twenty-four miles in the neighbourhood of Stirling, that he injured one of his feet, and he returned home seriously ill. The result was an abscess, disease of the ankle-joint, and long agony, which ended in the amputation of the right foot. But he never relaxed in his labours. He was now writing, lecturing, and teaching chemistry. Rheumatism and acute inflammation of the eye next attacked him; and were treated by cupping, blisetring, and colchicum. ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... temper, but simply as a remedial agent. I have never experienced anything of the kind myself, Mrs. Ross, but have heard it remarked that nervousness occasions greater suffering than what is generally understood by the term pain; therefore I suggested it as I should the amputation of a diseased member when necessary in ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley

... successful experiment. But either of the foregoing propositions would be too absurd to require a moment's consideration. The principle is as fully developed by the painless extraction of teeth, as by the painless amputation of a limb; by the successful use of nitrous oxyd gas, as of rectified sulphuric ether. In the language of Dr. Marcy: 'The man who first discovered the fact that the inhalation of a gaseous substance would render ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... negligent? who venal? We entrust to you therefore for this Indiction the dignity of the Comitiva Romana, with all its rights and just emoluments. Watch for all such evil-doers as we have described. Rightly does the public grief[476] punish those who mar the beauty of the ancients with amputation of limbs, inflicting on them that which they have made our monuments to suffer. Do you and your staff and the soldiers at your disposal watch especially by night; in the day the City guards itself. At night the theft looks ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... day amputation and subtraction had proceeded yet further. Only Bill was present when Arabella ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... Prince Albert to summon a doctor; but the old Indian women could not bear to wait so long for the coming of relief, so filing a big knife into a fine-toothed saw, they cut away the bruised flesh and sawed off the broken bones. They made a clean amputation which they dressed with a poultice made from well-boiled inner bark of juniper, and not only did no mortification set in, but the arm healed nicely; and when the doctor arrived ten days later, he examined the amputation carefully and said that there was ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... nerves in the wound. In severe compound fractures of the humerus occurring from force applied at the external side of the limb, the brachial vessels and nerves have been occasionally lacerated by the sharp jagged ends of the broken bone,—a circumstance which calls for immediate amputation ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise

... same time, the Indians of the party were detailed to build birch-bark canoes. With their long knives they swept around the slender trunks, making an incision as regular and precise as any surgeon might have done on a human limb destined to amputation. The first circle was made about one foot from the ground, the other about three feet from the branches where the tree began to taper. This was to secure slips of about equal length. They then ran down their knives ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... quarter-deck, to land on the main deck;—one may suppose rather ASTONISHED! The manly boatswain himself was the only man HURT in the affair—his boarding pistol, by some untoward accident, went off,—its double shot running up his fore-arm, and lodging in the bones of his elbow. Amputation became necessary; and the dear old ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... on these some straw was spread, and on this the wounded lay, with little or no covering other than such scanty clothes as they had on. There were wounds of all degrees of severity, but I heard no groans or murmurs. Most of the sufferers were hurt in the limbs, some had undergone amputation, and all had, I presume, received such attention as was required. Still, it was but a rough and dreary kind of comfort that the extemporized hospitals suggested. I could not help thinking the patients ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... give no help at all. There are people, with like misfortune to his, who are able to make some sort of a shift with crutches, but Will could not use them at all. As Mrs. Spencer had explained to Glen, there had been some trouble in the amputation. All that was needed was money to go to a famous hospital and have things properly arranged and a pair of artificial legs fitted that would enable him to walk, run, race, dance or play the pipe organ. Will hoped to be successful enough ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo

... lines it was extraordinary how much could be done, especially in the way of saving limbs. During the whole of our stay in Antwerp we never once had to resort to an amputation. We were dealing with healthy and vigorous men, and once they had got over the shock of injury they had wonderful powers of recovery. We very soon found that we were dealing with cases to which the ordinary rules ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar

... grumbling, and the one who remained proceeded to examine the wound. A terrible arquebus-shot had passed through the leg, shattering the bone: amputation ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... compared to the pulsing of a stream of fire, and I am certain that, had I been within reach of qualified surgical assistance at the moment, I should have insisted upon having the limb removed, as I was convinced that the pain of amputation would have been less acute than that from which I was suffering. Needless to say, I had no appetite for food when it was offered me a little while afterward; but I felt thirsty enough to drink the river dry, and quaffed several cocoa-nuts with an ecstasy of delight ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood

... with wars of more than fifty years ago. A bullet wound through a joint, such as the knee or the elbow, then necessitated the amputation of the limb. Now such a wound is easily ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... Medical Gazette, vol. xii. p. 515, Dr Sylvester, quoting from a German work by Meissner, published in 1782, mentions the case of Augustus, king of Poland, who underwent amputation while rendered insensible by a narcotic. But the practice of anaesthesia never became general, and surgeons appear to have usually regarded it with disfavour. When, towards the close of the 18th century, the discoveries of Priestley ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... was New England's maiden pale and pure, Whose gallant lover fell on Shiloh's plain; He was the mangled body of the dead; He writhing did endure Wounds and disfigurement and racking pain, Gangrene and amputation, ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... develop the miserable faculty of criticism which so imperiously demands satisfaction, and which, when once satisfied, leaves such little happiness in the soul! Would to God that it were in my power to suppress it. I would not hesitate at amputation if it were lawful and possible. Christianity satisfies all my faculties except one, which is the most exacting of them all, because it is by right judge over all the others. Would it not be a contradiction in terms to impose conviction upon ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... and the ugly contents of the bowl beside it, told of an interrupted amputation—perhaps the other man huddled up in the corner had been the ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry

... formed in 1841, but he waited for some time before testing it, in the hope that a case of surgery of some importance—the amputation of an arm or a leg—might fall in his practice. On the 30th of March, 1842, Dr. Long removed a tumor from the neck of Mr. James M. Venable. On the 6th of June, the same year, another small tumor was removed from the neck of the same patient, and both operations ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris

... that we were getting the worst of it. Shot after shot came crashing on board, and several more men were brought down. I expressed my fears aloud to the surgeon. A poor fellow already on the table about to undergo amputation overheard me. "Don't think of that, sir," he exclaimed; "they are tough ones, those mounseers, but we'll go down with our colours ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston

... inquire after their young chief, and being all perfectly sober, I descanted on the calamity of the previous night, describing my young man's case to be of such a serious nature as to induce the apprehension that death, or at least amputation of the limb, would be the consequence. In confirmation of the veracity of this statement, the afflicted leg was exposed to view, while the patient's groans, which impressed on the minds of the bystanders the conviction of the ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean

... affected until now. But outside the infection had crept up. It was no longer just above the wrists. It had reached his elbows and passed beyond. A few inches below his shoulder he could feel nothing. The illness was accelerating. If they had ever thought of amputation, it was too ...
— Bolden's Pets • F. L. Wallace

... entreaty, from scorn to tears. Was my little doctor right in thus speaking of the case of her dear patient? Was there no other remedy than that which Hetty cried for? Have not others felt the same cruel pain of amputation, undergone the same exhaustion and fever afterwards, lain hopeless of anything save death, and yet recovered after all, and limped through life subsequently? Why, but that love is selfish, and does not heed other people's griefs and passions, or that ours was so intense and ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the people's labour go to the prince, whilst only one-third remains for the sustenance of the producers. The prince's stores rot away, whilst our old men die of starvation. False feet are cheaper than shoes in the market-place (owing to the number of people punished with amputation of a foot); the people are smarting with a sense of wrong, and are longing for the advent (of the CH'EN family), whom they love as a parent, and towards whom they tend, just as water runs downhill. Under these circumstances, even if they did not want to gain the people over, how can they ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker

... to call a moment this morning at the amputation house—but no one was to come for me," ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort

... be no good reason why a man's way of sharpening a pencil is any better than a woman's. It is difficult to see just why it is advisable to cover the thumb with powdered graphite, and expose that useful member to possible amputation by a knife directed uncompromisingly toward it, when the pencil might be pointed the other way, the risk of amputation avoided, and the shavings and pulverised graphite left safely to the action of gravitation and centrifugal force. Yet the entire race of men refuse to ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed

... though there was gout in the leg itself giving him a twinge. And many the time—nay, hundreds of times—did he curse Prince de Joinville. For it was in defending Vera Cruz against the French, commanded by the latter, he had received the wound, which rendered amputation of the limb necessary. In a way he ought to have blessed the Prince, and been grateful for the losing of it rather than otherwise. Afterwards the mishap stood him in good stead; at election times when he was candidate for the Chief Magistracy of the State. Then he was proud to parade ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... water, the surface of the water was immediately frozen by the intense cold thus suddenly communicated to it; and, notwithstanding the most humane and unremitting attention paid to them by the medical gentlemen, it was found necessary, some time after, to resort to the amputation of a part of four fingers on one hand and ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... the wounded constable, who had refused to submit to amputation of the wounded limb, died ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various

... 53d Pennsylvania, is only 16 years of age, very bright, courageous boy, left leg amputated below the knee; next bed to him, another young lad very sick; gave each appropriate gifts. In the bed above, also, amputation of the left leg; gave him a little jar of raspberries; bed J, this ward, gave a small sum; also to a soldier on crutches, sitting on his bed near.... (I am more and more surprised at the very great proportion of youngsters from fifteen to twenty-one in the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... or nine families living on it. Some of the people interested us much. Celia, one of the best, is a cripple. Her master, she told us, was too mean to give his slaves clothes enough to protect them, and her feet and legs were so badly frozen that they required amputation. She has a lovely face,—well-featured and singularly gentle. In every household where there was illness or trouble, Celia's kind, sympathizing face was the first to be seen, and her services were always ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... o'clock the Belgian doctor and the German commandant appeared, and I went off with the former to help with an amputation of arm, in one of the little temporary ambulances in the town of M——, three kilometres away. The building had been a little dark shop and not very convenient, and if the patient had not been so desperately ill, ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan

... grey box at random certain (to me) more or less astonishing toys; which may or may not please the reader, but whose colours and shapes and textures are a part of that actual Present—without future and past—whereof they alone are cognizant who—so to speak—have submitted to an amputation of the world. ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... "Yes, sir, the amputation of the limb: only perceiving how much your constitution is broken down, he hesitates to advise you. Weak as you are, could you support the operation? will you run the ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico

... stabbed his right hand with a fish bone. The old, old story—now so sadly threadbare to me—of ignorance and uncleanliness! The hand was swollen to a wonderful size and grown wonderful angry—the man gone mad of pain—the crew contemplating forcible amputation with an axe. Wonderful sad the mail-boat doctor wasn't nowhere near! Wonderful sad if Bill Sparks must lose his hand! Bill Sparks was a wonderful clever hand with the splittin'-knife—able t' split a wonderful sight o' fish a minute. Wonderful sad if Bill Sparks's family was to be throwed on ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan

... I was in Cologne. It was the case of a terrible accident, which had thrown a whole family into despair, and a difficult amputation was necessary. They put me up; I might say, they almost locked me up, and I saw nobody but people in tears, who almost deafened me with their lamentations; I operated on a man who appeared to be in a moribund state, and who nearly died ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... the natives understood what I wished and hitherto no missionary knew where one was to be found. Here however, was a boy with his right hand missing and it had evidently been removed by a sharp instrument, but not I think by a surgeon, for the scars were not such as follow amputation at the wrist joint. Mr. Clarke acted as interpreter and the following ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman

... and the author and publisher, being proceeded against on a severe statute of Philip and Mary, which many lawyers held to be no longer in force, were found guilty, and condemned to the barbarous punishment of amputation of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... genius we are indebted for the bridges above named. The reports, plans, and specifications of the East River bridge were completed, and the work begun, when Roebling was severely injured in the foot while directing his work. Lockjaw succeeding amputation, he died in ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

... her foot had been crushed, or diseased, or snake-bitten, instead of sprained, it might have been needful to cut it off. But the amputation would not ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... field and the hospital, he was riding out near the camp one morning in unusual spirits, when two men in butternut fired at him: one had the mortification to miss him; the bullet of the other struck him in the arm. There was talk of amputation at first, but the case was finally managed without. In Ferris's state of health it was quite the same an end of ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... — N. subtraction, subduction^; deduction, retrenchment; removal, withdrawal; ablation, sublation^; abstraction &c (taking) 789; garbling, &c v.. mutilation, detruncation^; amputation; abscission, excision, recision; curtailment &c 201; minuend, subtrahend; decrease &c 36; abrasion. V. subduct, subtract; deduct, deduce; bate, retrench; remove, withdraw, take from, take away; detract. garble, mutilate, amputate, detruncate^; cut off, cut ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... sanction of duty, and the stamp of virtue. Character, once formed in a wrong direction, may be corrected. But it can be done only with the greatest difficulty, and by a process as hard to resolve upon as the amputation of a limb or the plucking out of ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde

... brigade of teams, manned by Germans, Englishmen and Irishmen (the Scandinavians had then just begun to make their appearance in the Northwest) to be caught in a winter storm, and result in the amputation of fingers, toes, feet and hands from freezing, but I cannot remember ever losing a Canadian Frenchman. I recall one instance, where a train was overtaken by a severe storm just about evening, where no timber was in sight. The men built barricades with their sleds and loads, and took ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... were divided and classified so that cases of a kind were grouped together, each hospital and the various floors of each hospital having a different class of patient. Some of the classifications were: head cases, amputation cases, gangrene cases, cases in which the patient could not refrain from screaming, either because of delirium or for other reasons. It is on leaving the base hospital that wounded are first classified ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood

... Some of the invalids manage it by themselves; and, sitting up in bed, they perform signaling operations with arms and white linen. Others are helped by the nurse. On their bare flesh I catch sight of scars and cavities, and parts stitched and patched, of a different shade. There is even a case of amputation (and bronchitis) who reveals a new and rosy stump, like a new-born infant. The negro does not move while they strip his thin, insect-like trunk; and then, bleached once more, he begins again to rock his head, looking boundlessly for the sun and for Africa. They exhume the ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... I believe, such as nobody can be shocked at. The repeated permission you give me of dealing freely with you will, I hope, excuse what I have done; for, if I have not spared you when I thought severity would do you a kindness, I have not mangled you where I thought there was no absolute need of amputation." Wycherley continued to return thanks for all this hacking and hewing, which was, indeed, of inestimable service to his compositions. But at last his thanks began to sound very like reproaches. In private, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... to your room? Pray send for Paget or Erichsen, and have yourself put right at once. No doubt that local simpleton is making a mess of your case. Perhaps while he is dabbing with lint and lotions the real remedy is the knife. I am sure amputation would be less melancholy than the despondent state of feeling which you are now suffering. If any limb of mine went wrong, I should say to the surgeon, "Cut it off, and patch up the stump in your best style; I give you a fortnight, and ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... look again into one another's eyes admitted of no doubt. Aleck had recovered the use of his voice, but he was still too weak to talk at any length. The bayonet wound in his shoulder had healed nicely, but his shattered knee had come terribly near to costing him his life. There had been infection. Amputation of the leg had been imminent. The surgeons and the nurses had struggled with the case for weeks and ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene

... of the value at which his life and limbs were assessed. Thus, if a doctor by carrying out an operation unskilfully caused the death of a member of the upper class, or inflicted a serious injury upon him, such as the loss of an eye, the punishment was the amputation of both hands, but no such penalty seems to have been exacted if the patient were a member of the middle class. If, however, the patient were a slave of a member of the middle class, in the event of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall

... fleet. "Know," (said the haughty Osmanli,) "that the loss of a fleet to the Padishah is as the shaving of his beard, which will grow again all the thicker; whereas the loss of Cyprus is to Venice as the amputation of an arm from the body, which will ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... continue to Strasburg. Few or no stragglers were found in Winchester, whence the sick and wounded, except extreme cases, had been taken. I stopped for a moment, at a house near the field of the 25th, to see Colonel Nicholls. He had suffered amputation of the arm that morning, and the surgeons forbade his removal; so that, much to my regret and more to his own, he was left. We reached camp at Strasburg after dark, a march of thirty odd miles, weather very ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor

... a poor student come to study the humanities, or the pleasant art of amputation, cross the water forthwith, and proceed to the "Hotel Corneille," near the Odeon, or others of its species; there are many where you can live royally (until you economize by going into lodgings) on four francs a day; and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... "I've always performed these labors in March with good results. I have often observed that taking off large limbs from old and feeble trees is apt to injure them. A decay begins at the point of amputation and extends down into the body of the tree. Sap-suckers and other wood peckers, in making their nests, soon excavate this rotten wood back into the trunk, to which the moisture of every storm is admitted, and the life of ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... sake) from Devizes. He said to my father, whom he knew to be a man of an uncommonly firm mind, "I know you will not be alarmed, Sir, but we must have good advice and assistance, or your leg is in such a state that I fear amputation may be necessary. I have therefore desired your son to send or go for Mr. Grant, of Bath, to assist me, who is one of the most eminent men in the profession." My father firmly replied, "if you think, Sir, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... cordial recommendation to Dr. Jephson; and asked if he might trouble me with a small parcel for the doctor. I found afterwards that, in order to secure attention from a man whose time was so fully occupied, he had entrusted me with a presentation copy of a work he had just published, on "The Amputation of a Leg at the Hip Joint," an operation which, he had recently, I believe for the first time in English surgery, ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... death, by some posthumous children, that bore no resemblance to their elder brethren. As for those who were the fathers of a mixed progeny, provided always they could prove the last to be a live child, they escaped with life, but not without loss of limbs; for, in this case, I was satisfied with amputation of the ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele

... am astonished at the whole-souled and whole-bodied devotion of the surgeons. Men in every condition of horror, shattered and shrieking, are brought in on stretchers and dumped down anywhere." Men shattered in the thigh, and even cases of amputation were shovelled into berths without blanket, without thought or mercy. It could not have been otherwise. Other hundreds and thousands were out on the field of Gettysburg bleeding to death, and every ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... when he dies the mortuary rhyme shall follow him. Indeed, almost every occurrence—a boy's success at school, an advocate's triumphal passage of the perils of examination at Padua, a priest's first mass, a nun's novitiate, a birth, an amputation— is the subject of tuneful effusion, and no less the occasion of a visit from the facchini of the neighboring campo, who assemble with blare of trumpets and tumult of voices around the victim's door, and proclaim his skill ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... describe my horror—my distraction. I felt as I imagined a man would feel after amputation of all his members, leaving only the quivering and bleeding trunk. I felt that life held no more joy, no more hope; and gladly would I have welcomed death itself as a happy release from the wretchedness of living. In my delirium of grief I ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... you please, with a similar analogy, "Who would not prefer the amputation of an arm to the periling of life by doubt and procrastination!" But I know not if I am right, and let us ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe

... matter, their attitude is profoundly intolerant— as intolerant as Bloody Mary. Their attitude is really this: that the man must stop thinking, if he is to go on living. Their counsel is one of intellectual amputation. If thy HEAD offend thee, cut it off; for it is better, not merely to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a child, but to enter it as an imbecile, rather than with your whole intellect to be cast into hell— or ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

... on the upper and main-deck, others on the forecastle and poop. The surgeons were below in the cock-pit, getting ready their instruments, and lint, and bandages, and preparing the tables on which amputation when necessary might be performed. Here also were restoratives arranged, for those who might faint from loss of blood. They had taken a look at the enemy, and aware from her superior size that the fight would be a desperate one, were coolly talking over the amount ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... mode of accounting for the fact, that now and then one of these supposed maimed or halt performers turns out to be an impostor, who, considering a broken limb, or something tantamount to that, essential to the success of his broom, concocts an impromptu fracture or amputation to serve his purpose. Some few years ago, a lively, sailor-looking fellow appeared as a one-handed sweeper in a genteel square on the Surrey side of the water. The right sleeve of his jacket waved emptily in the wind, but he flourished his left arm so vigorously in the air, and completed ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various

... it does not appear as a distinct proposition in the protocols. This proposal of making the Black Sea a neutral sea gave place to another project, and it appears to me very like asking Russia, voluntarily or by compulsion, to perform the operation of amputation upon herself. I maintain that the third article as offered to Russia in December last could not mean what the noble Lord offered to Russia at Vienna, because the cessation of preponderance does not mean the transfer of preponderance, but rather ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright

... amputation, doctor!" said he; "but, first of all, take a glass of brandy and water to steady your nerves. He knows you," says he; "hear him how he calls out Quack, quack! after you, as if he was afraid to let you ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee

... surprise of all, he revived. Patiently he bore his sufferings, which at times were severe. His legs began to swell badly and painfully. Mortification took place. He was informed that the amputation of the leg was necessary to save him ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... ways of deadening sorrow, as though the mind could teach itself to lop off its feelers. Sybil particularly disliked this self-inspection. In the first place she did not understand it, and in the second her mind was all feelers, and amputation was death. She could no more analyse a feeling than doubt its existence, both which were ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... with wings folded or feebly fluttering, in the superior, the supreme, the inexorably enveloping Parisian medium, resembled some critical apartment of large capacity, some "dental," medical, surgical waiting-room, a scene of mixed anxiety and desire, preparatory, for gathered barbarians, to the due amputation or extraction of excrescences and redundancies of barbarism. He went as far as the porte-cochere, took counsel afresh of his usual optimism, sharpened even, somehow, just here, by the very air he tasted, and then came back smiling to Charlotte. "It is incredible to you that when ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... it is found to act very differently on different constitutions. Some it elevates in the extreme; others it renders torpid, and scarcely observant of any evil that may befall them. In Barbary it is always taken, if it can be procured, by criminals condemned to suffer amputation, and it is said, to enable those miserables to bear the rough operations of an unfeeling executioner, more than we Europeans can the keen knife of our most skilful chirurgeons. This it may be necessary to have said to my friend Mr. T. Wedgewood, whom ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... sensation. Former constable Haines, now employed as an overseer at Fetters's convict farm, while driving in a buggy to Clarendon, where he spent his off-duty spells, was shot from ambush near Mink Run, and his right arm shattered in such a manner as to require amputation. ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... deadly enough, but they are mild beside the rattler. The rattler's fangs are so long that they strike deep and the quantity of venom injected is enormous, some of it is almost instantly taken up by the veins punctured. I do not believe that anything but instant amputation would save the life of one struck. But all bitten do not die equally soon. I have known a man struck in the ankle where the circulation was poor, to live for several hours, while another struck in the neck while bending over a flower, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... referred to above, did not die of wounds as first reported, but suffered the loss of a leg by amputation.] ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry

... Hertfordshire, June 23, 1738, and at eighteen years of age entered the Royal Navy, where, though he had been piously educated, he became dissipated and morally reckless. Wounded in a sea fight off Cape Lagos, and in dread of amputation he prayed penitently through nearly a whole night, and in the morning the surprised surgeon told him ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... of seventy, the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris made an attack on him on account of his use of the ligature instead of cauterizing after amputation. In answer, Pare appealed to his successful experience, and narrated the "Journeys in Diverse Places" here printed. This entertaining volume gives a vivid picture, not merely of the condition of surgery in the sixteenth century, but of the military life of the time; and reveals incidentally ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... of the favourable opinion expressed by the surgeon of the troops, it became evident that the wound was rapidly becoming worse; and it was decided that amputation was necessary. In order to entrust the operation to a more skilful surgeon than the one who had hitherto attended him, it was necessary that Captain Hastings should proceed to Zante. This decision had unfortunately ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... of blood and the intense agony of his wound, the sufferer was borne to a house hard by, and attended by Dr. Craik, by special order of the commander-in-chief. The doctor gave his patient but feeble hopes of recovery, even with the chances of amputation, when Nash observed, 'It may be considered unmanly to complain, but my agony is too great for human nature to bear. I am aware that my days, perhaps hours, are numbered, but I do not repine at my fate. I have fallen on the field of honor, while leading my brave Carolinians to the assault ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson

... go to bed. I am getting better and will get off with a stiff elbow, so Tom says. At first they talked of amputation. ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... on the awful and important question of religious feeling. Death is always terrible—no one need be ashamed to fear it. How we bear it depends much upon our constitutions. I have seen some brave men, who have smiled at the cruellest amputation, die trembling like children; while others, whose lives have been spent in avoidance of the least danger or trouble, have drawn their last painful breath like heroes, striking at their foe to the last, robbing him of his victory, ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole

... similitude is, the more new and unexpected it will appear. Some may be thought commonplace, yet will avail much for enforcing belief; as, "As a piece of ground becomes better and more fertile by cultivation, so does the mind by good institutions." "As physicians prescribe the amputation of a limb that manifestly tends to mortification, so would it be necessary to cut off all bad citizens, tho even allied to us in blood." Here is something more sublime: "Rocks and solitudes echo back the melody, and the fiercest beasts are often made ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser

... no more impossible (for there have been instances) than to extract iron from the mud of the Seine. There have even been men who wrote with their backs. You see, Sire, that we do not lack means of increasing national labor. If they do begin to fail us, there remains the boundless resource of amputation. ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... returned upon his hands, were generally reduced, by the critical amputation of managers, from the fair proportion of five acts to two, or even one, with the ordinary suggestion of "necessary alteration," &c. complained in wrath and bitterness to Sheridan, who, it is said, attempted to console him, by saying, "Why, my good fellow, what I would advise you is, to present ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various

... have ever written. And it is for this reason that, with a full realization of the standards demanded by the English-reading public, I have not hesitated to authorize the present translation without palliation or amputation, fully convinced that the reader will not find anything in this novel objectionable or offensive to his moral sense. Morality is not to be found in words but in deeds and in the lessons which ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... has been so distributed to multitudes, has been so minutely subdivided and peddled out, that it is spilled into drops, and cannot be gathered. The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... to talk to you of that, you ROAR about it enough as it is! one ought to be distracted; for if one thinks too much about it, one becomes separated from one's own limbs and lets oneself undergo amputation with too much stoicism. ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... had heard that people felt like that after the amputation of their right hands. As for the wound, he hoped ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... and I could quite understand, without Ned's halting explanation, that "under the circumstances" it would be necessary to defer what he called "our work—" "Of course, after we've rallied from this amputation, we shall grow fresh supplies—I mean my wife's investments will," he laughingly corrected, "and then we'll have no big outlays ahead and shall know exactly where we stand. After all, my dear fellow, ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... held the poor fellow's shattered arm till the amputation was complete. As the dissevered limb grew cold in his hands, he seemed more distressed than its late owner. Instead of laying it with some others near the surgeon's table, he wrapped it tenderly, as ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow

... surgery. Mr. Toddypestle informs me that I can't have anything without an order from the surgeon of my ward. Great heavens! where is he? and away I rush, up and down, here and there, till at last I find him, in a state of bliss over a complicated amputation, in the fourth story. I make my demand; he answers: "In five minutes," and works away, with his head upside down, as he ties an artery, saws a bone, or does a little needle-work, with a visible relish and very sanguinary pair of ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott

... tree and get speared with those thorns, and when the thorn pierces the skin there is a little tip on the end that breaks off and is left inside. When the usual infection that it carries get started from the part of the thorn that is left in the flesh, you get pus and, of course, later on the amputation of the leg, if it happens to be in the leg, of the horse. With the thornless type ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... there was woe in the palace! The king's family were seen wandering around with donkeys' heads on their shoulders. Their noses and ears were as long as their arms. The physicians were sent for and they held a consultation. They decided on amputation; but as fast as they cut off the noses and ears of the afflicted household, these troublesome members grew out again, longer ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth

... practised on his own forces. Besides, he was more interested in surgery than in capturing Toulon. He always gave the ambulance corps the right of line, and I believe to this day that his plan of routing the English involved a sudden rush upon them, taking them by surprise, and the subsequent amputation of their legs. The worst feature of the situation, as I found it, was that these two men, falling back upon their rights as my superior officers, refused to take orders from me. I called their attention to the fact that rank had been abolished, and that in ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs

... entertaining sights on The Road is to witness the meeting of two cripples. Their common disability is a fruitful source of conversation; and they tell how it happened, describe what they know of the amputation, pass critical judgment on their own and each other's surgeons, and wind up by withdrawing to one side, taking off bandages and ...
— The Road • Jack London

... read in a journal that the usefulness of Kora as a dancer was over. There had been an accident at the theatre, her foot was smashed; not badly enough to call for amputation, but too much for her ever to ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan

... the reason. The mink had been caught in a trap, and after twisting and turning until it had torn its leg fearfully, as is seen right there, in desperation it finished the amputation itself; not that it was afraid of decorating some high born dame's back, but because it was threatened with starvation if it sat there in the trap indefinitely. How's ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne

... while my brother's leg is so bad, it is out of the question. Poor fellow! he is very feverish and light-headed; but Cruikshanks has pronounced the symptoms favourable, and gives us every hope that there will be no need of amputation. God send not! We are necessarily confined with him all the afternoon and evening till very late, so that I am stealing a few minutes ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... whispered Captain, "can we save him?" They rubbed and thawed for hours, but the sluggish blood refused to flow into the extremities and Captain felt that this man would die for lack of amputation. ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... name of Nat Butler, of his arm, was by far the most serious. The attempt to save the arm came very near costing him his life. Instead of healing, the wound constantly sloughed, with great loss of blood. As the wound was between the elbow and the shoulder, the danger attending amputation increased with each sloughing, but the poor boy was deaf to all that his doctor could urge, positively refusing to have the arm amputated, and he grew weaker and weaker with every hemorrhage. Meantime several of the sick and wounded were so far cured as to be able to return ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux

... taking him into the drug store above, and examining his feet, I found them in a most shocking condition! Why, sir, in twelve hours mortification would have commenced, when nothing could have saved his life but the amputation of both limbs." The sober earnestness of Doctor R—caused Sharp to feel some alarm, and ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur

... wounded men were with great difficulty taken through the narrow passage. The soldier who was alive was the one who had received the charge of the blunderbuss in his legs; he was terribly injured below the knee, and Ralph had little doubt that amputation would be necessary. The other man lived but a short time after being brought ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty

... rosebush had evidently been propped up anew against the house since the commencement of the season; and a pear-tree and three damson-trees, which, except a row of currant-bushes, constituted the only varieties of fruit, bore marks of the recent amputation of several superfluous or defective limbs. There were also a few species of antique and hereditary flowers, in no very flourishing condition, but scrupulously weeded; as if some person, either out of love or curiosity, had been anxious to bring ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... and endurance of suffering are, after all, in my mind, the result of a greater degree of physical insensibility. It has been told me, and I believe it, that in amputation and other surgical operations, their nerves do not shrink, do not show the same tendency to spasm with those of the whites. When the savage, to explain his insensibility to cold, called upon the white man to recollect how little his own face was affected by it, in consequence of its constant ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... knew where—that the litter bearers slowly and carefully lowered a patient to the newly-made cot we had just prepared. Looking at the diagnosis card that we found, we learned that the patient, Lieut. Ira Ellsworth Lady, had had an amputation of his limb above the knee, and that he also ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... met. I owe it to her care and skill that I still have my good right arm. She has since married and the lucky man has one of the best of wives. Miss Malin advised me right at the beginning not to submit to an amputation. ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes

... in temperate and healthy comfort, without temptation, and with minds alert, I am determined to allow for the two of you, over and above all your present income from a grateful country (which pays a man less when amputation has left less of him), the sum of one guinea and a half per week. But remember that, to draw this stipend, both of you must be in condition to walk one mile and a half on a Saturday night, which is a test of character. You will both be fitted up ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... Oh, hello Dave; what do you want? Which Morgenroth's? Adolph's? All right. Amputation? Yuh, I see. Say, Dave, get Gus to harness up and take my surgical kit down there—and have him take some chloroform. I'll go straight down from here. May not get home tonight. You can get me at Adolph's. Huh? No, Carrie can give the anesthetic, I guess. G'-by. Huh? ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... our wake; and my dark foreboding was confirmed by the first news we had when we stepped ashore. Admiral Benbow was dead. Sturdy fighter as he was, he had contended gallantly for near a month against the fever that ensued upon the amputation of his leg, but 'twas not Heaven's will that he should live for further service to his country. In the presence of Death, the great leveler, all detraction is hushed, all enmities are extinguished; and even some who ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... years old, living in a New-Hampshire village, had one of his legs crushed so as to require amputation. The little fellow was furnished with a "Peg" and stumped round upon it for ten years. We can imagine what he suffered as he grew into adolescence under the cross of this unsightly appendage. He was of comely aspect, tall, well-shaped, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... he made a trip, Who'd just effected featly An amputation at the hip Particularly neatly. A rising man was Surgeon COBB But this extremely ticklish job He had achieved (as he ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert

... genitals becomes irresistible, and is indulged even in the presence of friends or strangers, and though the patient be at other times a young woman of unexceptionable modesty. In cases of this kind, great hypertrophy of the organ of greatest sensibility has been observed, and in some cases amputation of the part has been found the ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg

... priest, and did not reveal it to the proper authorities, was made liable to the punishment of a public whipping and the amputation of his ears; to be absent on a Sunday from the service at the parish church, subjected the offender to a fine of thirty pence; and the magistrates were authorized to take away the children of Catholics and send them to England for education, and to tender ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc

... bloody executions; and the gibbet, that perpetual resource of weak and cruel legislators, has groaned under the multitude of starving criminals; yet, while the cause is suffered to exist, the effects will ever follow. The amputation of limbs will never eradicate a prurient humour, which must be sought in its source ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... had been all the while solemnly assured that this was paternal government, could only repay the paternalism in the same fashion, when they had the power. Stedman saw a negro chained to a red-hot distillery-furnace; he saw disobedient slaves, in repeated instances, punished by the amputation of a leg, and sent to boat-service for the rest of their lives; and of course the rebels borrowed these suggestions. They could bear to watch their captives expire under the lash, for they had previously watched their parents. If the government rangers received twenty-five florins for every rebel ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... premature: endeavouring to exterminate, was the same as if a surgeon should proceed directly to the amputation of a diseased limb, because it created inconvenience to the rest of the body. Whereas the first inquiry ought to be, whether the disorder is of such a nature as not to be removed, but by entire separation. This is a desperate ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland

... are some yet who would have no stakes cut from the trees, save here and there one; so as to leave half the head naked, and the other standing; since the over-hanging bows will kill what is under them, and ruin the tree; so pernicious is this half-toping: But let this be a total amputation for a new and lusty spring: There is nothing more prejudicial to subnascent young trees, than when newly trim'd and prun'd, to have their (as yet raw) wounds poyson'd with continual dripping; as ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... engineer,[22] this has been a grave mistake, and he thinks that the Danube misses her former channel of Soroksar more and more. He further remarks in the very strongest terms upon an engineering operation "which proposes the amputation of a vital limb, conveying about one-third of the power and life of a giant river when in flood—a step which has no parallel in the magnitude of its consequences in any river with which I ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... the members for Liverpool, accompanied the Duke of Wellington in the procession; and, neglecting the caution given to visitors against leaving the carriages, he was knocked down by one of the returning engines, and his leg was so dreadfully crushed, that amputation could not be performed. He died of that disorder called tetanus, which commonly occurs after extensive lacerated wounds. His character is recorded in the previous pages of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... her father had a title: it was fair to presume that her opportunities were titled also. All the girls I knew wished they could have gone to the Crimea; while I was morally certain, that the first amputation would have turned them all faint. There was Dorothea Dix: she had money and time. It was not strange that she had great success; for she started, a monomaniac in philanthropy, from the summit of personal independence. ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska

... Carolinian died. The negroes lifted him from the table and put another in his place. "Amputation," said the surgeon. "Hold it firmly, Miss Cary; just there." He turned to the adjoining table where a younger man was sewing up a forearm, ripped from wrist to elbow by a piece of shell. "Lend me your saw, will you, Martin?—Yes, I know the heat's ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... a soul as his sister—"my little Breton," he always calls him, affectionately—and comments again and again upon the boy's patient courage amid sufferings that could have but one end. The infection spread in spite of all that science could do, and even amputation could not save him. At last he ceased to live, "like a poor little bird," as his French attendant, herself a mother with three boys in the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... as a punishment. Thus in the time of the reign of the Emperor Chandraguptra Maurya in the fourth century B.C. it is stated that ordinary wounding by mutilation was punished by the corresponding mutilation of the offender, in addition to the amputation of his hand. The crime of giving false evidence was visited with mutilation of the extremities; and in certain unspecified cases, serious offences were punished by the shaving of the offender's hair, a penalty regarded as specially infamous. [323] ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... having been about a quarter of an hour alone, she bid the Surgeons, of whom poor Festeau was one, go on in their Work. I know not how to give you the Terms of Art, but there appeared such Symptoms after the Amputation of her Arm, that it was visible she could not live four and twenty hours. Her Behaviour was so magnanimous throughout this whole Affair, that I was particularly curious in taking Notice of what passed as her Fate approached nearer and nearer, and took Notes of what she said to all about her, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... how it is that by being lost in her I save myself; that I lose only that which hinders my activity, not that which fosters it. For when is my hand most itself? When separated from the body, by paralysis or amputation? Or when, in vital union with the brain, with every fibre alert and every nerve alive, it obeys in every gesture and receives in every sensation a life infinitely vaster and higher than any which it might, temporarily, ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson

... Richmond to the single line of road running east from Vicksburg. To dispossess them of this, therefore, became a matter of the first importance. The possession of the Mississippi by us from Memphis to Baton Rouge was also a most important object. It would be equal to the amputation of a limb in its weakening effects upon ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant

... Sallie, and his longing to see her once more. He had himself, after his first hurt, written her that he was slightly wounded; but when he reached Washington, and the surgeon, looking at his shattered leg, talked about amputation and death, Jim decided that Sallie should not know a word of all this till something ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson

... greatest operations on enfeebled wounded were more successful, a great many more were saved, than was generally the case under more favorable circumstances. Thus Surgeon General von Kohlreuter observed that in the Russian campaign amputation of an arm, for instance, gave much better chances, more recoveries, than in the Saxon and French campaigns, during which latter the soldiers were still robust, well nourished and well, even in abundance, ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose

... opportunity of visiting Michael Wishart, the artificer who had met with so severe an accident at the rock on the 30th ult., and had the pleasure to find him in a state of recovery. From Dr. Stevenson's account, under whose charge he had been placed, hopes were entertained that amputation would not be necessary, as his patient still kept free of fever or any appearance of mortification; and Wishart expressed a hope that he might, at least, be ultimately capable of keeping the light at the Bell Rock, as it was not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... countries, whether they be French, Italians, Belgians, Dutch, Spanish, or inhabitants of the departments of the Rhine, under the directions of my executors, one hundred thousand francs. To be distributed among those who suffered amputation, or were severely wounded at Ligny or Waterloo, who may be still living, according to lists drawn up by my executors. The Guards shall be paid double, those of the Island of Elba ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... in any case to their authority; declaring it treasonable to bring from either of them an interdict upon the kingdom, and punishable in secular clergymen by the loss of their eyes and by castration, in regulars by amputation of their feet, and in laics with death; and menacing, with sequestration and banishment, the persons themselves, as well as their kindred, who should pay obedience to any such interdict: and he farther obliged all his subjects to swear to the observance of those orders [x]. These ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... women, had lost one, or both their little fingers.[5] We endeavoured, but in vain, to find out the reason of this mutilation; for no one would take any pains to inform us. It was neither peculiar to rank, age, or sex; nor is it done at any certain age, as I saw those of all ages on whom the amputation had been just made; and, except some young children, we found few who had both hands perfect. As it was more common among the aged than the young, some of us were of opinion that it was occasioned by the death of their parents, or some other near relation. But Mr Wales ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... ever published in Wapping, at any rate; and his stump as unquestionable a stump as any you will find in the western clearings. But, though for ever mounted on that stump, never a stump-speech does the poor whaleman make; but, with downcast eyes, stands ruefully contemplating his own amputation. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... in metal, clay, or wood, of the part that had been affected. In Italy, votive tablets were dedicated to Iris and Hygiea on which footmarks were engraved; and Hygiea received on one occasion tributes of this kind which recorded the gratitude of some Roman soldiers who escaped the amputation which was inflicted upon their comrades by Hannibal. This custom survived in the early Christian Church, and is still kept up, as any one who visits a modern shrine of pilgrimage in Roman Catholic countries ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... which first led him to meditate on this subject, and which since then has been often noticed and employed as an instance and illustration of the law. A child who with its eyes bandaged had lost several of his fingers by amputation, continued to complain for many days successively of pains, now in this joint and now in that, of the very fingers which had been cut off. Des Cartes was led by this incident to reflect on the uncertainty with which we attribute any particular place to any inward pain or ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... the flight of these enfranchised hours of night wherein I write. But in the pauses of this activity I see below me wagon loads of nails go by and wagon loads of hammers hard after, to get a crack at them. Then there will be a truck of saws, as though the planking of the world yearned toward amputation. Or maybe, at a guess, ten thousand rat-traps will move on down the street. It's sure they take us for Hamelin Town, and are eager to lay their ambushment. There is something rather stirring in such prodigious marshaling, but I hear you ask ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... horrible collection in Armory Building (in Armory Square Hospital),—about two hundred of the worst cases you ever saw, and I have probably been too much with them. It is enough to melt the heart of a stone. Over one third of them are amputation cases. Well, mother, poor Oscar Cunningham is gone at last: (he is the 82d Ohio boy, wounded May 3, '63). I have written so much of him I suppose you feel as if you almost knew him. I was with him Saturday forenoon, ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... observed that he was now arrived at that time of life when the lusts of the flesh should be entirely mortified within him, and his greatest concern ought to be the of his soul, to which nothing could more effectually contribute than the amputation which was proposed; that his body, as well as his mind, would profit by the change; because he would have no dangerous appetite to gratify, and no carnal thoughts to divert him from the duties of his profession; and his voice, which was naturally sweet, would improve to such a ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett



Words linked to "Amputation" :   surgical procedure, surgical operation, handicap, impairment, surgery, operation, surgical process, disablement, disability, amputate



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com