The Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes: Medical essays

Front Cover
Houghton, Mifflin, 1892
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 381 - He answered and said, Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not : one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.
Page 22 - why won't you listen to reason? I had them a dead bargain, or I should not have bought them. The silver rims alone will sell for double the money.
Page 410 - And she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.
Page xv - I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica, as now used, could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind, — and all the worse for the fishes.
Page 265 - The disgrace of medicine has been that colossal system of self-deception, in obedience to which mines have been emptied of their cankering minerals, the vegetable kingdom robbed of all its noxious growths, the entrails of animals taxed for their impurities, the poison-bags of reptiles drained of their venom, and all the inconceivable abominations thus obtained thrust down the throats of human beings suffering from some fault of organization, nourishment, or vital stimulation.
Page 33 - Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?
Page 437 - I remember calling the Voltaire of pelvic literature, — a sceptic as to the morality of the race in general, who would have submitted Diana to treatment with his mineral specifics, and ordered a course of blue pills for the vestal virgins.
Page 316 - sounded" with cold. The gunner, too, was sick unto death, but "hope of trucking" kept him on his feet, — a Yankee, it should seem, when he first touched the shore of New England. Most, if not all, got colds and coughs, which afterwards turned to scurvy, whereof many died. How can we wonder that the crowded and tempest-tossed voyagers, many of them already suffering, should have fallen before the trials of the first winter in Plymouth? Their imperfect shelter, their insufficient...
Page 120 - You see a man discharge a gun at another : you see the flash, you hear the report, you see the person fall a lifeless corpse ; and you infer, from all these circumstances, that there was a ball discharged from the gun, which entered his body and caused his death, because such is the usual and natural cause of such an effect. But you did not see the ball leave the gun, pass through the air, and enter the body of the slain ; and even testimony to the fact of killing is, therefore, only inferential,...
Page 103 - I ARRIVED AT THAT CERTAINTY IN THE MATTER THAT I COULD VENTURE TO FORETELL WHAT WOMEN WOULD BE AFFECTED WITH THE DISEASE, UPON HEARING BY WHAT MIDWIFE THEY WERE TO BE DELIVERED, OR BY WHAT NURSE THEY WERE TO BE ATTENDED, DURING THEIR LYING-IN: AND ALMOST IN EVERY INSTANCE MY PREDICTION WAS VERIFIED.

Bibliographic information