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Definition of paralysis:

  • (noun) loss of the ability to move a body part

Sentence Examples:

If the paralysis is widely distributed, and the joints are flail-like, it is better to ankylose the ankle and mid-tarsal joints.

It turns out to be just the reverse, inasmuch as it is owing to a paralysis of the nerves governing the muscular coats of the arteries.

Excessive smoking does not make a man maudlin, but it causes restless wakefulness, which is a symptom of cerebral paralysis, and is liable, in rare cases, to end in coma.

Here are some of the diseases which are most frequently feigned: Nervous Diseases, as headache, vertigo, paralysis of limbs, vomiting, sciatica, or incontinence or suppression of urine, spitting of blood; others, again, simulate hysteria, epilepsy, or insanity.

He claimed to be able to cure any human ill, and particularly emphasized his ability to cure consumption, Bright's disease, diabetes, epilepsy, asthma, stomach troubles, nervous prostration, blindness, female diseases, paralysis, heart and kidney diseases.

It is conceded by the medical profession that tobacco causes cancer of the tongue and lips, dimness of vision, deafness, dyspepsia, bronchitis, consumption, heart palpitation, spinal weakness, chronic tonsillitis, paralysis, impotency, apoplexy, and insanity.

Injuries to the nervous structure entail failures of function, either in the mental operations themselves or in the control which they exercise over the actions of the body; there is either psychical aberration, or loss of consciousness, or muscular paralysis.

Stimulation of nerve centers causes cross-eyed look, drooping of upper eyelid, movement of eyeballs unequal, contracted, dilated, or sluggish pupils; acute and painful hearing, spasmodic contractions of the muscles followed by paralysis of the face muscles, etc.

Unending jealousies, commercial clash, friction of law, paralysis of industry, financial disorder, the misdirection and miscarriage of good energy, mischievous ignorance and prejudice, incalculable waste, chronic alarm, and devastating wars are before us until we do it.

These effects may be manifested either in a general failure of physical and mental power, or in a form of disease closely resembling progressive paralytic dementia, or in various forms of chronic insanity, or in epilepsy, or in neuralgia, or in paralysis.

We say nothing of the overhanging paralysis of trade, and business generally, which threatened loss of confidence in the ability of the government to maintain its continued existence, and therewith the complete destruction of all remaining national credit.

There is an overwhelming number of modern instances of bad habits, various diseases, inflammations, local and general pain, insomnia, neurasthenia, psychic paralysis, and psychic hysteria, being cured by suggestion while the patient is in the hypnotic state.

Concussion of the spinal column, leading to paralysis more or less persistent, is usually occasioned by fragments of shell, or stones from parapets; and in these cases the accidents are mostly accompanied by extensive lesions of the neighboring structures.

The symptoms are faintness, nausea, vomiting, giddiness, delirium, loss of power in the limbs, general relaxation of the muscular system, trembling, complete prostration of strength, coldness of the surface with cold clammy perspiration, convulsive movements, paralysis and death.

The hopeless paralysis, the woeful corruption, the moral torpor, resulting from the suppression of individualism, are vividly portrayed; yet there is no discursive generalizing, and from moment to moment the development of the story proceeds from within itself.

When paralysis does occur, it is from advanced complications and need not be mentioned here; but sometimes an unnatural class of movements is produced by this variety of neurosis, generally of a spasmodic character and located in the involuntary sphere.

The considerations which make this probable are chiefly derived from the analysis of cases in which a more or less chronic, but severe, visceral disorder has been followed by so-called reflex paralysis, but in which neuralgic phenomena, have been conspicuous.

There is however considerable danger in too hastily discontinuing the use of so strong a stimulus, lest the torpor of the system, or paralysis, should sooner be induced by the omission than by the continuance of this habit, when unfortunately acquired.

Compression of a lateral half of the cord produces motor paralysis, disturbance of the circulation, and difficulty of movement, an increased sensibility on the side corresponding to the compressed section, and a diminished sensibility and some paralysis on the opposite side.

If the patient, however, had been bedridden with a paralysis caused by certain degeneration of nervous tissue, and he were cured in the manner described, that effect would be supernatural, miraculous; always provided there is no error in the medical diagnosis.

Our statistics ordinarily ascribe to syphilis but a small percentage of the deaths actually due to it; for instance, many of our cases of spinal disease, paralysis, arterial and other organic diseases are tabled under other names, although directly due to syphilis.

The spirituous extract was the most energetic, the effects produced being difficulty of breathing, weakness, and subsequent paralysis, which generally showed itself first in the posterior extremities, vertigo, convulsions, dilatation of the pupil, and death apparently from asphyxia.

Though their coming had thus been rendered very happy, the brightening had been but the symptom and precursor of a sudden attack of paralysis, whence there was no symptom of recovery, and which in a few hours ended in death.

I have seen "cured" (and have "cured") such patients, affected with paralysis, deafness, dumbness, blindness, etc., with reasoning, electricity, bitter tonics, fake electrodes, hypnotism, and in one case by a forcible slap upon a prominent and naked part of the body.

There is the alteration in the date, for one thing, which is provocative of thought, and there is the enforced idleness for another, coming upon energetic folk like a temporary paralysis and leaving them nothing but meditation wherewith to employ themselves.

In two instances, in women who in a single night had practiced intercourse to very great excess, Hammond observed paralysis of both legs to ensue; he saw also in numerous cases spinal irritation and other nervous disturbances as a consequence of sexual excesses.

If untreated, the condition is usually followed by the development of spastic paralysis of one or more limbs, on one or on both sides of the body (Little's disease), by blindness, deafness, and varying degrees of mental deficiency, or by Jacksonian epilepsy.

I should think that substance, applied to any vital part of the body, and kept there continuously, would produce racking pains and weakness, and be very likely to result in a disease resembling inflammatory rheumatism, or possibly paralysis, and death.

Nothing, however, could have more strikingly illustrated the commanding position which he had attained among his countrymen than the complete paralysis which overcame them in 1675, during the fortunately brief period of the Prince's suffering from a dangerous attack of smallpox.

The patient suffered from a fear of fatigue, from fear of exhaustion, from fear of disability, from fear of paralysis, pain, sickness, and death, fear of the negative aspect of the most primitive, and most fundamental of all impulses, the impulse of self-preservation.

The fits, at first typically Jacksonian, gradually lose their typical character, becoming more frequent and less focal in nature, the patient losing consciousness during the fit, and the fits succeeded by weakness or paralysis of the parts primarily involved.

That under the powerful combination of causes, each of which is in itself sufficient to endanger life, and greatly intensified as paresis gradually deepens into paralysis, the heart, even of large animals, succumbs in a comparatively short time, may be readily understood.

This last condition is not necessarily a neurosis; it is nevertheless a cause of modification of the function of the parts to which the nerves are distributed, often a result of paresis or paralysis, and therefore inseparably associated with the neuroses of the organ.

The chronic paralysis which follows an unadjusted case is curable, but restoration of the motor function and trophic tone of the paralyzed members is delayed while the ventral horn cells are regenerated, the axons rebuilt, and the atrophied muscles redeveloped.

The paralysis, although positive, was not so complete as to render the patient quite incapable of moving the arm and leg, which were frequently convulsed, but the convulsions, which were observable in both, were more marked on the opposite or left side.

And, by interposing an electric block, he arrested the nervous impulse in a plant in a manner similar to the corresponding arrest in the animal nerve and thereby produced nervous paralysis in plant, such paralysis being afterwards cured by appropriate treatment.

As in hydrophobia, so in hypochondria the virus spreads over the nervous system, produces constant and well-known disorders in the brain, and ends here also by paralysis, paralysis of the affected individual's intellectual and moral functions, and, at last, mental death.

It must be remembered that the lungs have lost much of their elasticity, and in consequence of their power of contracting on account of the degeneration of the walls of the air cells, and also on account of the paralysis of muscular tissue before mentioned.

It has been recommended, too, as a remedy in extensive ulceration, in paralysis, chronic rheumatism, epilepsy, mania, and hydrophobia, but with so little discrimination, that little reliance can be placed on the testimonies in its favor; and, in modern practice, it is little employed.

No difficulty is ordinarily experienced in differentiating radial paralysis from muscular injuries to the triceps; yet, in some cases of "dropped elbow," it is necessary to observe the progress of the case for ten days or two weeks before one can positively establish a diagnosis.

Whatever the causes may be, the vast liquidation and readjustments which have taken place have left us with a large degree of credit paralysis, which together with the situation in our railways and the conditions abroad, are now the outstanding obstacles to recuperation.

Suddenly, about twenty minutes later, while I was in the kitchen washing some salad, I became conscious of a strange, sharp pain which struck me across the eyes, followed almost instantly by a kind of paralysis of the limbs and a feeling of giddiness.

We may find among exhibitionists, as Garnier remarks, dementia, states of unconsciousness, epilepsy, general paralysis, alcoholism, but the most typical cases, he adds, if not indeed the cases to which the term properly belongs, are those in which it is an impulsive obsession.

For instance in some varieties of paralysis, as well as in consumption, the sufferer may to appearance recover completely for a few months or longer; if a remedy was being used at the time, it would naturally get the credit of causing the favorable change.

It is therefore not surprising if removal or destruction of this portion of the brain on one side does not produce paralysis of the muscles of phonation, which, always bilaterally associated in their actions, are represented as a bilateral group in both halves of the brain.

Paralysis of one-half of the body is known as hemiplegia and results from destruction or severe disturbances of the cerebral hemisphere of the opposite side of the body or from interference with nerve paths between the cerebellum, or small brain, and the spinal cord.

If it is given in these doses for several days in succession it produces great weariness, an unsteady gait, and may involve paralysis of the lower limbs, with great disturbance of digestion, and scanty secretion of urine of about the color of port wine.

Dennis, as soon as he had recovered from the species of partial paralysis which had taken possession of his limbs, climbed forward to his companion, who rested his head against his shoulder for a moment, and groaned faintly through his clenched teeth.

It is acknowledged, although it is not clearly and satisfactorily accounted for as to the face, that an extravasation of blood into one hemisphere of the cerebrum, or even of the cerebellum, can cause paralysis of the complete half of the body on the opposite side.

The results in many cases stopped at this point, but the size and wide distribution of certain nerves rendered even such slight symptoms of importance; while in others well-marked signs of neuritis declared themselves, such as glossy skin, pain, muscular wasting, and paralysis.

Sugar of lead is what is called a cumulative poison; having the quality of remaining in the system when taken in small quantities, and piling itself up, as it were, until there is enough to accomplish something, when it causes debility, paralysis, and other things.

In fact, in perusing his case material comprising "stupors" in the course of many types of functional insanity, or as a complication of epilepsy or general paralysis, it is evident that in practice he does not follow the discriminative definitions of the earlier portion of his paper.

And in the plenitude of our wisdom and the glow of our righteous wrath, we hang a man, or flog him, or brand him, or loathe him, because a cruel fate has visited upon him an affliction more pitiable than blindness, or lameness, or paralysis, or consumption.

That it did not then again result in a total paralysis of industry, in famine and anarchy, (which was probably intended), is only to be explained by the exercise of an energy, versatility, good sense, and industry in the Southern people, which are almost miraculous.

The acetabulum may be fractured or the sacrum broken, with injury to the sacral plexus of nerves, causing paralysis of the lower extremities and of the sphincters, with resultant involuntary passage of urine and feces, and in childbirth the coccyx is often broken.

The defect of speech, accompanied by a strong tendency to lethargy, we accounted for at the time, by a transient cessation or paralysis of the tongue, and a congestion of blood on the brain, all of which frequently attack persons of the soberest habits.

Although you have to generate in your pupils a large stock of ideas, any one of which may be inhibitory, yet you must also see to it that no habitual hesitancy or paralysis of the will ensues, and that the pupil still retains his power of vigorous action.

The fact that those who squint do not as a rule have diplopia, while squints depending on paralysis of the ocular muscles are combined with diplopia, was difficult to explain as long as the view was adhered to of identical retinal areas founded on anatomical construction.

And I further believe that the cause of that paralysis is a direct extension of the original morbid process from the sensory root to the motor, affecting the origin of fibers in the latter, which are destined to govern the caliber as ocular and facial vessels.

Entertaining on one occasion the late Emperor Augustus at dinner, he was asked by that prince whether he was aware that the person who was the first to commit this violence upon the statue, had been struck with blindness and paralysis, and then expired.

I examined him, and came to the conclusion that death had been caused by a blow on the back of the neck, dislocating the fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae, bruising the spinal cord and producing internal hemorrhage and partial paralysis of the brain.

"The ruler there treated us handsomely, and had even taken care in the most kindly manner, of a white man who had escaped the rigors of the sea some years before, and who was demented, or incapable, through paralysis, of recognizing those around him."

The Liberian planters had invested all the capital they had in the coffee industry, and when coffee went down in the early nineties, the different Liberian communities were thrown into such a paralysis of hard times that they have not recovered to this day.

We know that falls on the sacrum, from which arises a shock of the inferior part of the spinal marrow, produce retention of urine; that they strike, as it were, this organ with the same paralysis as the inferior extremities, which then also cease to move.

His gait was somewhat jerky and uncertain, like that of a man who already carries in his system the germ of paralysis, the first touch of spinal disease; his body remained rigid without following the movement of his limbs, like the body of an automaton.

For years previous he was confined to his room by paralysis, dead to all affections save love of money, and vegetating in an easy chair stuffed literally with gold; for the senile miser, like a magpie, slyly secreted coin in every nook and corner of his chamber.

The brief paralysis caused by the remorseless clubs of the police passed, and like a sluggish monster, the mob, aroused to sudden fury, pressed upon the soldiery, hurling not only the vilest epithets but every missile on which they could lay their hands.

During the afternoon he had told them the tiger story, and had confidentially informed them how it was that Bathurst from his birth had been the victim of something like nervous paralysis at all loud sounds, especially those of the discharge of firearms.

After a time, if the exposure be continued, the symptoms are intensified, and restlessness passes into the weakness of partial paralysis; then suddenly or gradually, with or without convulsions, stupor sets in, deepening into coma, and death from arrested respiration is the final result.

Cattle that have been confined to the stall, and even straw-yard cattle, are utterly unfit for the road, on account of the softness of their hoofs, and when put to it at once, are very apt to take paralysis if not carefully prepared by previous exercise.

Half dazed, starving, weary to the edge of paralysis, the young doctor staggered below, ate cautiously a little bread and milk, bathed himself, and ended this phase of his lesson with an ecstatic stretch on a couch that was heavenly to his wrenched limbs.

She had some friends of her school days, and the pride which had hitherto prevented her from communicating with them was all gone, immersed in the flood of fear and repulsion which, despite all her reasoning, swept over her periodically like a paralysis.

Writer's paralysis, or even the ache that comes from holding the hand so long in a more or less cramped attitude, is easily obviated by stopping once in an hour or half hour, stretching the fingers wide and letting the muscles slowly relax of their own accord.

Then, remembering the picture, he looked around him for his sword with which to obliterate the portraits which his genius had assigned to so lamentable an eternity; but his efforts were feeble, and the paralysis of death seized him while he was yet making them.

As we see that apoplexy attacks people with short necks, or butchers are liable to carbuncle, as gout attacks the rich, health the poor, deafness kings, paralysis administrators, so it has been remarked that certain classes of husbands and their wives are more given to illegitimate passions.

They showed that neurotic sufferers presented disorders in their thoughts, that many of their accidents, in all appearance physical, were in connection with ideas, with the conviction of paralysis, of illness, with the remembrance of such or such an event which had determined some great emotion.

That a period of lethargy in action should steal over a government just released from strenuous exertion is one thing, and bad enough; but it is different, and much worse, that there should be a paralysis of idea, of mental development corresponding to the movement of the world.

When an animal is struck by lightning the shock is instantaneously expended on the nervous system, and as a rule death occurs immediately; but when the shock is not fatal animation is suspended to a greater or less extent, as evidenced by prostration, unconsciousness, and paralysis.

In paralysis of the body of the bladder attention is rarely drawn to the urinary disorder until the bladder has been distended to full repletion and is almost ready to give way by rupture and to allow the escape of the contained liquid into the abdomen.

A cock-and-bull story of his having disguised himself as a savage in a kind of voluntary tar-and-feather suit, and having been struck with paralysis in consequence of plunging into an ice-cold stream to escape the populace, is usually told, but there seems to be no truth in it.

It often happens that shots touching the kidneys produce a paralysis, temporarily severe, which passes off to a great extent after some minutes and leaves the wounded animal well able to charge: it happened to me some years later while trying to photograph a wounded sable.

Catania, the rival seaport of Messina, is a thriving city, but the drain put upon the citizens, many of whom had suffered great loss of property through the earthquake, and the consequent paralysis to business all over Sicily, was more than they could meet.

Every line of a ship is so built for motion, every part, while afloat, seems so full of life and so answering to the human life it bears, that this paralysis of shipwreck touches the imagination as if the motionless thing had once been animated by a soul.

Described under the titles of "Radial Paralysis" and "Brachial Paralysis," there is to be found in veterinary literature a discussion of conditions which vary in character from the almost insignificant form of paresis to the incurably affected conditions wherein the whole shoulder is completely paralyzed.

When the abscess becomes active, general symptoms similar to those of other forms of abscess develop, and there may be localized paralysis of the opposite side of the body, the distribution of which depends upon whether the cortical centers or the motor fibers are implicated.

It was soon plainly apparent that he was attacked with paralysis of the right side, and from this time until his death, he was only able to utter a sentence occasionally, though most of the time he appeared to be fully conscious of everything transpiring around him.

Eugene, whom he found on the roof of his house playing with coils, batteries, accumulators, had suggested eagerly that if there was real trouble, he might end it by turning his light bang on to the jail, and so reducing it to a paralysis of sheer terror.

Even such mild infections as measles, scarlet fever, and influenza may poison certain nerves supplying the muscles of an arm or a leg, causing temporary paralysis, or even permanent laming; or they may attack the nerve of sight or of hearing and produce blindness or deafness.

Disorderly and insubordinate as soldiers, nothing but the terrors of their destructive arms, and the fatal paralysis of mind which singular prophesies had cast on the Americans, could have prevented them from being speedily swept away in the midst of their riot and contention.

Early in his career he did some excellent work in the study of the paralysis of childhood (infantile hemiplegia), but his attention and that of an older colleague, Breuer, were soon drawn (as has occurred to almost every neurologist) to the manifestations of that extraordinary disease, hysteria.

Distention of any hollow muscular organ, if the distention is not to the point of paralysis, means a greater inherent or reflex attempt of that organ to evacuate itself; the muscular tissue begins to grow, and a hypertrophy of the left auricle with the above-named lesion develops.

Most of the writers on this subject attribute the paralysis more particularly to drawing the head to one side when the patient lies in the Trendelenburg position with abducted upper limbs, as it tends to stretch the lower cervical nerves of the opposite side, especially the fifth.

A scream of horror burst from his lips, but overcoming the paralysis that momentarily affected his bodily powers, he leaped like a cat from the main shrouds to the cutting falls, and, grabbing the bucket in one hand, slid down into the yawning chasm beneath.

Liver disorders which throw on the kidneys the work of excreting irritant products, diseases of the lungs and heart from which clots are carried, to be arrested in the small blood vessels of the kidney, and injuries and paralysis of the spinal cord, are additional causes.

Sometimes the fingers, instead of being cramped, move in a disorderly manner and the pen cannot be grasped, while in other rare instances a kind of paralysis affects the muscles of the fingers, and they are powerless to make the movements necessary for holding the pen.

It is a curious fact, that a shot through the kidneys of any creature occasions almost instantaneous death, and the animal falls immediately, as though shot through the neck; this proves the terrible shock to the system, as the body is smitten with a total paralysis.

On the contrary, if the nostrum appears to develop fresh and disagreeable symptoms, he must manfully persevere, and face in turn neuralgia, rheumatic gout, fever, lumbago, sciatica, incipient paralysis, and even greater complications, rather than relinquish the remedy when he has once had recourse to it.

To our mind this is more than a coincidence; from the history supplied by the patient it is plain that the paralysis was peripheral and that the lesion involved the facial trunk somewhere in its intracranial course after its emergence from the side of the pons.

In short, here was a case of functional paralysis with contracture of the right hand, to be regarded as hysterical in the classical sense of the term, both by reason of the anesthesia and absence of trophic disorder, and on account of the hysterical history of the patient.

One of the most marked effects is the suspension of locomotion of the legs and arms, and the direct loss of will power which must supervene before voluntary muscular inactivity, which amounts to partial paralysis in the hands or feet, or peripheral extremities of the same.