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Contagion   /kəntˈeɪdʒən/   Listen
Contagion

noun
1.
Any disease easily transmitted by contact.  Synonym: contagious disease.
2.
An incident in which an infectious disease is transmitted.  Synonyms: infection, transmission.
3.
The communication of an attitude or emotional state among a number of people.  Synonym: infection.  "The infection of his enthusiasm for poetry"






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"Contagion" Quotes from Famous Books



... debarred from baptism and grace, how much more ought not an infant to be debarred who, being newly born, has in no way sinned, except that being born after Adam in the flesh, he has by his first birth contracted the contagion of the old death; who is on this very account more easily admitted to receive remission of sins, in that, not his own, but another's sins are ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... for the latest news, while all sorts of rumors filled the air. A feeling of mingled horror and despair appeared to possess everybody. . . . Our soldiers came straggling into the city covered with dust and many of them wounded, while the panic that led to the disaster spread like a contagion through all classes." The President did not share the panic. He "received the news quietly and without any visible sign of perturbation or excitement"'(10) Now appeared in him the quality which led Herndon to call him a fatalist. All night long he sat unruffled in his office, while refugees ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... noticeable. He made one or two violent efforts to spur her flagging spirits and then, becoming touched by the contagion of her reserve, lapsed himself into silence. They sat and sipped their lemonades, thoughtfully inspecting their straws, dolefully ruminative. Their little table was like a blot on a snow-white ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... to him Nodwengo, and last of the three John. They drew near to the king, when suddenly, moved by a common impulse, the thousands of the people upon the banks of the stream with one accord threw themselves upon their knees before Owen, calling him God and offering him worship. Infected by the contagion, Umsuka, his guard and his councillors followed their example, so that of all the multitude Hokosa alone remained upon his feet, standing by his ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard

... or sympathy, might be forgotten, but no one can forget the child among the disciples, nor the raptured gaze of the blind man when his purged eyes open to behold the face of his miraculous Physician, nor the picture of Jesus touching without fear or disgust the leper whose unclean contagion made him an object of aversion even to ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson

... and destructive. The practice of medicine requires both vigorous health of body and firmness of mind. Dr. Garnett, now greatly weakened in body, and not exempt from anxiety of mind, became more and more susceptible to the action of morbific matter. It was not long before he received the contagion of typhous fever, whilst attending a patient, belonging to that very dispensary of which he had been so anxious to become physician. He laboured under the disorder for two or three weeks, and died the 28th of June, 1802; and was buried in ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... not a member of this jury who had not been exposed to some of this vile talk about Zoe and me, in the general contagion of the village gossip. How should this examination be managed? Of course the single question, they told me, was the manner of Lamborn's meeting his death. But the coroner's jury had the power to bind me to the grand jury for an indictment, ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... in question is called "parangi," and is defined by Mr. Kinsey (British Medical Journal) as a specific disease, produced by such causes as lead to debilitation of the system; propagated by contagion, generally through an abrasion or sore, but sometimes by simple contact with a sound surface; marked by an ill-defined period of incubation, followed by certain premonitory symptoms referable to the general system, then by the evolution of successive crops of a characteristic eruption, which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various

... families were stricken down in a day, and not one member spared to aid the others. The exodus was only limited by impossibility; all who could abandoned their homes and sought safety in flight. These were the fortunate minority; and, as if resolved to wreak its fury on the remainder, the contagion spread into every quarter of the city. Not even physicians were spared; and those who escaped trembled in anticipation of the fell stroke. Many doubted that it was yellow fever, and conjectured that the veritable plague ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... Aix or of Auch, and went off in a great hurry. For, in short, we repeat it, men wish to be pushed. A saint who dwells in a paroxysm of abnegation is a dangerous neighbor; he might communicate to you, by contagion, an incurable poverty, an anchylosis of the joints, which are useful in advancement, and in short, more renunciation than you desire; and this infectious virtue is avoided. Hence the isolation of Monseigneur Bienvenu. We live in the midst of a gloomy society. Success; ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... an individual affair. In recent years bacteriology and medical science have revealed the causes of many diseases and the manner in which they are spread. With a denser population and with more frequent contacts as a result of better transportation, the possibility of contagion has very largely increased and we now appreciate that the health of the family—even of the rural family—cannot be maintained without attention to the health of the community as a whole. Good health has become a responsibility of ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson

... with the poor invalid. No special command was therefore necessary to keep the maids of honor away from the prisoner; she was utterly neglected, and her old companions passed her door with flying steps. But the queen, as it appeared, did not fear this contagion; she was seen to enter the sick girl's room every day, and to remain a long time. The tender sympathy of the queen excited the admiration of the whole court, and no one guessed what torturing anxiety oppressed the heart of the poor prisoner ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... of contagion has been perplexed by comparing it with fermenting liquors; but the contagious material is shewn in Section XXXIII. to be produced like other secreted matters by certain animal motions of the terminations of the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... to know just what to do, turned them both out, which did not displease either greatly, as the brother and sister were equally afraid of contagion, and were nervous ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... statue, had been driven wild by forcible feeding was a fact that had given considerable uneasiness to headquarters, but she had been kept in comparative discipline. Now that discipline has been destroyed, it is possible that other free-lances will catch the contagion of crime; nay, there are signs that the leaders themselves are being infected through the difficulty of disavowing their martyrs. The wisest course for the Government would be to pardon Miss Pankhurst, of Paris, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... guilt upon the mind: so that a man of business often has all the air, the distraction and restlessness and hurry of feeling of a criminal. A knowledge of the world takes away the freedom and simplicity of thought as effectually as the contagion of its example. The artlessness and candour of our early years are open to all impressions alike, because the mind is not clogged and preoccupied with other objects. Our pleasures and our pains come single, make room for one ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... that on the night P——, the great ladies' doctor, had taken me aside and said, "My dear Dickens, you may rely upon it that if only one woman cries out when you murder the girl, there will be a contagion of hysteria all over this place." It is impossible to soften it without spoiling it, and you may suppose that I am rather anxious to discover how it goes on the 5th of January!!! We are afraid to announce it elsewhere, without knowing, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... thee love, since it is learned Only when one heart from another takes The sweet contagion; but, my bride and I May humbly teach thee other human lore. Thou say'st thou hast no soul. This cannot be, Since reason and all mental gifts are thine; Within the lovely calyx sleeps the germ,— A flower as yet unblossomed. Warmth and light From the great spiritual Sun alone ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown

... feeling, on the contrary, seemed to come from an indefinable emotion, more physical than mental. He was nervous and restless, as if under the shadow of threatening illness, though nothing painful entered into this fever of the blood which by contagion stirred his mind also. He was quite aware that Madame de Guilleroy was the cause of his agitation; that it was due to the memories she left him and to the expectation of her return. He did not feel drawn to her by an impulse of his whole ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant

... are made in the loyal university of Oxford, to continue the throne free from the contagion of schism. See Mather's sermon on the 29th of May, 1705." Thus he ridicules the university while he is eating their bread. The whole university comes with the most loyal addresses, yet that goes for nothing. If one indiscreet man drops an indiscreet word, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... book-fancier, suggests. And when he was speaking enthusiastically in a drawing-room his face irradiated, one might almost say, a sort of spirituality, his eyes glowed with a splendid fire, and his lips parted in a laugh of such potent joyousness that he communicated the contagion of it to his hearers. He spoke in a pleasant, well-modulated voice, with fluctuations in tone that accorded nicely with the circumstances of the recital; and his gestures and power of mimicry seemed to conjure up the characters whose adventures he ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet

... us demand its natural food, or it corrupts the whole?" ejaculated Sir Austin. "And is no angel of avail till that is drawn off? And is that our conflict—to see whether we can escape the contagion of its embrace, and come ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... interview neither party saw the other, nor was the gakt[^u]['][n]ta violated by entering the house. From this example it must be sufficiently evident that the tabu as to visitors is not a hygienic precaution for securing greater quiet to the patient, or to prevent the spread of contagion, but that it is simply a religious observance of the tribe, exactly parallel to many of the regulations among the ancient Jews, as laid down ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney

... victory too long withheld, it came to me. He was mad. Goliath, my servant, was mad. But more than that—a telepathic madness. I have elaborated my understanding since. Goliath suffers from a contagion. His constant attendance upon me has proved fatal to his stupidity. His senses are the victims of my puppets. He has entered my world and my madness creates for him, as it does for me, shadows that deceive him. But there is no Mallare in him. Unlike me, he does not sit in amused ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht

... be done is, once a week or so, to see that the whole skin of those exposed to infection, head included, is freshened by a wash all over with vinegar, and then protected with a gentle rub of olive oil. If this is done we should have little fear of contagion. Such a weekly freshening would ward off other evils ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers, and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The Prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... Africa, and of improving their own condition! Here, then, are two ignorant and depraved nations to be regenerated instead of one!—if we may call all the natives that occupy that vast continent a nation—two huge and heterogeneous masses of contagion mingled together for the preservation of each! One of these nations is so incorrigibly stupid, or unfathomably deep in pollution, (for such is the argument,) that, although surrounded by ten millions of ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... except in that, and what will follow out of that, we have no hope at all. Reform, like Charity, O Bobus, must begin at home. Once well at home, how will it radiate outwards, irrepressible, into all that we touch and handle, speak and work; kindling ever new light, by incalculable contagion, spreading in geometric ratio, far and wide,—doing good only, wheresoever it ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... began to play that all the Tidy Castle dolls had scarlet fever. She said it had broken out in the night and she undressed them all and put them into bed and gave them medicine. She could not find Lady Patsy, so she escaped the contagion. The truth was that Lady Patsy had stayed all night at Racketty-Packetty House, where they were giving an imitation Court Ball with Peter Piper in a tin crown, and shavings for supper—because they had nothing else, and in fact ...
— Racketty-Packetty House • Frances H. Burnett

... Words: nosology, nosography, etiology, nosogeny, pathology, pathologist, pathological, pathogeny, therapeutics, symptomatology, diagnosis, pathognomonic, diagnostics, semeiology, semeiography, clinic, polyclinic, prognosis, contagion, infection, contagious, infectious, zoonosology, enantiopathy, loimography, loimology, quarantine, pathogene, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... deserted. Three Rivers, once crowded with the friendly Algonquins, was now never visited by a red man, and a few years after the frightful plague first appeared, the settlement of Sillery, near Quebec, was attacked; 1500 savages took the fatal contagion, and not one survived. The Hurons, who had been always most intimately associated with the French, suffered least among the native nations from the malady. In 1670 Father Chaumonat assembled the remnant of this once powerful tribe in the neighborhood of Quebec, and established ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... they always had a great advance of wages, receiving sometimes as much as thirty dollars per month. I did not attempt to dissuade them from their purpose; they were just as right to risk their lives from contagion at thirty dollars a-month, as to stand and be fired at a shilling a day. The circumstance of so many of my own men being in American ships, and their assertion that there were no other sailors than English at New York, induced me to ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... these forces may or may not destroy all that you have gained. But we, the scientists of Venus, promise you this—that on the very day your conflict deteriorates into heedless violence, we will not stand by and let the ugly contagion spread. On that day, we of Venus will act swiftly, mercilessly, and ...
— The Delegate from Venus • Henry Slesar

... was a great believer in the experience meeting, and the Tuskegee Negro Conference, which he started in 1891, is nothing more nor less than an agricultural experience meeting. He placed his faith in the persuasive power of example—in the contagion of successful achievement. He once said: "One farm bought, one house built, one home sweetly and intelligently kept, one man who is the largest taxpayer or has the largest bank account, one school or church maintained, one factory running successfully, one truck garden profitably cultivated, ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... right? Have I laid finger on the sentiments which actuate you? But you are not satisfied by turning your own brain, you want to do, or rather do, the same thing to my good Razoumikhin. Really, it is a pity to upset so good a fellow! His kindness exposes him more than anyone else to suffer contagion from your own malady. But you shall know all as soon as you shall be calmer. Pray, therefore, once again sit down, batuchka! Try and recover ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... indecisive quickness of movement, a sniffing of snouts and pricking of ears. These became incensed at their more phlegmatic brothers, urging them on with numerous sly nips on their hinder quarters. Those, thus chidden, also contracted and helped spread the contagion. At last the leader of the foremost sled uttered a sharp whine of satisfaction, crouching lower in the snow and throwing himself against the ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London

... during the reign of Gallienus, the pagans deserted their friends upon the first symptoms of disease; they left them to die in the streets, without even taking the trouble to bury them when dead; they only thought of escaping from the contagion themselves. The Christians, on the contrary, took the bodies of their brethren in their arms, waited upon them without thinking of themselves, ministered to their wants, and buried them with all possible care, even while the best people of the community, presbyters ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... were the cause, were not affected. In the early part of the reign of George III, a prisoner who had been confined in a dungeon was taken in a coach with four constables before a magistrate; and although the man himself was not ill, the four constables died from a short putrid fever; but the contagion extended to no others. From these facts it would almost appear as if the effluvium of one set of men shut up for some time together was poisonous when inhaled by others; and possibly more so, if the men be of different races. Mysterious as this circumstance appears to ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... what ill-fated hour Sprung the fierce strife, from what offended power? Latona's son a dire contagion spread, And heap'd the camp with mountains of the dead; The king of men his reverend priest defy'd, And for the king's ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... counterbalanced those advantages, had they been realized in their fullest effect. The remote stations of these troops, placing the commanding officers beyond the notice and control of the board, afforded too much opportunity and temptation for unwarrantable emoluments, and excited the contagion of peculation and rapacity throughout the whole army. A most remarkable and incontrovertible proof of the prevalence of this spirit has been seen in the court-martial upon Captain Erskine, where the court, composed ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... alms, his offerings, his pilgrimages were incessantly renewed; the monastery chosen for his sepulchre was endowed with his fairest possessions, and the naked heir might often complain that his father's sins had been redeemed at too high a price. The Marquis Azo was not exempt from the contagion of the times; his devotion was animated and inflamed by the frequent miracles that were performed in his presence; and the monks of Vangadizza, who yielded to his request the arm of a dead saint, were not ignorant of the value of that ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison

... enemies were gone, gave way utterly, and sinking on the floor, she swayed back and forth, sobbing even more hysterically than Zell, and her mother and Laura, oppressed with the sense of some new impending disaster, caught the contagion of their bitter grief, and wept and wrung ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... Chingford 'bus any Sunday evening, and let yourself go with the crowd. Out in the glades of the Forest things are happening. The dappled shades of the wood flash with colour and noise, and, if you are human, you will soon have succumbed to the contagion of the carnival. Voices of all varieties, shrill, hoarse, and rich, rise in the heavy August air, outside "The Jolly Wagoners," and the jingle of glasses and the popping of corks compete with the professional hilarity of the vendors of novelties. Here and there bunches of ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... cries one,—"nou k bien amieus nou!—c'est zaffai si nou m!" [We will have our fill of fun: what matter if we die after!] And all mask, and join the rout, and dance down to the Savane, and over the river-bridge into the high streets of the Fort, carrying contagion with them!... No extraordinary example, this: the ranks of the dancers hold many and many ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... might understand the sublimity of their best poets. She discovered in her early years a taste for works of genius; and it was St. Aubert's principle, as well as his inclination, to promote every innocent means of happiness. 'A well-informed mind,' he would say, 'is the best security against the contagion of folly and of vice. The vacant mind is ever on the watch for relief, and ready to plunge into error, to escape from the languor of idleness. Store it with ideas, teach it the pleasure of thinking; and the temptations of the world without, will be counteracted by the ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... enthusiasm, and with a conscious sense of companionship, pride and affection. I do not think I was altogether understood, except by a few, but the contagion of my own pleasure seized the multitude, and a great melodious shout arose, while cries of 'Hi mitla' echoed in the Hall, and then, carried away with an emotional impulse, these excited Martians broke into a song, a swinging ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... posterity, to strive to remove an evil, which, like the Upas, extends its pestiferous influence in every direction. Let them reflect that the object of punishing criminals is to protect society. This object may be promoted by the reformation of the transgressor; but if he is placed in a situation where contagion is inevitable, the punishment, however severe, is not conducive to that result. A severe punishment may, indeed, be influential in deterring others from pursuing similar courses; but if he, on obtaining his release, instead of being disposed ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... high above all other modern poets by the deliberate purity of his responsiveness. The contagion of the world's slow stain has not touched him; from the first he held aloof from the general conspiracy to forget in which not only those who are professional optimists take a part. Therefore his simplest words have a vehemence and ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... Are there not grown-up people who stand just as much in need of care? What of the idiot, the imbecile, the feeble-minded or the drunkard? What does rational self-determination mean for these classes? They may injure no one but themselves except by the contagion of bad example. But have we no duty towards them, having in view their own good alone and leaving every other consideration aside? Have we not the right to take the feeble-minded under our care and to keep the drunkard from drink, purely for their own good and apart from every ulterior ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse

... incredible that the economic balance can be universally disturbed by local changes, and always in one direction, we must assume a kind of moral contagion as an efficient agent in the wide-spread demand for a revision, of wages and hours of labour. Identical theories and demands, preferred simultaneously in Austria, Germany, France, England, and America, must be largely due to the force of example operating ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various

... Eden from cell to cell, from mind to mind, from sex to sex, would take volumes and volumes. I only profess to reveal fragments of such a man. He never hoped from the mere separate cell the wonders that dreamers hope. It was essential to the reform of prisoners that moral contagion should be checkmated, and the cell was the mode adopted, because it is the laziest, cheapest, selfishest and cruelest way of doing this. That no discretion was allowed him to let the converted or the well-disposed mix and sympathize, and compare notes, and confirm each other in good ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... army had been before Acre; it had sustained considerable losses, and it would have been imprudent to expose it to more. The plague was in Acre, and the army had caught the contagion at Jaffa. The season for landing troops approached, and the arrival of a Turkish army near the mouths of the Nile was expected. By persisting longer, Bonaparte was liable to weaken himself to such a degree as not to be able to repulse new enemies. The main point of his plan ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... Memory, as to be able to repeat all Terence and Horace by Heart. The Plague at that Time raging violently at Daventer, carry'd off his Mother, when Erasmus was about thirteen Years of Age; which Contagion increasing more and more every Day, having swept away the whole Family where he boarded, he returned Home. His Father Gerard hearing of the Death of his Wife, was so concern'd at it, that he grew melancholy upon it, fell sick, and died soon after, ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... The contagion of high spirits caught even Le Gardeur, and drew him out of himself, making him for the time forget the disappointments, resentments, and allurements of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... of guilt, I drew Contagion with my breath; And, as my days advanc'd, I grew A juster ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts

... their Characters (tho' briefly) are describ'd in our foregoing Catalogue: For notwithstanding it seem in general, that raw Sallets and Herbs have experimentally been found to be the most soveraign Diet in that Endemial (and indeed with us, Epidemical and almost universal) Contagion the Scorbute, to which we of this Nation, and most other Ilanders are obnoxious; yet, since the Nasturtia are singly, and alone as it were, the most effectual, and powerful Agents in conquering and expugning that cruel Enemy; it were enough to give the Sallet-Dresser direction ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn

... continual struggle of boldness on the one hand and slander on the other. The king treated him, however, with the indulgence which virtue testifies for youth's follies. The Comte d'Artois took him as the constant companion of his pleasures. The queen, who liked the Comte d'Artois, feared for him the contagion of the disorders and amours of the Duc d'Orleans. She hated equally in this young prince the favourite of the people of Paris and the corrupter of the Comte d'Artois. She made the king purchase the almost royal palace of St. Cloud, the favourite ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... San Francisco is the natural gateway for any such impulse, and not a little of it has already passed the custom house. In this field Edgar S. Kelley's influence is predominating, and it is not surprising that he should pass the contagion on to his pupil, Nathaniel Clifford Page, who was born in San Francisco, October 26, 1866. His ancestors were American for many years prior to the Revolution. He composed operas at the age of twelve, and has used ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... annoying, free to enjoy the quietness and ease he had earned from the world, the same vandals laid the track through his grounds, not only destroying all their beauty and attraction, but leaving fens from which these summer heats distilled contagion. He has therefore been ill for some weeks, and as he had never a strong constitution, and has preserved his equable but not vigorous health only by the most constant carefulness, his physicians and friends ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various

... country; and being implicitly adopted by the bulk of the community, the nation has abandoned itself to a sort of despair on the subject, and regarding manufacturing districts as the necessary and unavoidable hotbed of crimes, strives only to prevent the spreading of the contagion into the rural parts of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... from Locust that night at her party, for the doctor made his visit and pronounced his verdict. No parties for many a long day. Lloyd and Eugenia and Joyce had the measles, and nobody would want Betty to come for fear of the contagion. ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston

... time he was in constant correspondence with the members of the Cabinet, of whom Jefferson appears to have retired to Virginia and the other heads of departments to other places to avoid the contagion of the fever. ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... and passed out of his own yard, traversed the empty street and strove with the stubborn gate latch of the little house that faced his own. It was a poor-looking little house, and its poorness had extended to its surroundings—as if poverty was a contagion that spread. In Judge Priest's yard, now, the grass, though uncared for, yet grew thick and lush; but here, in this small yard, there were bare, shiny spots of earth showing through the grass—as though the soil itself was out at elbows ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... Sure there's contagion in the tears of friends: See, I have caught it too. Believe me, 'tis not For my ...
— All for Love • John Dryden

... Italy, northern France, the plains of Switzerland and north Germany). See 36.(375) We must not, however, fail to consider the reverse side of the picture of the great highways of the world. The same reasons that raise them to the dignity of lines of commerce, make them lines of war; and even the contagion of great plagues and of the ruling vices follows, as a rule, the avenues ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... spotless purity. She was the daughter of Yniol, and wife of Geraint. The tale of Geraint and Enid allegorizes the contagion of distrust and jealousy, commencing with Guinevere's infidelity, and spreading downward among the Arthurian knights. In order to save Enid from this taint, Sir Geraint removed from the court to Devon; but overhearing part of a sentence uttered by Enid, he fancied that she was unfaithful, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... to be done for the dear Master, in that moral lazaretto—the long rows of cells down stairs, where some had been consigned for 'ninety-nine years'? Hitherto, she had shrunk from contact, as from leprous contagion; meeting the Penitentiary inmates only in the chapel where, since her restoration to health, she went regularly to sing and play on the organ, when the chaplain held service. The world had cruelly misjudged her; was ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... relaxing the tension of these many weary years, the bearer of good tidings folded his arms about the slight form for a moment as he led her to her mother. Not yet, even, would he give full rein to his hopes. He might fail. There was inflammation lurking behind the eye-ball, caused by contagion from its fellow, which, when carelessly bandaged too closely, had burst from its socket, irretrievably lost. He could but try; and now his humanity as well as his love ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... his convictions, the refinement of his bearing, and the purity of his life. He was unspoiled by fortune and applause; uncorrupted by the tempting chances of his time; stainless in the use of gifts which in the hands of a man less true would have caught the contagion of Pope's malice or of Swift's ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... matters of fact. I could not, however, illustrate my own early experience, except by the lives around me which most influenced mine. And it was true that our smaller and more self-centred natures in touching hers caught something of her spirit, the contagion of her warm heart and healthy energy. For health is more contagious than disease, and lives that exhale sweetness around them from the inner heaven of their souls ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom

... would have shown him my example. I was afraid to be seen speaking with him, lest it should be thought I did him harm, and tempted him to evil, and corrupted him: or lest I really should. There may be such contagion in me; I don't know. Piece out my history, in connexion with young Walter Gay, and what he has made me feel; and think of me more leniently, James, if ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... 1688. At present there was more than passionate enthusiasm. The frenzied movement of mixed horror and exultation—the ululation of vengeance which ascended instantaneously from the individual street, and then by a sublime sort of magnetic contagion from all the adjacent streets, can be adequately expressed only by ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... colonies: another was, the infecting the world with a disease, which was before unknown only in the new world and particularly in the island of Hispaniola. Several of the companions of Christopher Columbus returned home infected with this contagion, which afterwards spread over Europe. It is certain that this poison, which taints the springs of life, was peculiar to America, as the plague and small-pox, were diseases originally endemial to the southern ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... London, of course, a house of your own: no longer with the Admiral. My dearest Henry, the advantage to you of getting away from the Admiral before your manners are hurt by the contagion of his, before you have contracted any of his foolish opinions, or learned to sit over your dinner as if it were the best blessing of life! You are not sensible of the gain, for your regard for him has blinded you; but, in my estimation, your marrying early ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... America.—Dr. Richard Bayley is the person to whom New York is chiefly indebted for its quarantine laws. His death was, however, by contagion. In August, 1801, Doctor Bayley, in the discharge of his duty as health physician, enjoined the passengers and crew of an Irish emigrant ship, afflicted with the ship fever, to go on shore to the rooms and tents appointed for them, leaving their luggage ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various

... wise resolves she ran down stairs, looking so blithe and bright that Phil cheered at the sight of her, and lost the long morning face he had got up with, while even Mrs. Watson caught the contagion, and became fairly hopeful and content. A little leaven of good-will and good heart in one often avails to lighten the heaviness ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge

... and I studied medicine together. I think he would have succeeded, had he stuck to the profession; but he preferred the Church, poor fellow, and died early, a sacrifice to contagion, contracted in the noble discharge of his duties. For my present purpose, I say enough of his character when I mention that he was of a sedate but frank and cheerful nature; very exact in his ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... most conspicuous in the solar rays: Without them, destitute of heat and light, This world would be the reign of endless night: In their excess how would our race complain, Abhorring life! how hate its length'ned chain! From air adust what num'rous ills would rise? What dire contagion taint the burning skies? What pestilential vapours, fraught with death, Would rise, and overspread the lands beneath? Hail, smiling morn, that from the orient main Ascending dost adorn the heav'nly plain! So rich, so various are thy beauteous dies, That spread through ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley

... Merton, lifted their voices in a shrill "Kree-kree-eee," which rose piercingly above the Wolves' "How-ooo-ooo!" Then the Otters and the Foxes added their characteristic cries to the din, and away off in the shadows where the contagion of the noise penetrated, Indian Joe gave vent to a ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler

... Danny; the contagion soon spread and first Nora and then Celia Jane were running with all ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell

... pilgrims went back to their homes they carried news of Stephen's Crusade to their children, who, filled with excitement, in turn passed the news on to their friends. And so the interest spread like a contagion throughout all parts of France, through Brittany, where the English ruled, through Normandy, recently added to Philip's domain, to Aquitaine and Provence, to Toulouse and peaceful Gascony. Whatever feuds their parents were engaged in, the children did not care, ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... very handsome in her evening dress, but she was cold as a stone and unapproachable as a statue. She scarcely spoke to him, indeed, except in answer to some direct remark, reserving all her conversation for her father, who seemed to have caught the contagion of restraint, and was, for him, unusually silent ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... rolling on the rug, communicating contagion. Flasks of treble-distilled lavender water, and their favourite, traditional in the family, eau d'Arquebusade, were on the toilet-table. They sprinkled his basket, liberally sprinkled the rug and the little ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... no less potent and mischievous than those with which Pasteur deals. Some of those who are infected with the contagion are put away in pest-houses or in prisons; many more walk the streets, and spread their dangerous infection through the social, business, and home life of the people. My claim is that the bad tenement ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks

... independent youth, thoroughly imbued with the instincts of his northern dalesmen, he had early leaned to a republican sentiment. His dislike of the effete conventionalism of the literary creed blended with his aversion to the political rule of the time. He caught the contagion of revolutionary enthusiasm in France, and was converted by the sight of the 'hunger-bitten' peasant girl—the victim of aristocratic oppression. 'It is against that,' said his friend, 'that we are fighting,' and so far Wordsworth was a convert. The revolution, therefore, meant ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... me for them with becoming gravity. I now thank him kindly for the same (it would have been undignified to do so then) and sincerely hope that he has found my scientific research beneficial to his land." Then the gold contagion suddenly broke out and committed great ravages. "I caught it one rainy afternoon near the Exchange; my mother and sister instantly became affected, but my father, who was of a stout habit and robust temperament, ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood

... universal frenzy, which spread itself by contagion throughout Europe, especially in France and Germany, men were not entirely forgetful of their present interests; and both those who went on this expedition, and those who stayed behind, entertained schemes of gratifying, by its means, their avarice or their ambition. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... do their utmost to extirpate and totally root out those workers of iniquity who in the kingdom of Ireland had infected and were always striving to infect the mass of Catholic purity with the pestiferous leaven of their heretical contagion. ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous

... the brother and sister there. They did much to foster the sympathies of Colin and Corinne for the English cause. The boys told of England and the life there, and were so full of enthusiasm for their country that it was almost impossible not to catch something of the contagion of their mood. Both Colin and his sister had seen much to disgust and displease them amongst the French; whilst round their foes there seemed to be a sort of halo of romance and chivalry which appealed to the imaginative strain ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... old age, in their own houses, in peace and honour,' whose deaths, nevertheless, were 'violent, immature, and tragical.' Cicero also used an argument whose full force has only been recognised in modern times. 'What contagion,' he asked, 'can reach us from the planets, whose distance is almost infinite?' It is singular that Seneca, who was well acquainted with the uniform character of the planetary motions, seems to have entertained no doubt respecting their influence. Tacitus expresses some doubts, but ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... first place the home (to show my inconsistency in regard to generalizing) is the place where prejudice is born, nourished, and grown to its fullest proportions. The child born and reared in a home is exposed to the contagion of whatever silliness and prejudice actuate the lives and dominate the thought and feeling of its parents. And the quirks and twists to which it is exposed affect its life either positively or negatively, for it either accepts their prejudices or develops ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... escape, swept willy-nilly by the vast adventure into one rank, we have no choice but to go as the weeks and months go—alike. The terrible narrowness of the common life binds us close, adapts us, merges us one in the other. It is a sort of fatal contagion. Nor need you, to see how alike we soldiers are, be afar off—at that distance, say, when we are only specks of the dust-clouds that roll ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... feet and cried out suddenly like a child who sees a tiger. The awful sensation of abysses seized her; one glance sufficed to communicate its contagion. The fiord, eager for food, bewildered her with its loud voice ringing in her ears, interposing between herself and life as though to devour her more surely. From the crown of her head to her feet and along her spine an icy shudder ran; then suddenly intolerable ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... This will be for her own good, as well as the redemption of mankind from her unwholesome foreign influences, typified as they are in the beautiful city of Havana, which has become the center of political plagues and pestilential fevers, whose contagion has at frequent intervals reached ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... not, new or old, But it may well be call'd poor mortals' plague; For, like a pestilence, it doth infect The houses of the brain. First it begins Solely to work upon the phantasy, Filling her seat with such pestiferous air, As soon corrupts the judgment; and from thence, Sends like contagion to the memory: Still each to other giving the infection. Which as a subtle vapour spreads itself Confusedly through every sensive part, Till not a thought or motion in the mind Be free from the black poison of suspect. Ah! but what misery is it to know this? Or, knowing it, to want ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson

... thoroughly master it but the conviction that if I was to be of any real assistance to my poor friend Maltravers, I must know as far as possible every circumstance connected with his malady. As it was, I felt myself breathing an atmosphere of moral contagion during the perusal of the manuscript, and certain passages have since returned at times to haunt me in spite of all efforts to dislodge them from my memory. When I came to Worth at Miss Maltravers's urgent invitation, I found my friend Sir John ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner

... From long experience with natives of wild countries I did not despair of obtaining an influence over my men, however bad, could I once quit Gondokoro and lead them among the wild and generally hostile tribes of the country. They would then be separated from the contagion of the slave-hunting parties, and would feel themselves dependent upon me for guidance. Accordingly I professed to believe in their promises to accompany me to the east, although I knew of their ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... persons in that part of the country, I should say a good many; though some of the lameness may have been taken at second-hand from the original sufferers by their descendants, and some may have come by contagion. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... perpetual motion, Which is the easiest matter of a hundred. Now, sir, your onion, which doth naturally Attract the infection, and your bellows blowing The air upon him, will show, instantly, By his changed colour, if there be contagion; Or else remain as fair as at the first. —Now ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson

... waited to ask no questions, but spurring into the thick of it laid right and left of him with the flat of his sword, and his men, catching the contagion of it, swarmed after him until the whole pack of attacking ruffians ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the eagerness of one who has found absence a burden. She shook her head and smiled. The little frown that had been marring the youth of her pretty brow smoothed itself away. She tripped beside him, feeling the contagion of his joy—inwardly repentant—and ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Petronius whom Nero called his Arbiter, the master of his revels; and the notorious ribald of Arezzo, dreaded and yet dear to the Italian courtiers. I name not him for posterity's sake, whom Henry VIII. named in merriment his vicar of hell. By which compendious way all the contagion that foreign books can infuse will find a passage to the people far easier and shorter than an Indian voyage, though it could be sailed either by the north of Cataio eastward, or of Canada westward, while our Spanish ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton

... formed for the abode of sacred truth; and for the reasons alike honorable to her character and to that of society. From the nature of humanity this must be so, or the race would soon degenerate, and moral contagion eat out the heart of society. The purity of home is the safeguard to ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... wards, and there must be content to stay. A sheep may be transferred from the scarlet-fever ward with its patron to the mixed-measles or diphtheria, when symptoms of either of these diseases appear, as they often do; but it cannot then go back again, lest it carry the seeds of the new contagion ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... cases, of another nurse devoted to the problems of maternity and children. Such organization gives at once a fundamental control of preventive measures and assists in community instruction. The Federal Government, through its interest in control of contagion, acting through the United States Public Health Service and the State agencies, has in the past and should in the future concern itself with this development, particularly in the many rural sections which are unfortunately far behind in progress. Some parts of the funds ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Herbert Hoover • Herbert Hoover

... outward shape, 460 The unpolluted temple of the mind, And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence, Till all be made immortal. But, when lust, By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk, But most by lewd and lavish act of sin, Lets in defilement to the inward parts, The soul grows clotted by contagion, Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite loose The divine property of her first being. Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp 470 Oft seen in charnel-vaults and sepulchres, Lingering and sitting by a new-made grave, As loth to leave the body that it loved, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... also true that there has perhaps not appeared a cartoon in any American newspaper tending to glorify war, and no legislation has so far been enacted in preparation for war. There is good reason to believe that the people have not been infected by the contagion of blood. ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... subject plainly discussed. Need of Occult protection. How to change the Aura so that it will repel physical contagion and psychic attacks. How to Guard the body by Auric Colors. How to energize and illumine the mind, so as to protect against mental influences. The protective Golden Aura. How to protect your emotional nature from ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi

... I pass; and you, in the same way, for me; and we must find each other soon. So that is understood. I can't enjoy a thing of that kind with any but a young person; a man of my age requires the contagion of young spirits and the companionship of someone who enjoys everything spontaneously. ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... away. I tried to continue my calculations. I tried to stir myself up with recollections of the miserable sights I had seen, the poverty, the helplessness. I tried to work myself into indignation; but all through these efforts I felt the contagion growing upon me, my mind falling into sympathy with all those straining faculties of the body, startled, excited, driven wild by something, I knew not what. It was not fear. I was like a ship at sea straining ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

... perverted natures became hardy, vigorous, bore fruit. They surrounded themselves with proselytes from the ranks of the idle, the vicious, the unsuccessful. They stimulated and organized discontent. Every one of them became a center of moral and political contagion. To those as yet unprepared to accept anarchy was offered the milder dogma of Socialism, and to those even weaker in the faith something vaguely called Reform. Each was initiated into that degree to ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... paths of virtue. That this was not from a defect of feeling and passion, but that his mind being filled with important objects, his passions were employed in more noble pursuits than those of licentious pleasure. I saw from Paoli's example the great art of preserving young men of spirit from the contagion of vice, in which there is often a species of sentiment, ingenuity and enterprise nearly allied ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell

... and you are toiling like mad, when somebody happens to speak to you, or you strike a bone. Then your hand slips up on the blade, and there is a fearful gash. And that would not be so bad, only for the deadly contagion. The cut may heal, but you never can tell. Twice now; within the last three years, Mikolas has been lying at home with blood poisoning—once for three months and once for nearly seven. The last time, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... removed on board the hospital ship, and I shall return as quickly as possible with my assistants and move her. The more promptly you call your daughter from her bedside, the better, for 't will just so much lessen the chance of contagion." ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... place of refuge. In their turn, the Spanish counter-revolutionists found an asylum in France, and prepared arms on both sides of the Pyrenees. A sanatory line of troops, stationed on our frontier to preserve France from the contagion of the yellow-fever which had broken out in Catalonia, soon grew into an army of observation. The hostile feeling of Europe, much more decided and systematic, co-operated with the mistrust of France. Prince Metternich dreaded a ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... broke out in these mountains, Chainitza had distributed infected garments among gipsies, who scattered contagion wherever they went. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... necessarily unfavorable to public schools; but in reality he knew nothing of public schools. All the establishments for Papists were narrow, and suited to their political depression; and his parents were too sincerely anxious for their son's religious principles to risk the contagion of Protestant association by ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... of two or three feet square from each other, are inoculated with the cochineal, which, I scarcely need say, is an insect; it is the same as if you would take the blight off an apple or other common tree, and rub a small portion of it on another tree free from the contagion, when the consequence would be, that the tree so inoculated would become covered with the blight; a small quantity of the insects in question is sufficient for each plant, which in proportion as it increases its leaves, is sure to be covered with this costly parasite. When ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various

... the door of every squalid house was the plain pine box that held what was left of some one of its loved inmates. Yet through this carnival of death, steadily and fearlessly, the better class of workers walk; not dreading the contagion and secure in their ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... of sound children from an unsound parent, in the first case, and unsound children from two apparently sound parents in the second case, is exactly the opposite of what one would expect if the child gets his unsoundness merely by imitation or "contagion." The difference can not reasonably be explained by any difference in environment or external stimuli. Heredity offers a satisfactory explanation, for some forms of feeble-mindedness and epilepsy, and some of the diseases known as insanity, behave as recessives ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... by the contagion of this frenzy, save her husband—and no one more than the pirate ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai

... mission Egede had sent home young Eskimos from time to time. Three of these died of smallpox in Denmark. The fourth came home and brought the contagion, all unknown, to his people. It was the summer fishing season, when the natives travel much and far, and wherever he went they flocked about him to hear of the "Great Lord's land," where the houses were so tall that one could not ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... the woman has to be than the man. I could go into town, where there was the contagion of good cheer; and where my work absorbed my thoughts and helped to shut out grief. But not so with Mother! She must live day by day and hour by hour amid the scenes of her anguish. No matter where she turned, something reminded her of the joy we had known and lost. Even ...
— Making the House a Home • Edgar A. Guest

... from amongst the masses. Democracy raises up a natural prince for its leader, and aristocracy infuses a princely spirit among the people. Virtues are no less contagious than vices. "There needs but one wise man in a company, and all are wise, so rapid is the contagion," says Emerson. No social class or caste can resist the diffusive ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... There was a funeral almost daily, and the mothers of the town were nearly demented with fright. My mother was greatly troubled. She worried over Pamela and Henry and me, and took constant and extraordinary pains to keep us from coming into contact with the contagion. But upon reflection I believed that her judgment was at fault. It seemed to me that I could improve upon it if left to my own devices. I cannot remember now whether I was frightened about the measles or not, but I clearly remember that I ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain



Words linked to "Contagion" :   morbilli, STD, contagious, Cupid's disease, rubeola, measles, venereal infection, communicable disease, Vincent's angina, dose, VD, venereal disease, influenza, incident, social disease, flu, sexually transmitted disease, pox, trench mouth, scarlet fever, communication, grippe, Vincent's infection, scarlatina, diphtheria, Cupid's itch, Venus's curse



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