Word: corde
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Even before its official opening, its 50 beds were filled with patients suffering from skull fractures, Parkinson's disease, tumors of the brain and spinal cord, and assorted other examples of the 200 human ills loosely classed as neurological. It had already undertaken its first operation, for a temporal-lobe defect causing epilepsy. The 13-member team in the operating room included an electronics engineer, a neurophysiologist, a neuroanesthesiologist, an electroencephalographer, and a behavioral psychologist...
...syphilis victims pass through the primary and secondary stages without knowing what has hit them. Then the spirochete goes underground, to erupt at intervals over the years in new active phases. Finally, in about half of the untreated cases, it attacks the heart and aorta, the brain and spinal cord. If the victim does not die of heart disease, he may end his days as a lame, blind, insane, partially paralyzed patient in a mental hospital...
Another investigation he took part in had equally obvious immediate practical results. It concerned the cord "pigtails" one still sees adorning the wings of various propellor driven planes. The subject under study was "precipitation static" - an electrical charge picked up when a plane passes through certain kinds of rain or snow storms. These charges, pilots found, interfered with radio communication. Since electricity tends to concentrate itself on pointed surfaces, such as radio antennas, the investigators suggested the pigtails as a harmless discharge point for any excess charge...
...Soutter pointed out to me: You jump with an emergency parachute on your chest which you deploy in case of a malfunction in the main canopy. On your first five jumps, in accordance with Parachuts Club of America regulations, you use a static line, which means that your rip cord is pulled for you as soon as you leave the plane...
...England safety officer licensed by the P.C.A., told me that he had taken 489 students through static-line jumps--in none of which did the main canopy fail. And he showed me how a parachute works, how the several tough, elastic bands throw the pack open when the rip cord is pulled, and how, at the same instant, the pilot chute (a miniature parachute that pulls the main canopy out) hurtles almost 20 feet into the air by the force of its own compressed spring system...