Word: muscularly
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Just about everyone swears on occasion. But some people are cursed with a pathological need to curse-and uncontrollably shout obscenities every few minutes. Accompanied by a violent muscular tic, their singular malady is called the Gilles de la Tourette syndrome for the French neurologist who first described it in 1884. The disease is rare, but its smutty symptoms turn its victims into social pariahs, and sometimes the psychological disorder leads them to mental institutions...
Investigators strongly suspect that the tic is neurotic in origin, related to the venting of aggression. Beginning in children as muscular twitches, the La Tourette syndrome gradually progresses to grunts and finally foul shouting. Doctors have tried everything from psychotherapy to sedatives and carbon dioxide inhalation, which is akin to a form of shock therapy. Lasting cures have proved as rare as the disease, but Psychologist David F. Clark now reports in the British Journal of Psychiatry that the treatment is contained in the symptoms...
...hour interview, he told Heatly that, like his father, he had beaten his wife a few times. He was making "intense efforts" to control his temper, he said, but he was worried that he might explode. In notes jotted down at the time, Heatly described Whitman as a "massive, muscular youth" who "seemed to be oozing with hostility." Heatly took down only one direct quote of Whitman's?that he was "thinking about going up on the tower with a deer rifle and start shooting people." That did not particularly upset Heatly; it was, he said, "a common experience...
...lotus' size made balance precarious, and its tenderness made walking painful. The withering of the foot caused a withering of the calf and sometimes dangerously distorted the curve of the spine and the position of vital organs. The Chinese believed, however, that by shifting muscular strain from the lower leg to the hip region, the process considerably increased the size of a woman's thighs and buttocks and permanently strengthened the pelvic muscles, alterations much appreciated by Chinese...
Flexible Rule. At Massachusetts General Hospital, the criterion laid down by Neurologist Schwab is that the EEG must remain flat for about 24 hours, and stay flat despite external stimuli such as a loud noise. There must be no muscular or pupillary reflexes; the patient must have no heartbeat or respiration of his own-only what the machines are providing. "After that," says Dr. Schwab, "the physician in charge can agree to turn off the artificial aids and pronounce the patient dead...