From his early, playful use of Schele De Vere's "
mephitic vapors," through his gaining inspiration from the book's physical appearance, to his infusing Stray Leaves' oceanity into his poetry, Whitman wrote Stray Leaves into Leaves of Grass.
Emerson had "no great thought or purpose in him," and his work was, in fact, "somehow
mephitic." It lacked, for Bushnell, the acknowledgment of the "living God, and objects of faith" so central to his own life.
it was once in a
mephitic place in Russia known as Tchorni Gorod
Damp towels and cloths littered every surface in the bathroom and Lydia gagged at the
mephitic stench of the narrow water closet.
They swerved back into Beatles renditions, and PDQ Bach spin-offs, and the
mephitic misty-eyed syrup of "Shenandoah."
[I]t's a left-wing Disney Land: reckless neo-cons,
mephitic corporations, redneck governors, the death penalty, and Muslims being rounded up like, er ...
The wranglers explain the poor digestion of elephants as the
mephitic odor of drifts around us.
Passages at once grotesque and pastoral present wounded bodies in devastated expanses,
mephitic gardens littered with rotting fruit, suffering brides with putrescent wombs, and "bones a sheep skull or two beer cans in the dirt." Blood saturates this book; a "guilty stain" imbues its pages.
(11,12) In addition to ADH effects, conditions that alter AQP2 expression include: lithium treatments, hypokalemia, hypercalcemia, chronic renal failure, ischemic renal failure, cirrhosis,
mephitic syndrome, and seemingly unrelated conditions such as a low protein diet or exposure to high altitudes.
Viscous like an octopus, her breath
mephitic with drink, Marie plants on Maleux's lips a long, sour, aspiratory kiss, at which point he plunges his blade in her belly, proudly proclaiming: "Ben, quoi?
Man reverts once more to living in a cave, but the cave is now polluted by the
mephitic and pestilential breath of civilization....
and especially, the
mephitic effluvia [foul odor] from sinks [latrines]" Preventive measures included avoiding contaminated soil, foul neighborhoods, and impure water supplies.
Reading the novel as an English imitation of a decadent French text, for example, the reviewer for the Daily Chronicle denounced it as "a tale spawned from the leprous literature of the French Decadents, a poisonous book, the atmosphere of which is heavy with
mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction" (NCE 342-43).
In 1772, Daniel Rutherford discovered something that he called "
mephitic air." We now know it as nitrogen.
