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The act or means of communicating any influence to the mind or heart; as, the contagion of enthusiasm. "The contagion of example." Eikon Basilike. When lust . . . Lets in defilement to the inward parts, The soul grows clotted by contagion. Milton.

Affected by contagion.

One who believes in the contagious character of certain diseases, as of yellow fever.

Opposing or destroying contagion.

Preventing the contagion of smallpox.

To affect or infect, as with physical or mental disease or with moral contagion; to taint or corrupt. My tender youth was never yet attaint With any passion of inflaming love. Shak.

avoid; to shun; to refuse; to let go by; to shirk. [Obs. or Obsolescent] By reason of the contagion then in London, we balked the Evelyn. Sick he is, and keeps his bed, and balks his meat. Bp. Hall. Nor doth he any creature balk, But lays on all he meeteth. Drayton.

To take or receive; esp. to take by sympathy, contagion, infection, or exposure; as, to catch the spirit of an occasion; to catch the measles or smallpox; to catch cold; the house caught fire.

hilips. When lust . . . Lets in defilement to the inward parts, The soul grows clotted by contagion. Milton.

Contagion; contagious matter. "Contagium of measles." Tyndall.

rris (Jason). Though the former legal pollution be now done off, yet there is a spiritual contagion in idolatry as much to be shunned. Milton. It ["Pilgrim's Progress"] has been done into verse: it has been done into modern English. Macaulay.

poreal; to assume the qualities of a material body. See Embody. The soul grows clotted by contagion, Imbodies, and imbrutes. Milton.

To sink to the state of a brute. The soul grows clotted by contagion, Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose The divine property of her first being. Milton.

(with something); as, to impregnate India rubber with sulphur; clothing impregnated with contagion; rock impregnated with ore.

That which conveys contagion or infection. [Obs.] Donne.

ammation of the pleura and lungs; a combination of pleurisy and pneumonia, esp. a kind of contagions and fatal lung plague of cattle.

ails to appreciate the significance of the sounds heard or the images seen. -- Psychical contagion, the transference of disease, especially of a functional nervous disease, by mere force of example. -- Psychical medicine, that department of medicine which treats of mental diseases.

hich some ease is obtained; succor; alleviation; comfort; ease; redress. He seec the dire contagion spread so fast, That, where it seizes, all relief is vain. Dryden.

. Prayer. They swerve from the strict letter of the law. Clarendon. Many who, through the contagion of evil example, swerve exceedingly from the rules of their holy religion. Atterbury.

and ulceration of the intestines over the areas occupied by Peyer's glands. The virus, or contagion, of this fever is supposed to be a microscopic vegetable organism, or bacterium. Called also enteric fever. See Peyer's glands. -- Typhoid state, a condition common to many diseases, characterized by profound prostratio…