Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Not irritable; good-natured; in physiology, not reacting to stimulation.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Not irritable; esp. (Physiol.), incapable of being stimulated to action, as a muscle.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective biology, archaic Incapable of being stimulated to action, as a muscle.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

in- +‎ irritable

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Examples

  • Surprise is occasioned by the sudden interruption of the usual trains of our ideas by any violent stimulus from external objects, as from the unexpected discharge of a pistol, and hence does not exist in our dreams, because our external senses are closed or inirritable.

    Canto III 1803

  • I suppose when the stomach becomes inirritable, that there is at the same time a deficiency of gastric acid; hence milk seldom agrees with these patients, unless it be previously curdled, as they have not sufficient gastric acid to curdle it; and hence vegetable food, which is itself acescent, will agree with their stomachs longer than animal food, which requires more of the gastric acid for its digestion.

    Zoonomia, Vol. I Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766

  • These observations explain why epilepsy and insanity frequently succeed or reciprocate with each other, and why inirritable habits, as scrophulous ones, are liable to insanity, of which I have known some instances.

    Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766

  • As the patients liable to consumption are of the inirritable temperament, as appears by the large pupils of their eyes; there is reason to believe, that the hæmoptoe is immediately occasioned by the deficient absorption of the blood at the extremities of the bronchial vein; and that one difficulty of healing the ulcers is occasioned by the deficient absorption of the fluids effused into them.

    Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766

  • Some of them return at periods, and when these can be ascertained, a much less quantity of opium will prevent them, than is necessary to cure them, when they are begun; as the vessels are then torpid and inirritable from the want of sensorial power, till by their inaction it becomes again accumulated.

    Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766

  • Surprise is occasioned by the sudden interruption of the usual trains of our ideas by any violent stimulus from external objects, as from the unexpected discharge of a pistol, and hence does not exist in our dreams, because our external senses are closed or inirritable.

    The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society A Poem, with Philosophical Notes Erasmus Darwin 1766

  • Inflammations of the eyes without fever are frequently cured by taking a stream of very small electric sparks from them, or giving the electric sparks to them, once or twice a day for a week or two; that is, the new vessels, which constitute inflammation in these inirritable constitutions, are absorbed by the activity of the absorbents induced by the stimulus of the electric aura.

    Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766

  • In the history of hypqchondriasm, as far as it has been given, there is a combination of some of the symptoms of hysteria from the nervous system being partially or alternately in a strictum or laxum, or, in other words, in an inirritable or irritable state, and from the blood-vessels being alternately in a diseased and sound state.

    Medical inquiries and observations, upon the diseases of the mind Rush, Benjamin, 1746-1813 1812

  • Hence the bathing in a cold spring of water, where the heat is but forty-eight degrees on Fahrenheit's thermometer, much disagrees with those of weak or inirritable habits of body; who possess so little sensorial power, that they cannot without injury bear to have it diminished even for a short time; but who can nevertheless bear the more temperate coldness of Buxton bath, which is about eighty degrees of heat, and which strengthens them, and makes them by habit less liable to great quiescence from small variations of cold, and thence less liable to be disordered by the unavoidable accidents of life.

    Zoonomia, Vol. I Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766

  • Hence it appears, why people of these inirritable constitutions, which is another expression for sensorial deficiency, are often much injured by bathing in a cold spring of water; and why they should continue but a very short time in baths, which are colder than their bodies; and should gradually increase both the degree of coldness of the water, and the time of their continuance in it, if they would obtain salutary effects from cold immersions.

    Zoonomia, Vol. I Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766

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