Word: procrustean
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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From sheer whimsicality, the mythical Greek giant Procrustes stretched short men out to fit a long bed. Eight years ago, Los Angeles' Dr. Alvia Brockway decided to try a scientific Procrustean operation on his patients, who, cured of infantile paralysis or tuberculosis of the hip, hobbled about with one leg shorter than the other. Last week he announced in California and Western Medicine that of 75 operations performed in the Orthopaedic Hospital, 90% were successful...
Frequent and futile are the complaints from many mouths concerning the Procrustean rigours of the course system, which, cultivating knowledge in small and vigorous doses, so often blinds the intelligence of the student to problems and pleasures beyond the narrowest limits of his work; in examining the surface similarities between two versions of Goethe's "Faust" he forgets that the play is a thing of beauty and a living comment on life; in studying the calculus he overlooks that mathematics is a method of expressing the truth, as capable of interpreting the science of physiology as of indicating the proper...