DISSECTION WOUNDS. 299 DISSENTERS. should be carefully sucked as soon as it is ob- served, and the part then frequently touched with a solid stick of nitrate of silver or with nitric acid. Abrasions and small wounds on the hands should be protected with collodion or with ruliber gloves before beginning to dissect. If, however, the poison has been absorbed and infection has occurred, the patient begins to have a feeling of general illness in less than twenty- four hours. He is low-spirited, faint, and chilly, ami often complains of nausea. Then come rigors, intense headache, rapid and sharp (but weak) pulse, a coated tongue, great restlessness, and sometimes vomiting. The first local symp- tom is intense pain, with swelling and heat at the point of infection. Later the arm may swell, and there may follow pain in the shoulder of the wounded side, followed by fullness of the neck or armpit, extending in the form of a doughy swelling down the side of the trunk and assuming a pinkish tint. If incision at the point of infection and evacuation of pus does not give relief, general septica>mia may follow. The gen- eral symptoms increase in severity; breathing becomes dilHcult ; the pulse becomes very rapid and weak ; the tongue becomes dry, brown, and often tremulous when protruded: and the skin assiunes a more or less pronounced yellow tinge. The case may terminate fatally at or before this ^tage: or abscesses may continue to form, from which the patient may more slowly sink ; or, if he survive, the arm may remain stiff and useless, or amputation may be necessary. See PT-EsriA; "^EPTIC^MIA. DISSEISIN (OF. disseisin, from disseisir, ■lissaisir. Fr. dcssaisir, to disseise, from des-, dis-, apart + seisir. saiser. It. sagire, to seize, from .L. sacire, to take possession of, from OHG. tiizzan, Ger. set:eii, to set). At common law, the process of acquiring title to land by a wrong- ful possession thereof, accompanied by a claim to the freehold. It involved the double notion of the ouster of the rightful owner from his seisin and the definite acquisition of seisin by the newcomer. Its extraordinary efficacy in making a wrongful act of dispossession the basis of a valid (though defeasible) title is due to the transcendent im- portance which at the feudal law attached to the liare fact of possession of lands. The person .sei.sed of lands — that is, possessed of them and <lainiing them as his own — was not only 'pre- sumed' to be the rightful owner, as we should ex- press it to-day. but was. to all intents and pur- poses, in his public as well as his private relations, regarded as the owner. As to the person whom lie has ousted (the disseisee) . the possessor may have been only a disseisor; but in the eye of the law he was invested with the title, which would pass by descent to his heir or which he could alienate at his pleasure. Of course, this title was a defeasible one, which could by entry or by appropriate legal proceed- ings, taken within a limited time, be destroyed, notwithstiiniling its descent or alienation ; but pending such action it was the only existing right in the land which was recognized by the law as an estate or legal interest. The disseisee, whom we call the rightful orrner. was in effect only a rightful rlniwaiil. and what he had was not an estate or interest in the land, but a mere right of entry, which might or might not some time ripen into a legal estate, and certain cum- VOL. VI.— 20. bersome and expensive rights of action, which might or might not avail him. Though these rights were capable of transmission by descent, they could ni>t he alienated or made availal)le to another, and if not exercised within tlic longer or shorter term to which they were limited by law they were barred altogether. In the earliest period of Knglish law, only a few days were al- lowed for making a reentry upon lands — only so long as might be necessary to enable the dis- seisee to learn of the disseisin and make the necessary journey to the spot. Later the period of liu'itation was fixed by .statute at sixty years and upward, and it is now, acc(U'ding to the jurisdiction, fixed at periods of ten to twenty years, but the practice and effect of a disseisin, and the respective rights of the parties in the land, continue to be substantially the same as at common law. See Advkr.se Po.ssessiox; Descent Cast; Limitation: Pkescriptiox : and Seisin. Consult the authorities referred to under Real PKOrERTY. DISSEMINATION (Lat. disseminalio, from disseiiiinare, to scatter seed, from dis-, away + semiiiare. to sow, from semen, seed). The scat- tering of seeds. Often used in the sense of dis- persal (q.v.). DISSEN, dls'scn, Geobg Lvdolph (1784- 1837). A German classical scholar, born near Giittingen. Xot long after receiving his degree at the imiversity of his native city, where he had been a p,upil of the philologist He^^le, he was made professor cxtraordinarius (1813), and in 1817 full professor of the same institution. In early life he gave esjweial attention to the philosophy of the ancients, but after- wards devoted himself almost exclusively to a'sthetic interpretation of the classics. In these he attached .special importance to the de- velopment of rigid stylistic laws, which he main- tained governed all oratorical and political com- positions among the ancients. In addition to two admirable treatises, De Temporihiis et Modis Verbi Grwci (1800) and De Philosoiihia in Xenophonfis de Korratr Commenfariis Tradita (1812), he published editions of Pindar (1830), Tibullus (1835), and the De Corona of Demos- thenes (1839). His minor writings, Kleine lateinische iind deutsche Sehriften, with bio- graphical reminiscences by F. Thiersch, F. G. Welcker, and K. O. Miiller, appeared after his death (1830). Consult Bursian, Gesehichte der •llassisehen Philologie in Deiilschland (ilunich, 1883). DISSENTERS (from Lat. dissentire, to dis- agree, from dis-, apart -- sentire, to think). A name popularly applied to those who refuse to accept the authority or conform to the laws of an established Church, specifically in Kngland, al- though the word dissidents occurs in the acts of the Warsaw Confederation of 1573, to denote the Polish Protestants of that day. .s an English term it became common in the seventeenth cen- tury to denote the bodies who separated from the Church of England : thouch it is not commonly applied to Roman Catholics (for whom the older title was recusants), nor to members of the Episcopal Church in Scotland, though both these bodies dissent from the established churches. For the history of repressive legislation in Eng- land, and its gradual mitigation, see Tolera-
