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diastole

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Medical, Wikipedia, Hutchinson 0.01 sec.
diastole
the dilatation of the chambers of the heart that follows each contraction, during which they refill with blood

diastole [dī′as·tə·lē]
(physiology)
The rhythmic relaxation and dilation of a heart chamber, especially a ventricle.


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? Mentioned in ? References in classic literature
 
Lydgate talked persistently when they were in his work-room, putting arguments for and against the probability of certain biological views; but he had none of those definite things to say or to show which give the waymarks of a patient uninterrupted pursuit, such as he used himself to insist on, saying that "there must be a systole and diastole in all inquiry," and that "a man's mind must be continually expanding and shrinking between the whole human horizon and the horizon of an object-glass.
For three hundred years and more the long steadily accelerated diastole of Europeanised civilisation had been in progress: towns had been multiplying, populations increasing, values rising, new countries developing; thought, literature, knowledge unfolding and spreading.
POLARITY, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature; in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male and female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals; in the equation of quantity and quality in the fluids of the animal body; in the systole and diastole of the heart; in the undulations of fluids, and of sound; in the centrifugal and centripetal gravity; in electricity, galvanism, and chemical affinity.
 
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