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Distemper   Listen
noun
Distemper  n.  
1.
An undue or unnatural temper, or disproportionate mixture of parts. Note: This meaning and most of the following are to be referred to the Galenical doctrine of the four "humors" in man. See Humor. According to the old physicians, these humors, when unduly tempered, produce a disordered state of body and mind.
2.
Severity of climate; extreme weather, whether hot or cold. (Obs.) "Those countries... under the tropic, were of a distemper uninhabitable."
3.
A morbid state of the animal system; indisposition; malady; disorder; at present chiefly applied to diseases of brutes; as, a distemper in dogs; the horse distemper; the horn distemper in cattle. "They heighten distempers to diseases."
4.
Morbid temper of the mind; undue predominance of a passion or appetite; mental derangement; bad temper; ill humor. (Obs.) "Little faults proceeding on distemper." "Some frenzy distemper had got into his head."
5.
Political disorder; tumult.
6.
(Paint.)
(a)
A preparation of opaque or body colors, in which the pigments are tempered or diluted with weak glue or size (cf. Tempera) instead of oil, usually for scene painting, or for walls and ceilings of rooms.
(b)
A painting done with this preparation.
Synonyms: Disease; disorder; sickness; illness; malady; indisposition; ailment. See Disease.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Distemper" Quotes from Famous Books



... wine? Let me tell you, Mr. Wild, there is nothing so deceitful as the spirits given us by wine. If you must drink, let us have a bowl of punch—a liquor I the rather prefer, as it is nowhere spoken against in Scripture, and as it is more wholesome for the gravel, a distemper with which ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding

... overjoyed at the news that he made a great sacrifice upon it to the gods, prepared sumptuous feasts, to which he invited all his friends, and therein drank so excessively that it threw him into a very bad distemper."]—who died of joy; and of Thalna, who died in Corsica, reading news of the honours the Roman Senate had decreed in his favour, we have, moreover, one in our time, of Pope Leo X., who upon news of the taking of Milan, a thing ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... will cure more diseases than any other medicine known; such as Distemper, Fersey, Hidebound, Colds, and all lingering diseases which may arise from impurity of the blood or lungs.—Take 1 lb. comfrey root, half lb. antimony, half lb. sulphur, 3 oz. of saltpetre, half lb. laurel berries, half lb. juniper berries, half lb. angetice seed, half lb. rosin, 3 oz. alum, half ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid

... treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch - hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into - some fearful, devastating scourge, I know - and, before I had glanced half down the list of "premonitory symptoms," it was borne in upon me that I had fairly ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... time [380], before he could enter upon his office he was obliged to set out suddenly for the east, where, after he had conquered the king of Armenia, and reduced Cappadocia into the form of a province, he died at Antioch, of a lingering distemper, in the thirty-fourth year of his age [381], not without the suspicion of being poisoned. For besides the livid spots which appeared all over his body, and a foaming at the mouth; when his corpse was burnt, the heart was found entire among the ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... flint of Primitive Man, cut the outline of the figure. At first only this cut was filled with color, producing what has been called the koil-anaglyphic. In the final stage the line was made by drawing with chalk or coal on prepared stucco, and the color, mixed with gum-water (a kind of distemper), was applied to the whole enclosed space. Substantially the same method of painting was used upon other materials, such as wood, mummy cartonnage, papyrus; and in all its thousands of years of existence Egyptian painting never advanced upon or varied ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... bring permanent weakness of the eyes. Smoked glasses or goggles,[A] veils of green or blue or black, even a crescent eye-shade cut out of a piece of birch-bark or cardboard and blackened on its under-side with charcoal, will prevent the hours and sometimes days of torture which this distemper entails. ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... to hear the Portuguese cry quarter, and see their ancient struck, was so great to our captain, who, as I have said, was reduced very weak with a high fever, that it gave him new life. Nature conquered the distemper, and the fever abated that very night; so that in two or three days he was sensibly better, his strength began to come, and he was able to give his orders effectually in everything that was material, and in about ten days was entirely well and about ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe

... man as of a being, who, naturally pure, and inclined to all virtue, is sometimes, almost involuntary, drawn out of the right course, or is overpowered by the violence of temptation. Vice with them is rather an accidental and temporary, than a constitutional and habitual distemper; a noxious plant, which, though found to live and even to thrive in the human mind, is not the natural growth and production of ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... persisted in his design, alleging "that more than fifty poor individuals depended for their daily bread on its performance." His life fell a sacrifice to his benevolence. The exertions which he was compelled to make in playing the principal part of Argan aggravated his distemper, and as he was repeating the word juro, in the concluding ceremony, he fell into a convulsion, which he vainly endeavoured to disguise from the spectators under a forced smile. He was immediately carried to his house, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various

... a spoiled and obstreperous puppy of three months or so, Lady was stricken with distemper and was taken to a veterinary hospital. There, for something more than three months she was nursed through the scourging malady and through the chorea and pneumonia which are so prone to follow in distemper's ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... apothecary and asked him for some lozenges. "My poor master," she said, "can neither eat nor speak, and no one knows what his distemper is." She carried home the lozenges and returned next day weeping, and asked for an essence only given to those just about to die. Thus, in the evening, no one was surprised to hear the wretched shrieks and cries of Cassim's wife and Morgiana, telling everyone ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... temporary place in the scheme of things. Mrs. Yorba fell ill. The sudden and complete change from a personage to a nobody, the long confinement,—she rarely put her foot outside the house lest her shabby clothes be remarked upon,—and a four years' course of sensational novels induced a nervous distemper. Magdalena, hearing the sound of pacing footsteps in the hall one night, arose and opened her door. Mrs. Yorba, arrayed in a red flannel nightgown and a frilled nightcap, was walking rapidly up and down, talking ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... but Fraser developed a wolfish temper which turned him into a veritable chestnut burr. There was no handling him. His scars were not deep nor his hurts serious, however, so by the afternoon of the second day he announced, with surly distemper, that he would be ready to leave on the following morning, and the others accordingly made preparation for an early start. They selected the most seaworthy canoe, which at best was a treacherous craft, and stocked it well with water, cooked ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... a sort of Physician, or rather a Quack, who being once cur'd of some dangerous Distemper, has the Presumption and Folly to fancy that he is immortal, and possessed of the Power of curing all Diseases, by speaking to the Good and Evil Spirits. Now though every Body rallies upon these Fellows when they are absent, and looks upon 'em ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... the man that have made light of my salvation? If they do not, it is because you make light of it still, for all that is said to you. But because, if it be the will of the Lord, I would fain have this damning distemper cured, and am loath to leave you in such a desperate condition, if I knew how to remedy it, I will give you some considerations, which may move you, if you be men of reason and understanding, to look better about you; and I beseech you to weigh ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser

... means my love? Oh, how have I deserv'd This language from the sovereign of my joys? Stop, stop, these tears, Monimia, for they fall Like baneful dew from a distemper'd sky; I feel 'em chill me to my ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway

... to eat, had begun to show decidedly alarming symptoms. I diagnosed the case as plain homesickness and privately resolved to get her off the yacht if it was a possible thing; but Mr. Daly thought she had distemper or something and was mightily cut up. He didn't want the animal to die on his hands after all he had gone through to get her. Altogether he began to be pretty uneasy and you may be sure I did my part to make him so. Every chance ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett

... and to catch fishe at the two seasons aforemencioned [spring and fall]." The work was allowed to lapse and in 1620 the "salt works" were described as "wholly gone to rack and let fall" with serious consequences. It led, it appears, to some "distemper" in Virginia caused by the colonists "eating pork and other meats fresh and unseasoned." In any case measures were taken in 1620-21 to re-establish the works and Pory reported that he had found a suitable spot not far from "where was ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch

... maker's point of view, by builders and decorators for the preparation of ordinary mortar or lime-wash. The mortar made from acetylene lime has been found equal in strength and other properties to mortar compounded from fresh slaked lime; while the distemper prepared by diluting the sludge has been used most successfully in all places where a lime-wash is required, e.g., on fruit-trees, on cattle-pens, farm-buildings, factories, and the "offices" of ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... evil is totally changed in France: but there is an evil there. The disease is altered; but the vicinity of the two countries remains, and must remain; and the natural mental habits of mankind are such, that the present distemper of France is far more likely to be contagious than the old one: for it is not quite easy to spread a passion for servitude among the people; but in all evils of the opposite kind our natural inclinations are flattered. In the case of despotism, there ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the blood-letting to which I had been subjected. When any one is proved to be guilty of a crime, he is bled, for the purpose of detecting from the color of the fluid, or blood, how far his guilt was voluntary or otherwise; whether he had sinned through malice or distemper. Should the fluid be found discolored, he is sent to the hospital to be cured; thus this process is rather a correction than a punishment. A member of the council, or any one high in office, would be removed, should it be ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg

... with my faithful tears, And be perpetual mourner at thy tomb; I'll sacrifice this comet into sighs,[376] Make a consumption of this pile of man, And all the benefits my parents gave, Shall turn distemper'd to appease the wrath For this bloodshed, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... name was Tootteraso,* (* M. de Bougainville, who laid at Hitiaa from April 6th to April 16th, 1768.)—so at least the Natives call him—and that one of the Natives, Brother to the Chief of Ohidea, went away with him. They likewise say these ships brought the venerial distemper to this Island, where it is now as Common as in any part of the world, and which the people bear with as little concern as if they have been accustom'd to it for Ages past. We had not been here many days before some of our People ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook

... fixed in a tool-handle; clear out the larger spaces with a small gouge, leaving tool-mark roughness in the bottoms for key; when cut, stop the suction of the wood by several coats of white, hard polish. For coloured stoppings, resin (as white as can be got), beeswax, and powdered distemper are the three things needful. The melted wax may be run into the incisions by means of a small funnel with handle and gas jet affixed; it is attachable to the nearest gas burner by india-rubber ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson

... directly to the plastering, either in oil or water-colors. Oil is the best; water the cheapest. In any case, the best quality of plastering is none too good. For the papering it may be left smooth, but for painting, especially with distemper, the rough coarse-grained surface is very much the best. The chief objection to stucco arises from its being a cheap material, easily wrought. It is so often introduced as if quantity would compensate for quality,—a common error in other ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner

... she did these things no man could tell, except it were the power of the spiritual world itself; but the distemper of the mind, which loved such dangers, increased upon her as she grew from a child into a maid, and it found new ways of strangeness. Thus, in the spring, when the rain fell heavily, or in the winter, when the great winds were abroad, or in the summer, when the lightning lightened and ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... being invited to a turtle-feast, there was no room for Wit; he asked after Charity, but it being found that Charity was that day run over by a bishop's new set of coach-horses, he died broken-hearted, being a distemper which, although {26}not catalogued in the Materia Medica, is very epidemical among beautiful women, and men of genius, who, having worn themselves out in making other people happy, are at last neglected, and left to perish amid ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens

... astrictive Quality, they are so far from being afraid of it in America, that they have found by Experience a Vertue directly contrary to it; for several young Women, subject to the Whites, have been cured of this Distemper, by eating a Dozen Cocao Kernels for Breakfast every Morning. It is well enough known that Obstructions are the Cause of this Disease, which instead of being encreas'd by Chocolate, were ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus

... sick of mind to speak, and my distemper was not of my wound. I had builded for this moment for two years, and now that it had come I was going to turn my back on it. More, I was going to refuse aid to a man who had succored me, had shown me genuine kindness. Self-pity is contemptible, but ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... occasion of our miseries and confusions. But whatever has been the occasion, it is now high time to seek for a thorough cure. We have need of more generous remedies than what have yet been made use of in our distemper. It is neither declarations of indulgence, nor acts of comprehension, such as have yet been practised, or projected amongst us, that can do the work. The first will but palliate, the second increase our evil. Absolute Liberty, just and true Liberty, equal and impartial ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... times of a quality which would not be called the best, appears from the annexed paragraph, written in the year 1774. "He [Eleazer Wheelock, President of the College] has had the mortification to lose two cows, and the rest were greatly hurt by a contagious distemper, so that they could not have a full supply of milk; and once the pickle leaked out of the beef-barrel, so that the meat was not sweet. He had also been ill-used with respect to the purchase of some wheat, so that they had smutty bread ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... city that he died of a distemper fatal in those parts, whilst he was engaged in celebrating the victories of his favourite monarch, the great Abbas.[10] As to the Eclogues themselves, they give a very just view of the miseries and inconveniences, as well as the felicities, that attend one of the finest countries ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... Fy, fy, M[aster]. Ford, are you not asham'd? What spirit, what diuell suggests this imagination? I wold not ha your distemper in this kind, for y welth ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... sir. My youth would needs bestow the wine on me to hear some martial discourse; where I so marshall'd him, that I made him monstrous drunk, and because too much heat was the cause of his distemper, I stript him stark naked as he lay along asleep, and borrowed his suit to deliver this counterfeit message in, leaving a rusty armour and an old brown bill to watch him till my return: which shall be when I have pawn'd his apparel, ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson

... Thus we staggered on until near night time, when we again stopped and I fell into a deep sleep, but the enemy did not again come up. On the following day we got into Fort Edward, where I was taken with a distemper, was seized with very grevious pains in the head and back and a fever. They let blood and gave me a physic, but I did not get well around for some time. For this sickness I have always been thankful, otherwise I should have been with Major Rogers in his unfortunate battle, which has become ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington

... names in different sections of the country where it frequently appears. It is often called Spanish fever, acclimation fever, red water, black water, distemper, murrain, dry murrain, yellow murrain, bloody murrain, Australian tick fever, and ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... be surprized to perceive that this letter is dated at the residence of my fathers. Fourteen days ago I was summoned hither by the particular request of my brother, who had been seized with a violent epidemical distemper. It was extremely sudden in its operation, and before I arrived he was no more. He had confessed however to one of the friends of our house, before he expired, that he had forged the will of my father, instigated by the surprize and disappointment he had felt, when he understood that that father, ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin

... shock sustained by all nations during the prevalence of the black plague is without parallel and beyond description. In the eyes of the timorous, danger was the certain harbinger of death; many fell victims to fear on the first appearance of the distemper, and the most stout-hearted lost their confidence. The pious closed their accounts with the world; their only remaining desire was for a participation in the consolations of religion. Repentance seized the transgressor, admonishing him to consecrate ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... habit, in which I passed upon your servants, and was conducted hither. I pretended a fit of the colic, to excuse my lying down upon your bed; hoping that when she heard of it, her good nature would bring her to administer remedies for my distemper. You know what might have followed. But, like an uncivil person, you knocked at the door before your ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... O words of heavenly sound! Shall I behold you, hear you once again? O waving locks, that Love has made the chain, In which this wretched ruin'd heart is bound! O face divine! whose magic spells surround My soul, distemper'd with unceasing pain: O dear deceit! O loving errors vain! To hug the dart and doat upon the wound! Did those soft eyes, in whose angelic light My life, my thoughts, a constant mansion find, Ever impart a pure unmixed delight? Or if they have one moment, then unkind ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... must be covered completely with a "first wash" of whitening and size, mixed to a freely working consistency, and laid on with a white-wash brush. When dry, he must outline his scene on this in charcoal. The painting is then to be done in distemper—all the effects are put in by the first wash; lights and shadows in their full tone, &c. He will use powder paints, mix them with size (which must be kept warm on a fire), and add white for body-colour when he wants to lay one colour ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... were as long as ever, but they changed greatly in character. He was no longer compelled to work with the women and children, save when the tending of the herds brought him into contact with the boys, but there he was now an acknowledged chief. A distemper appeared among the ponies and the Sioux were greatly alarmed, but Will, with some simple remedies he had learned in the East, stopped it quickly and with the loss of but two or three ponies. Old Xingudan ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler

... The gang is a distemper of the slum that writes upon the generation it plagues the receipt for its own corrective. It is not the night stick, though in the acute stage that is not to be dispensed with. Neither is it the jail. To put the gang behind iron bars affords passing ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... prophecies, and deliver oracles. Thus they announced in Rome that a victory would be obtained over King Perseus, when in truth they knew that the battle was already won. They falsely cure diseases; for, taking possession of the body of a man, they produce in him a distemper, and then ordaining some remedy to be used, they cease to afflict him, and men think that a ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... our distemper in all likelihood will be the same; for we shall be sick of one another. I shan't endure to be reprimanded nor instructed; 'tis so dull to act always by advice, and so tedious to be told of one's faults, I can't bear it. Well, I won't have you, Mirabell—I'm resolved—I think—you may go—ha, ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve

... placed him at a grammar school near St. Albans, where he was called by the name of his nurse, without the least intimation that he had a claim to any other. While he was at this school, his father, the earl of Rivers, was seized with a distemper which in a short time put an end to his life. While the earl lay on his death-bed, he thought it his duty to provide for him, amongst his other natural children, and therefore demanded a positive account of him. His mother, who could no longer refuse an answer, determined, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... fact is undoubted— that under them the state of America has been kept in continual agitation. [Footnote: 4] Everything administered as remedy to the public complaint, if it did not produce, was at least followed by, an heightening of the distemper; until, by a variety of experiments, that important country has been brought into her present situation—a situation which I will not miscall, which I dare not name, which I scarcely know how to comprehend in the ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke

... misfortunes, whose eyes glimpse evil, and by whose touch the most prosperous affairs are blasted. They work their malicious sorceries in the dark, collect herbs of baleful influence; by the help of which, they strike their enemies with palsy, and cattle with distemper. The males are called maissi, and the females maissa—witches ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... death-rate is under three hundred it went to four hundred and seventy-four. Then the weather setting in very severe checked it till the end of February, and we all hoped that the danger was over, and that we should be rid of the distemper before the warm weather set in; but for the last fortnight there has been a rise rather than a fall—not a large one, but sufficient to cause great alarm that it will continue until warm weather sets in, and may then grow into terrible proportions. ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty

... of the slaves, or that he imagined there was a much greater number of people in the colony who were satisfied with the present system of government than really was the case (a mistake, and an unfortunate one, which, like an epidemical distemper, seems to have spread through all our official departments in America)—upon whatever grounds he proceeded, he determined, though he relinquished his government, not to abandon his hopes, nor entirely to lose sight of the country ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... my opinion, a peculiar venom and malignity in this political distemper beyond any that I have heard or read of. In former times the projectors of arbitrary government attacked only the liberties of their country; a design surely mischievous enough to have satisfied a mind of the most unruly ambition. But a system unfavorable ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... right Method of bringing up Young Children: To which is added, An Essay on preserving Health, and prolonging Life. With a Treatise of the Gout, and Receipts for the Cure of that Distemper. By ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte

... M'Grath's remedy for that distemper was ever heroic. In a flash his big fist shot out and the crew looked to see its lighter champion go backward into the river at the impact. But the blow did not land. Griswold saw it coming and swerved ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... assured, he sputtered and giggled with small regard for my presence, and the farther he went the madder I got. Despite his former protestations of fair play, I now began to nurse a suspicion of this befousled little gimcrack; but I'd not thought that Tommy would grow a distemper of any magnitude until the professor, ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... together and incorporated in the Constitution of any Individual; yet this Observation is not so conspicuous in any, as in those, whose native Complexion comes the nearest to a Subversion and Absence of Mind, tho it should never degenerate into that distemper'd Elevation of the Spirits: Nothing is more common, than to see Persons of this Class always Think Right, and always Act Wrong; admirable for the richness, delicacy, and brightness of their Imaginations, and at the same Time to be pity'd for their want of ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore

... not yet concluded. When Charles met the army at Blackheath, 50,000 strong, "he knew well the ill constitution of the army, the distemper and murmuring that was in it, and how many diseases and convulsions their infant loyalty was subject to; that how united soever their inclinations and acclamations seemed to be at Blackheath, their affections were not the same—and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... out the dregs of his distemper. You couldn't be peevish swimming in that jolly, shining sea. We raced each other away beyond the inlet to the outer water, which a brisk morning breeze was curling. Then back to a promontory of heather, where the first beams ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... toad, and she wear them in a silken bag about her neck, it would certainly cure her; but it was to be observed, that on the toad's losing its legs, it was to be turned loose abroad, and as it pined, wasted, and died, the distemper would likewise waste and die; which happened accordingly, for the girl was entirely cured by it, never having had the evil afterwards. Another Gaddesden girl having the evil in her eyes, her parents dried a toad in the sun, and put it in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various

... work by steam-engines, for the reason that fuel is less costly than horse feed. An interesting instance to show how far mechanical inventions have taken the place of horsed wagons in the work of civilized communities was afforded by the horse distemper which swept over the country in 1872. During the week or more in which this epidemic was at the worst, the State of Massachusetts was practically unhorsed, yet the greater part of the necessary business, that required to bring provisions ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... Little, round, soft, doughlike swellings occur on the skin and may be scattered freely over the surface of the body when the horse is afflicted with urticaria. Similar eruptions, but distributed less generally, about the size of a silver dollar, may occur as a symptom of dourine, or colt distemper. Hard lumps, from which radiate welt-like swellings of the lymphatics, occur in glanders, and blisterlike eruptions occur around the mouth and pasterns ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... affirm, that this distemper proceeds from the womb; occasioned by the gross, vicious and rude humours arising from several inward causes; but there are also outward causes which have a share in the production of it; as taking cold in the feet, ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... The confusion among the people, especially within the city, at that time was inexpressible; the terror was so great at last that the courage of the people appointed to carry away the dead began to fail them; nay, several of them died, although they had the distemper before, and were recovered; and some of them dropped down when they had been carrying the bodies even at the pitside, and just ready to throw them in; and this confusion was greater in the city, because they ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... from which her recovery was slow. The fever which consumed her rendered her nights uneasy; and in her perturbed state of half-slumber, she spoke of sounds, and of motions, in and about the chamber of the turret, which I concluded had no origin save in the distemper of her fancy, or perhaps in the phantasmagoric influences of the chamber itself. She became at length convalescent—finally well. Yet but a brief period elapsed, ere a second more violent disorder again threw her upon a bed of suffering; ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... to the Coles, and ask them if there is anything more we can do," Peggy said, looking as unhappy as she felt. "They know so much about all kinds of animals. I've taken care of Taffy in his attacks of distemper, and once he had a dreadful fight with another dog, and came home all torn. But he didn't bleed ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith

... preference their hearts gave him to all other men.—Say what they will of generosity being a manly virtue; but upon my word, my dear, I have ever yet observed, that it is not to be met with in that sex one time in ten that it is to be found in ours.—But my father was soured by the cruel distemper I have named; which seized him all at once in the very prime of life, in so violent a manner as to take from the most active of minds, as his was, all power of activity, and that in all appearance for life.—It imprisoned, as I may say, his lively spirits in himself, and turned the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... will, doubtless, throw a number of deserving persons out of employ. The writers, whose stock in trade consists of words rather than ideas, will find their way to Basinghall Street, prose will be at a discount, and long-windedness be accounted a distemper. A great variety of small Sapphos must turn seamstresses*, at three-halfpence a shirt instead of a penny a line; while the minor poets will have to earn a livelihood by writing invoice, instead of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... monster in size—a beautiful, playful, gracefully galumphing, and most affectionate monster, and I, his happy Frankenstein, congratulated myself on the possession of a treasure that would last twelve years at least, or even fourteen, with the care I meant to take of him. But he died of distemper when ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... braines, which are the onely fountaine of that sense, doeth euer serue vs for an infallible witnesse, whether that Odour which we smell, be healthfull or hurtfull to the braine (except when it fals out that the sense it selfe is corrupted and abused through some infirmitie, and distemper in the braine.) And that the suffumigation thereof cannot haue a drying qualitie, it needes no further probation, then that it is a smoake, all smoake and vapour, being of it selfe humide, as drawing ...
— A Counter-Blaste to Tobacco • King James I.

... so evilly borne, shall cool the hearts Of all his people, and freeze up their zeal, That none so small advantage shall step forth To check his reign, but they will cherish it; No natural exhalation in the sky, No scope of nature, no distemper'd day, No common wind, no customed event, But they will pluck away his natural cause And call them meteors, prodigies, and signs, Abortives, presages, and tongues of heaven, Plainly denouncing ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... civillity and complaisance to all people, he was of a tender constitution, but through the vivacity of his spiritt could undergo labours, watchings and journeyes, as well as any of stronger compositions; he was rheumatick, and had a long sicknesse and distemper occasion'd thereby two or three yeares after the warre ended, but elce for the latter halfe of his life was healthy tho' tender, in his youth and childhood he was sickly, much troubled with weaknesse and tooth akes, but then his spiritts carried him through them; he was very patient ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... never turn into the Substance, but infects the Body with peccant Humours, which now and then are discharg'd by Phlegbotomy, and then they turn to a Gangreen by Amputation. Jacobitism (I speak of it in relation to the strong Hopes they have of succeeding by a French Power) is an uncurable Distemper. I have often wonder'd to hear Persons, otherwise of great Penetration and Sense, grow constantly Delirious upon this Topick. The Wagers that have been lost upon that very Prospect wou'd have purchas'd him a little Kingdom. Time has open'd a great many People's Eyes; but there is a set ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe

... those tiles," he heard Bosinney say,—"is ruby with a grey tint in the stuff, to give a transparent effect. I should like Irene's opinion. I'm ordering the purple leather curtains for the doorway of this court; and if you distemper the drawing-room ivory cream over paper, you'll get an illusive look. You want to aim all through the decorations ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... attempt to bite. I had two good opportunities of observing the disease at Yauli. Cats attacked in this way are called, by the natives, azorochados, and antimony is alleged to be the cause of the distemper. Dogs are also liable to it, but it visits them less severely than cats, and with care ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... Queen of Hearts. At this, the blood the virgin's cheek forsook, A livid paleness spreads o'er all her look; 90 She sees, and trembles at th' approaching ill, Just in the jaws of ruin, and Codille. And now (as oft in some distemper'd State) On one nice Trick depends the gen'ral fate. An Ace of Hearts steps forth: The King unseen 95 Lurk'd in her hand, and mourn'd his captive Queen: He springs to Vengeance with an eager pace, And falls like thunder on the prostrate Ace. The nymph exulting fills with shouts the sky; ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... home a wife of twenty-five, Christina was, not unnaturally, incensed. She refused to speak to the newcomer, shut herself up in her own apartments, and had a special servant to wait upon her. This uncomfortable state of things continued for some time, when she sickened of some acute distemper, and died in a short time. She possessed some fine jewels, which she had inherited from her mother, and she was heard to say repeatedly that her stepmother should never lay a finger on one of them. It is supposed that she, or her servant acting under her ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards

... perhaps a little surprising. Defoe, in his fictitious but graphic "Journal of the Plague Year in London," says that the sexton of one of the London parishes, who personally handled a large number of the victims, never had the distemper at all, but lived about twenty years after it, and was sexton of the parish to the time of his death. This man, according to Defoe, "never used any preservative against the infection other than holding garlic and rue in ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... cowboys, Loveless and Means, were ready to start at once. Eight out of the ten horses were in fine condition. With but one exception, the dogs had come through safely, though all were suffering somewhat from distemper. It was concluded, however, that they would recover just as rapidly in the open country as they ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... of my former desires returned, I entirely forgot the vows and promises that I made in my distress. I found, indeed, some intervals of reflection; and serious thoughts did, as it were, endeavour to return again sometimes; but I shook them off, and roused myself from them as it were from a distemper, and applying myself to drinking and company, soon mastered the return of those fits, for so I called them; and I had in five or six days got as complete a victory over conscience, as any young fellow that resolved not to be troubled with it, could desire: but I was to have another ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe

... along tracks already rendered impassable: they murmured loudly and would undoubtedly have dispersed to a man, had not the Carthaginian cavalry under Mago, which brought up the rear, rendered flight impossible. The horses, assailed by a distemper in their hoofs, fell in heaps; various diseases decimated the soldiers; Hannibal himself lost an eye in consequence ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... who read the message carefully realised that in it the President promised the people to put an end to the dishonour of thieving politics. There was something in the air in Washington that seemed to afflict the men who went there with moral distemper. I was told that Coates Ames was almost a Christian in Massachusetts, while in Washington, from his house, was born that monster—The Credit Mobilier. Congressmen who in their own homes would insist upon paying their private obligations, ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... Diamonds tries his wily arts, And wins (oh shameful chance!) the Queen of Hearts. At this, the blood the virgin's cheek forsook, A livid paleness spreads o'er all her look; 90 She sees, and trembles at the approaching ill, Just in the jaws of ruin, and Codille. And now, (as oft in some distemper'd state) On one nice trick depends the general fate, An Ace of Hearts steps forth: the King unseen Lurk'd in her hand, and mourn'd his captive Queen: He springs to vengeance with an eager pace, And falls like thunder on the prostrate Ace. The nymph, exulting, fills with shouts ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... burning with indignation; but entering his grounds, and wandering among the green grass and the flowers, silently growing in the cool moonlight, he looked up at the big trees and the big trees looking down upon him seemed to say: "What! so hot, my little sir!" Yes, we must upon our "distemper sprinkle cool patience." If all is not well, yet all is coming well. In this faith we find peace. The endless progress of the race is assured now that evolution has come with its message and shed light where before there ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... the next morning, in Lincoln's-inn-fields, upon some business of importance; but I excused myself from complying with the message, as, besides being lame, I was very ill with the great fatigues I had lately undergone added to my distemper. ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding

... and well formed, and his countenance of the cast of an ancient statue; yet his appearance was rendered strange and somewhat uncouth, by convulsive cramps, by the scars of that distemper which it was once imagined the royal touch could cure, and by a slovenly mode of dress. He had the use only of one eye; yet so much does mind govern and even supply the deficiency of organs, that his visual perceptions, as far as they extended, were uncommonly quick and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... Mecca, and the visitation of God; if ye be besieged, send that offering which shall be the easiest; and shave not your heads, until your offering reacheth the place of sacrifice. But whoever among you is sick, or is troubled with any distemper of the head, must redeem the shaving his head by fasting, or alms, or some offering. When ye are secure from enemies, he who tarrieth in the visitation of the temple of Mecca until the pilgrimage, shall bring that offering which ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... entreaties, but when she heard that the life of her favourite was menaced, she could no longer control her anxiety. She attended her sickbed; her watchful attentions triumphed over the malignity of the distemper—Elizabeth was saved, but the consequences of this imprudence were fatal to her preserver. On the third day my mother sickened; her fever was accompanied by the most alarming symptoms, and the looks of her medical attendants ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley

... long time. Yes, honey, I been in Arkansas so long I say I ain't goin' out—they got to bury me here. Arkansas dirt good enough for me. I say I been here so long I got Arkansas 'stemper (distemper). ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... representative of independent constituents; superiour to fear, hope, and expectation, who has no private purposes to promote, and whose prosperity is involved in the prosperity of his country. As my recovery from a very severe distemper is not yet perfect, I have declined to attend the Hall, and hope an omission so necessary ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... she fled the life of bliss below, That youthful Hope in bright perspective drew? False were the tints! false as the feverish glow That o'er her burning cheek Distemper threw! ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers

... from her presence dates his second reign. But awful charms on her fair forehead sit, Dispensing what she never will admit: Pleasing, yet cold, like Cynthia's silver beam, The people's wonder, and the poet's theme. Distemper'd Zeal, Sedition, canker'd Hate, No more shall vex the Church, and tear the State: 40 No more shall Faction civil discords move, Or only discords of too tender love: Discord, like that of music's various parts; Discord, that makes the harmony of hearts; Discord, that only this dispute shall bring, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... off as planned; Abner was disposed of, and upon the first stated date the Ryans received the first letter; it stated that the distemper was rather prevalent among the best circles of Long Island Horse Society, but that as yet Abner ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy

... he said, to bless him with three sons, the finest lads in Germany; but having in one week lost two of the eldest of them by the small-pox, and the youngest falling ill of the same distemper, he was afraid of being bereft of them all; and made a vow, if heaven would not take him from him also, he would go in gratitude ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne

... foundations. Kutusoff's instructions directed his responsibility to that point. Ertell, who commanded twelve thousand men near Bobruisk, refused to quit his cantonments, to follow Dombrowski, and to come and defend that part of the river. He alleged, as his justification for refusal, the danger of a distemper among the cattle, a pretext unheard of and improbable, but perfectly true, as Tchitchakof ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... Diego to use the utmost diligence in the present posture of affairs, he was under the absolute necessity of marching slowly, as Juan de Herrada his great friend and adviser fell sick of a mortal distemper. Owing to this delay, Holguin was enabled to get beyond the valley of Jauja in his march towards the province of Chachapoyas. Yet Don Diego followed after him with so much diligence that he very ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... be pleased to strengthen my inner man that I may put my whole Trust in him. May we all be prepared for his holy will. Red part of plunder, 9 small tooth combs." Crafts died in the spring, of the prevailing distemper, after doing good service in the commissary department of ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... liberty which is the proper end and object of authority; it is a liberty for that only which is just and good: for this liberty you are to stand with the hazard of your very lives and whatsoever crosses it is not authority, but a distemper thereof. This liberty is maintained in a way of subjection to authority; and the authority set over you will, in all administrations for your good, be quietly submitted unto by all but such as have a disposition to shake off the yoke and lose ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... hastily give up the man who had sought protection in her house; so she strictly questioned the wife about the story she told of her husband's madness, and she said, "What is the cause of this sudden distemper of your husband's? Has he lost his wealth at sea? Or is it the death of some dear friend that has disturbed his mind?" Adriana replied, that no such things as these had been the cause. "Perhaps," said the abbess, "he has fixed his affections ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

... heard at last what had become of him. He had died of distemper soon after I was sent to school. His master had buried him in the back-garden, and, thinking I should be as sorry as he was for the loss of our comrade, he had set up a stone with an inscription in our joint ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... passion may consume All that thou hast of beauty's gentle bloom, And one distemper'd hour of sordid fear Print on thy brow the wrinkles of a year. [Footnote: These four lines, as I have already remarked, are taken—with little change of the words, but a total alteration of the sentiment—from the verses which he addressed to ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... knew of her was this; to the register of her children's births, baptisms, and confirmations, entered on a grandly-ornamented fly-leaf of the family Bible, she has subjoined the record of every disease each has had, with the year, month, and day (and in one case the hour), when each distemper made its appearance. After most of the main entries, you may read, "Cut his (or her) first tooth"—at such a date. But, alas for the originality! she has just told me that her maternal grandmother did the same. How strange that she and ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... the fostering influences of peace and tranquillity. He was brilliantly peculiar as a schoolboy. As an old man of twenty-two, mourning over the vanished brio of youth, he carried morbidity to perfection. Only when he was travelling (as, for example, in Egypt) do his letters lose for a time their distemper. His love-letters are often ignobly inept, and nearly always spoilt by the crass provincialism of the refined and cultivated hermit. His mistress was a woman difficult to handle and indeed a Tartar in egotism, but as the recipient ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett

... injured for dressing by the hand, but it is not entirely spoiled: and therefore the following extract from Mr. Dana's 'Two Years before the Mast' may be of service to travellers who have shot many head of game in one place, or to those who have lost a herd of goats by distemper. ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... sister then was stood at fifty miles' distance, and, though I used the utmost expedition, the unmerciful distemper had, before my arrival, entirely deprived the poor girl of her senses, as it soon after did of ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... was observed in Brazil as early as 1643, and in America later by Lebat in 1722. In the last century Winterbottom and Hume describe yaws in Africa, Hume calling it the African distemper. In 1769 in an essay on the "Natural History of Guiana," Bancroft mentions yaws; and Thomson speaks of it in Jamaica. Hillary in 1759 describes yaws in Barbadoes; and Bajou in Domingo and Cayenne in 1777, Dazille having already observed it ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... she replied. "If we ask him he will simply offer to show us the way. Then we shall have to talk to him—about hydrophobia, and lethal chambers, and distemper—and it may be for miles. I simply couldn't bear it! We shall have to tip him, too. ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay

... hope just as I get fond of them they will not have the distemper and die!" said Mrs. Lossing; which speech Harry rightly took for the ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet

... inward heat, and pains in the bowels, swept off, in a short time, fourteen thousand persons; nor could the art of physicians afford any relief. Stephen, bishop of Paris, with the clergy and people, implored the divine mercy, by fasting and supplications. Yet the distemper began not to abate till the shrine of St. Genevieve was carried in a solemn procession to the cathedral. During that ceremony many sick persons were cured by touching the shrine; and of all that then lay ill of that distemper ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... impossible that the cause of this strange distemper should not sometimes become a subject of discourse. It is a compliment due, and which I willingly pay, to those who administer our affairs, to take notice in the first place of their speculation. Our Ministers are ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... genial autumn, on the fallen leaves In any nook, not curious where, he finds There, stretch'd forlorn, nourishing grief, he weeps Thy lot, enfeebled now by num'rous years. So perish'd I; such fate I also found; Me, neither the right-aiming arch'ress struck, Diana, with her gentle shafts, nor me Distemper slew, my limbs by slow degrees But sure, bereaving of their little life, 240 But long regret, tender solicitude, And recollection of thy kindness past, These, my Ulysses! fatal proved to me. She said; I, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... onions hanging in the fortunate house, and on examination all these proved to have become diseased. But whilst welcoming this protective quality, the danger must be remembered of eating an onion which shows signs of decay, for it cannot be told what may have caused this distemper. ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... But I think you will have been at the Duke's manor of that name; and it was the hunting-lodge on the edge of the chase that I had in mind. The Marquess uses it, I believe, as a kind of casino; though not without risk of a distemper. Indeed, there is much wonder at his frequenting it, and 'tis said he does so against ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... the plague. There are many that escape it; neither is the air ever infected. I am persuaded it would be as easy to root it out here as out of Italy and France; but it does so little mischief, they are not very solicitous about it, and are content to suffer this distemper instead of our variety, which they ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... freely unfold, That he can Cure Cuckolds tho' never so old; He helps this Distemper in all sorts of Men, At Forty and Fifty, ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various

... oppose itself, and on the 15th she died, at the early age of twenty-eight. Like Rachel weeping for her children, Marlborough refused to be comforted. He withdrew to the retirement of Holywell, that he might indulge his sorrow unseen; and there became first afflicted by that melancholy distemper, under which first his mind and eventually his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various

... and towns. What both have always desired is a strong hand in government which assures their property rights. Whenever any of the successive forms and methods has failed its fate was doomed. In this temper of the masses, in the flight of the ruling class, in the distemper of the radical democracy, a constitutional monarchy was unthinkable. A presidential government on the model of that devised and used by the United States was equally impossible, because the French appear already to have had a premonition or an instinct that a ripe experience of liberty was essential ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... this talent and of his other good qualities. Whereupon, being seized by a wish to show himself in his own city in order to enjoy some fruit of the fatigues endured by him, he returned to Venice, where, having made himself known by many works wrought in fresco and in distemper, he was commissioned by the Signoria to paint one of the walls of the Council Chamber. This he executed so excellently and with so great majesty that, according to his merit, he would have obtained an honourable reward; but the emulation, or rather, the ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari

... ago this horrible distemper prevailed all Europe over: and our forefathers were by no means exempt, as appears by the large provision made for objects labouring under this calamity. There was a hospital for female lepers in the diocese of Lincoln; a noble one near Durham; three in London and Southwark; ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White

... 1738, May 16: "Richard Madderson, aged 29 years, and was not above three feet and three inches high; but in thickness grown as much as any other person. He was all his life troubled with an inward griping distemper, of which he at last died ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... big as a pony. You will permit me to send you one, warranted to have passed his distemper, which can rarely be done for our human species, though here and there I venture to guarantee my man ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... followed his injunctions found an effectual antidote, but Feoder Weregin, being naturally of an indolent disposition, averse to drinking the rein-deer blood, and, unwilling to leave the hut when he could possibly avoid it, was soon seized with the scurvy. Under this afflicting distemper he passed nearly six years, enduring the greatest sufferings. At length he became so weak that he could not sit erect, nor even raise his hand to his mouth, so that his humane companions were obliged to attend on, and feed him like ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... Strangles or distemper is, according to most pathologists, due to the Streptococcus equi. Hoare[2] states that in this type of specific arthritis the contagium is probably carried by the blood. He gives it as his opinion that even laminitis has occurred as a result of the streptococcus-equi. ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix

... some passengers in a very fainting condition, and brought home to me about midnight. His violent exercise threw him into a fever, which grew upon him by degrees, and at last carried him off. In one of the intervals of his distemper he called to me, and, after having excused himself for running out his estate, he told me that he had always been more industrious to improve his mind than his fortune, and that his family must rather value themselves upon his memory ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... it. It is anomalous, to say the least, to find, in general or special literature, enuresis mentioned as a diseased condition peculiar from babyhood to puberty; to find it fully described and to have it stated that it is a widely-prevalent distemper, affecting both sexes alike; to know that it is an annoying, intractable, persistent condition, wearing to the child in every sense, subjecting it to a demoralizing mortification as well as to unmerited scoldings, humiliations, and punishments, and that its ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... French, you must have rhyme, Which long to please the ladies' ears did chime. Soon after this came ranting fustian in, And none but plays upon the fret were seen, Such daring bombast stuff which fops would praise, Tore our best actors' lungs, cut short their days. Some in small time did this distemper kill; And had the savage authors gone on still, Fustian had been a ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... was closed appropriately, says Dr. Knapp, by the mysterious distemper already referred to, which would, he thought, end his life; but as he recovered a career had to be decided upon, and, apparently on the advice of his friend Roger Kerrison, the law was chosen. So on Monday, March 30th, 1819, George Borrow was ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper

... such unfavourable circumstances as those in which we were placed, I was yet thankful that I did not become worse. For Mr. Browne, as he did not complain, I had every hope that he too had succeeded in arresting the progress of this fearful distemper. It will naturally occur to the reader as singular, that the officers only should have been thus attacked; but the fact is, that they had been constantly absent from the camp, and had therefore been obliged to use bacon, whereas the men were living on fresh mutton; besides, the same men ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... degree, one Mrs. Mary Mordant, a gentlewoman of great virtue and piety, and a very good fortune, took him into her service, and carried him with her, first to Bath, and then to Bristol, where, after a lingering distemper, which continued for about four years, ...
— Dickory Cronke - The Dumb Philosopher, or, Great Britain's Wonder • Daniel Defoe

... that a question now? Have you not driven me to plight my child To one possess'd with other love, averse To marriage; to expose her to divorce, And crazy nuptials; by her woe and bane To work a cure for your distemper'd son? You had prevail'd: I travel'd in the match, While circumstances would admit; but now The case is chang'd, content you:—It is said That she's a citizen; a child is ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer

... the ladye, and anon, With loathly shudder, from that wither'd one Hath torn him back. "Oh me! no more—no more! Thou virgin mother! Is the dream not o'er, That I have dreamt, but I must dream again For moons together, till this weary brain Become distemper'd as the winter sea? Good father! give me blessing; let it be Upon me as the dew upon the moss. Oh me! but I have made the holy cross A curse, and not a blessing! let me kiss The sacred symbol; for, by this—by this! I sware, and sware again, as now I will— Thou Heaven! ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart

... must have connected them exist also? There is but one answer; we are ignorant what characters are of essential value to each species; we do not know why white terriers are more subject than darker-coloured ones to the attacks of the fatal distemper; why yellow-fleshed peaches in America suffer more from diseases than the white-fleshed varieties; why white chickens are most liable to the gapes; or why the caterpillars of silkworms, which produce white cocoons, are not ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... inclination to; so that I had nothing, indeed, to do but to sit still, and fully enjoy what I had got, and see it increase daily upon my hands. Yet all these things had no effect upon me, or at least not enough to resist the strong inclination I had to go abroad again, which hung about me like a chronic distemper. In particular, the desire of seeing my new plantation in the island, and the colony I left there, ran in my head continually. I dreamed of it all night, and my imagination ran upon it all day: it was uppermost in all my thoughts, and my fancy worked so steadily ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... This known, some curious, some in pity went, And others question'd—"Wretch, dost thou repent?" He heard, he trembled, and in fear resign'd His boat: new terror fill'd his restless mind; Furious he grew, and up the country ran, And there they seized him—a distemper'd man: - Him we received, and to a parish-bed, Follow'd and cursed, the groaning man was led. Here when they saw him, whom they used to shun, A lost, lone man, so harass'd and undone; Our gentle females, ever ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... distemper. The first symptom is the ferret's neglect of its food. When you see this you will observe a little matter at the corner of the eyes, and the ferret will have a slight running at the nostrils. Immediately you see these symptoms separate that ferret from the others, ...
— Full Revelations of a Professional Rat-catcher - After 25 Years' Experience • Ike Matthews

... attempt. It would be exempted, by this means, from a little cavilling and ridicule, to which some of its enemies reckon it at present exposed, and the design could not in the least derogate from its divinity, as the instantaneous cure of a distemper cannot be considered less miraculous than the expulsion of the devil. At any rate, these possessions are all extraordinary; appeared on some most extraordinary occasion; and from them, therefore, no general conclusion can ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... write. It has operated such a revolution on my mind, as no time, at my age, can efface. It has at once damped every pursuit which my spirits had even now prevented me from being weaned from, I mean of virtu. It is like a mortal distemper in myself; for can amusements amuse, if there is but a glimpse, a vision of outliving one's friends? I have had dreams in which I thought I wished for fame—it was not certainly posthumous fame at any distance; I feel, I feel ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... unlicensed inclination. The struggle has cost me something, but it is over. I have recovered my health, I have formed my resolution. This very day, (you, my good friend, will accept the apology) I had determined to repair to Beaufort Place. Doubt and uncertainty nourish the lingering distemper that would undo me. I will come to ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin

... cold water to be ready to attend him. "The pain," says Walpole, "the bulk, and the exercise threw her into such fits of perspiration as routed the gout; but those exertions hastened the crisis of her distemper." History preserves some curious pictures of the manner in which the morning prayers were commonly said to Queen Caroline. The Queen was being dressed by her ladies in her bedroom; the door of the bedroom was left partly open, the {115} chaplain ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... Carleton: "The King hath been at Theobald's ever since Wednesday, and came to town this day. I am sorry to hear that he grows every day more froward, and with such a kind of morosity, that doth either argue a great discontent in mind, or a distemper of humours in his body. Yet he is never so out of tune but the very sight of my Lord of Buckingham doth settle and ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... is difficult to understand the high price of most highly improved breeds, which almost implies long-continued close interbreeding, except on the belief that this process lessens fertility and increases liability to distemper and other diseases. A high authority, Mr. Scrope, attributes the rarity and deterioration in size of the Scotch deerhound (the few individuals now existing throughout the country being all related) in large part to ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... an excellent condiment, and do also well in tarts. But that is very old, which Mathiolus affirms upon his own experience, that one who has been bitten of a mad-dog, if in a year after he handle the wood of this tree till it grow warm, relapses again into his former distemper. ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... employed in destroying them. One branch of it still looks healthy! Will it recover? No, it cannot; Nature has already run her course, and that healthy-looking branch is only as a fallacious good symptom in him who is just about to die of a mortification when he feels no more pain, and fancies his distemper has left him; it is as the momentary gleam of a wintry sun's ray close to the western horizon. See! while we are speaking a gust of wind has brought the tree to the ground and made room ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... from the impossibility, as I supposed, of there being any, or of the ingress of any, unless by the same passage I entered at, and by which I was well assured they could never return, I grew contented, and blamed myself for the folly of my imaginary voices, as I called them then, and took it for a distemper ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... will trust his daughter to Ferdinand, he tests both the character and the love of the latter most severely. He even feigns anger and appears to be cruel and unjust. That he is feigning, neither suspect, but Miranda says: "Never till this day saw I him touch'd with anger so distemper'd," and "My father's a better nature, sir, than he appears by speech." When he is assured of Ferdinand's worthiness, of the sincerity of his love for Miranda and of her devotion to her young lover, he is delighted, and becomes so interested in the entertainment ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... in the rear of all this travelling and excitement, Friedrich falls unwell; breaks down there into an aguish feverish distemper, which, for several months after, impeded his movements, would he have yielded to it. He has much business on hand, too,—some of it of prickly nature just now;—but is intent as ever on seeing Voltaire, among the first things. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... such connections, the more innocent they are, afford the less variety in the long run, I was seized with that wicked distemper which seduces us to derive amusement from the torment of a beloved one, and to domineer over a girl's devotedness with wanton and tyrannical caprice. By unfounded and absurd fits of jealousy I destroyed our most delightful days, both for myself and her. She endured it for a time with ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... it at the disposal of the chief officer of the city, to be discreetly employed in transactions with complacent railway officials, in order to further the work of reducing prices on necessaries of life. The motive adduced for this homoeopathic way of treating a social distemper were the conditions of life in Russia and the necessity of complying with them. But as the Statute Book does not recognize these conditions and condemns bribery absolutely, a vote on the ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... not die of vulgar diseases. Turn to the subhead Todesursachen in the instructive Statistischer Monatsbericht der Stadt Muenchen, and you will find records of few if any deaths from delirium tremens, boils, hookworm, smallpox, distemper, measles or what the Monatsbericht calls "liver sickness." The Muencheners perish more elegantly, more charmingly than that. When their time comes it is gout that fetches them, or appendicitis, or neurasthenia, or angina pectoris; or perchance they ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright

... for the fame of his wife's beauty was greatly talked of; for which reason Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, would not be satisfied with what was reported of her, but would needs see her himself, and was preparing to enjoy her; but God put a stop to his unjust inclinations, by sending upon him a distemper, and a sedition against his government. And when he inquired of the priests how he might be freed from these calamities, they told him that this his miserable condition was derived from the wrath of ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... patient scholar, and a scholarly patient, allow me to 'exhibit' my own medicines according to my own notion of the various crises of your distemper. I assure you I will not play you false, or entrap you by quips and special pleading. You are aware that our Lord's miracles were almost exclusively miracles of healing—restorations of that order ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... unfailing companions of that subtle visitation. A sea voyage, native air, and all other expedients suggested by skill or affection, were tried in vain; and, in the fiftieth year of his age, the minister of Eccleshall returned to the bosom of his family, with a full anticipation that the distemper under which he lingered would, ere long, prove fatal. His eyes sparkled with more than wonted lustre—his benevolent and intelligent countenance glowed with the delicate hectic flush which so often marks the progress of consumption—and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... the before-named W^m Beard being very sicke and in a strange distemper, and {465} haveing heard that Margaret, the wife of the before-named Thomas Burgis, had threatened him, did suspect the s^d W^m Beard might be bewitched or ill dealt w^{th}, did cut off some of his haire off from his head, and did wind it up together and put it into the fire, and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various

... fools come never in the reach: No rule can I more wisely teach. Nor can there be a better one Than this,—distemper'd heads to shun. We often see them, high and low. They tickle e'en the royal ear, As, privileged and free from fear, They hurl about them joke and jeer, At ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... the clergy-house was of the regular type—very comfortable and pleasing to the eye, as it ought to be for a young man working under such circumstances; not really luxurious; pious and virile. The walls were a rosy distemper, very warm and sweet, and upon them, above the low oak book-cases, hung school and college groups, discreet sporting engravings, a glorious cathedral interior, and the Sistine Madonna over the mantelpiece. An oar hung all along one ceiling, painted ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... to inform you that your Sealyham has contracted distemper. There is at present no reason to think that he will be seriously ill, and, the veterinary surgeon is ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates



Words linked to "Distemper" :   ill humor, humor, mood, fretfulness, petulance, crossness, irritability, art, artistic creation, artistic production, peevishness, temper, strangles, ill humour, pigment, canine distemper, good humor, moodiness, animal disease



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