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Distemper   Listen
verb
Distemper  v. t.  (past & past part. distempered; pres. part. distempering)  
1.
To temper or mix unduly; to make disproportionate; to change the due proportions of. (Obs.) "When... the humors in his body ben distempered."
2.
To derange the functions of, whether bodily, mental, or spiritual; to disorder; to disease. "The imagination, when completely distempered, is the most incurable of all disordered faculties."
3.
To deprive of temper or moderation; to disturb; to ruffle; to make disaffected, ill-humored, or malignant. "Distempered spirits."
4.
To intoxicate. (R.) "The courtiers reeling, And the duke himself, I dare not say distempered, But kind, and in his tottering chair carousing."
5.
(Paint.) To mix (colors) in the way of distemper; as, to distemper colors with size. (R.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Distemper" Quotes from Famous Books



... overlord out of his distemper, as he looked down into the faces of his faithful ones below. "Fools and sons of fools! Thy beast would suit them better, ...
— The Truce of God • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... exhort them, that since they are now unable to go on with the business of life, are become a burden to themselves and to all about them, and they have really outlived themselves, they should no longer nourish such a rooted distemper, but choose rather to die, since they cannot live but in much misery: being assured, that if they thus deliver themselves from torture, or are willing that others should do it, they shall be happy after death. Since by their acting thus, they ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... 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 had ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... the most effectual antidotes that medical science has discovered for this afflicting distemper, and for the cure of the disorders it entails. That it is far superior to any other remedy yet devised, is known by all who have given it a trial. That it does combine virtues truly extraordinary in their effect upon this class ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... playing Fanchon the Cricket, free and happy once more, wearing spangles as Ophelia of Denmark, and a gilt paper crown as Cleopatra of Egypt, I wasn't married then; and I didn't go moping about, like an old hen with the distemper, every time it was wet and nasty. If it keeps on like this I shall have a pretty time of it getting to Fourteenth Street, at ten o'clock to-night. And I'll surely go, if it were to rain cats, ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming

... the Lord Mayor, Sir John Shorter: the occasion of his distemper was his fall under Newgate, which bruised him a little, and put him into a fever." ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... his love for fresco, was all his life an itinerant painter. In 1521 he was back at Udine and wandered from place to place, painting a vast distemper for the organ doors at S. Maria at Spilimbergo, the facade of the Church of Valeriano, an imposing series at Travesio, and in 1525, the "Story of the True Cross" at Casara. At the last place he threw aside much of his exaggeration, and, ruined and restored ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... the stern commands of his benefactor. [173] The frequent disappointments of his ambitious views, the experience of six years of persecution, and the salutary reflections which a lingering and painful distemper suggested to the mind of Galerius, at length convinced him that the most violent efforts of despotism are insufficient to extirpate a whole people, or to subdue their religious prejudices. Desirous of repairing the mischief that he had occasioned, he published in his own name, and in those ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... 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

... Some people used the yolk and the white together, some only one or the other, but the egg was, and is, always mixed with water. Some artists now put gum tragacanth into the mixture. It is then used like water in water-colour work, but is called 'tempera' or 'distemper.' The effect of the egg is to produce an easy flow of the colour with so little liquid that the paint does not run on the surface, as it easily does in ordinary water-colours. The effect of the yellow yolk of the egg upon ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... minded diligently to persevere after Shanks. 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, ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington

... mother. "It was but a tenpenny tow lost," she said, "and what was that to a woman's life?" There came up, however, a parcel of savage-looking fellows, butchers and graziers chiefly, among whose cattle there had been of late a very general and fatal distemper, which their wisdom imputed to witchcraft. They laid violent hands on Madge, and tore her from the carriage, exclaiming— "What, doest stop folk o' king's high-way? Hast no done mischief enow already, wi' thy murders ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... this is to acquaint thee that all things for which I was sent hither must be fulfilled and that I shall be taken up and returned to Him that sent me. But after my ascension I will send one of my disciples that shall cure thee of thy distemper and give life to all ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... 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 ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... was 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

... christianity would lose nothing by the 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 ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... of my ailment is this, y^t it groweth not Less with much nursinge, but is like to those fevres w^ch y^e leeches Starve, 'tis saide, for that y^e more Bloode there be in y^e Sicke man's Bodie, y^e more foode is there for y^e Distemper to feede upon.—And it is moste fittinge y^t I come backe to y^s my Journall (wherein I have not writt a Lyne these manye months) on y^e 1^st of Aprile, beinge in some Sort myne owne foole and y^e foole of Love, and a poore Butt on whome his hearte ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... compelled to retrace our steps through this tedious and difficult part of our rout, obstructed with brush and innumerable logs of fallen timber which renders the traveling distressing and even dangerous to our horses. one of Thompson's horses is either choked this morning or has the distemper very badly I fear he is to be of no further service to us. an excellent horse of Cruzatte's snagged himself so badly in the groin in jumping over a parsel of fallen timber that he will evidently be of no further service to us. at the pass of Collin's ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... ultramarine, however, red and orange vermilions, yellow and orange chromes, yellow and orange and red cadmiums, aureolin, the ochres, viridian and other oxides of chromium, Indian red &c., they compound with little or no injury. Lead colours must not be employed in water-colour or crayon painting, distemper, or fresco. The whites of lead are carbonates of that metal, with two exceptions:—Flemish white or the sulphate, and Pattison's white or the oxychloride. In using all pigments of which lead is the basis, cleanliness is essential ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... you will not be troubled by me. I cannot hope that my motives in opposing your nomination, consistent as you know them to have been, or that my conduct during the post-convention discussion and canvass, free as I know it to have been of ill-feeling, or distemper, has escaped misrepresentation and misconception. I could not, without the loss of my self-respect, approach you on any private matter whatever; though it may not be amiss for me to say to you, that three weeks before the meeting of the National Convention, I wrote to ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... 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 he ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... them. Of those seasons of affliction, he says, with a truly elevated mind and thankful heart, "I am not afraid to let the world know that, amidst the sinkings of life and nature, Christianity and the gospel were my support. Amidst all the violence of my distemper, and the tiresome months of it, I thank God I never lost sight of reason or religion, though sometimes I had much difficulty to preserve the machine of animal nature in such order as regularly to exercise either the man or ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... great Round: partition firm and sure, The Waters underneath from those above Dividing: for as Earth, so hee the World Built on circumfluous Waters calme, in wide 270 Crystallin Ocean, and the loud misrule Of Chaos farr remov'd, least fierce extreames Contiguous might distemper the whole frame: And Heav'n he nam'd the Firmament: So Eev'n And Morning Chorus sung the second Day. The Earth was form'd, but in the Womb as yet Of Waters, Embryon immature involv'd, Appeer'd not: over all the face of Earth Main Ocean flow'd, not idle, but with warme ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... to the quiet or benefit of the nation, nor any other charitable or public-spirited reason, should tempt us to exceed; because, if all were to be admitted on such a foundation, who might be reputed incurable of this distemper; and if it were possible for the public to find any place large enough for their reception; I have not the least doubt, that all our Inns, which are at this day so crowded, would in a short time be emptied of their inhabitants; and the law, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... 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 ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... dark,—night has stolen upon us again,—the hour for the raffle is at hand. The saloon, about a hundred and forty feet long by forty wide, is brilliantly lighted for the occasion. The gas-lights throw strange shadows upon the distemper painting with which the walls are decorated. Hanging carelessly here and there are badly-daubed paintings of battle scenes and heroic devices, alternated with lithographic and badly-executed engravings of lustfully-exposed females. Soon the saloon fills with a throng ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... with a beautiful verdure, covered with tall trees, abounding with plenty of excellent water ... and so healthy that the inhabitants make no use of medicines, for almost all who die here are not cut off by any distemper, but worn out by age. Here are many large rivers, besides a vast number of delightful springs. The plains are large and spacious, and afford excellent pasture.... In short, the whole country affords a most beautiful prospect, being diversified with hills and valleys, ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... poem entitled 'Pacchiarotto, and how he worked in distemper', Mr. Browning turns upon his critics, whom he characterizes as "the privileged fellows, in the drabs, blues, and yellows" (alluding to the covers of the leading British Reviews), and especially upon Alfred Austin, the author of ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... taken as nearly alike as the diversity and the individuality of nature will admit, of the same age, stature, complexion, and strength of body, and under the same chronical distemper, and I am willing to take the seeming worse of the two; let all the most promising nostrums, drops, drugs, and medicines known among the learned and experienced physicians, ancient or modern, regular physicians or quacks, be administered ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... 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 a silken bag, which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various

... sitting together in Louisa's room; Louisa was recovering from the measles. Every one, during her illness, had been desirous of attending her; but Leonora and Cecilia were the only two that were permitted to see her, as they alone had had the distemper. They were both assiduous in their care of Louisa; but Leonora's want of exertion to overcome any disagreeable feelings of sensibility often deprived her of presence of mind, and prevented her being so constantly useful as Cecilia. Cecilia, on the contrary, often made ...
— The Bracelets • Maria Edgeworth

... that the physicians have this day as well as yesterday given this account to the Council, viz.—That they conceive His Majesty to be in a condition of safety, and that he will in a few days be freed from his distemper. ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... else she would look at him sulkily, and he would see once again a face worthy to figure in Botticelli's 'Life of Moses,' he would place it there, giving to Odette's neck the necessary inclination; and when he had finished her portrait in distemper, in the fifteenth century, on the wall of the Sixtine, the idea that she was, none the less, in the room with him still, by the piano, at that very moment, ready to be kissed and won, the idea of her material ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... a mare—the boys called her the fifteen-minute nag, but that was only in fun, you know, because, of course, she was faster than that—and he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards' start, and then pass her under way; but always at the fag-end of the race she'd get excited and desperate-like, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... eighth day of Cronius, now called Hecatombaeon, he arrived at Athens, where he found the public affairs full of all confusion, and divided into parties and factions, Aegeus also, and his whole private family, laboring under the same distemper; for Medea, having fled from Corinth, and promised Aegeus to make him, by her art, capable of having children, was living with him. She first was aware of Theseus, whom as yet Aegeus did not know, and he ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... I've practiced for thirty years among Endbury ladies. They can't spring anything new on me. I've taken your mother through doily fever induced by the change from tablecloths to bare tops, through portiere inflammation, through afternoon tea distemper, through art-nouveau prostration and mission furniture palsy, not to speak of a horrible attack of acute insanity over the necessity of having her maids wear caps. I think you can trust me, whatever dodge the old malady ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... life in general contradicts the indictment, my health at that time in particular contradicts it yet more. A little time before, I had been confined to my bed, I had suffered under a long and severe disorder. The distemper left me but slowly, and in part. So far from being well at the time I am charged with this fact, I never, to this day, perfectly recovered. Could a person in this condition execute violence against another?—I, feeble and valetudinary, with ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... doors troubles. Those within were still worse. His sound, strong horses perished one after another—till at last he had nothing left in his stables but one old gaunt mare called Blaessel. A distemper broke out amongst his horned stock, and before a month passed, destroyed every thing in his stalls, with the exception of an old goat and a gormandizing and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... 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 ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin

... consideration prompted Don 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 nearly got up with him. In this emergency, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... pen, madam, not the brush. As the wags said, I transferred the distemper from my canvas to my ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade

... accepted Son, Obtain; all thy request was my decree: But, longer in that Paradise to dwell, The law I gave to Nature him forbids: Those pure immortal elements, that know No gross, no unharmonious mixture foul, Eject him, tainted now; and purge him off, As a distemper, gross, to air as gross, And mortal food; as may dispose him best For dissolution wrought by sin, that first Distempered all things, and of incorrupt Corrupted. I, at first, with two fair gifts Created him endowed; with happiness, And immortality: that fondly lost. This other served but to eternize ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... contribute to that ill state of health which allayed the happiness of his married life, during the greater part of it. In the latter end of the year 1714, his weakness increased, and he seemed to labour under all the symptoms of a consumption; which distemper, after it had confined him some months, put a period to his most valuable life, at Hampstead, in 1715, when he was but in the 28th year of his age. The exquisite grief and affliction, which his amiable ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... intellectual malady. Biographers, translators, editors, all, in short, who employ themselves in illustrating the lives or the writings of others, are peculiarly exposed to the Lues Boswelliana, or disease of admiration. But we scarcely remember ever to have seen a patient so far gone in this distemper as Mr. Thackeray. He is not satisfied with forcing us to confess that Pitt was a great orator, a vigorous minister, an honourable and high-spirited gentleman. He will have it that all virtues and all accomplishments ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... 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 ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... 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 ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... and 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

... I never ... see you now," he began. Sally looked up at his tall figure, thrown sharply into relief by the clear light from a window upon the stairs, and by the pale grey distemper of the wall behind him. Again she noticed that creeping redness under the grey of his cheeks, and the almost liquid appeal which he directed at her. "I ... er ... I meant to ask ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton

... and more than once, Walpole says, when she had the gout in her foot, she dipped her whole leg in 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

... strongly fortifies: Some say he's mad; others, that lesser hate him, Do call it valiant fury: but, for certain, He cannot buckle his distemper'd cause Within the belt ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... The consequences of a general spirit of monopoly, which I formerly described, have lately been so oppressive, that the Convention thought it necessary to interfere, and in so extraordinary a way, that I doubt if (as usual) "the distemper of their remedies" will not make us regret the original disease. Almost every article, by having passed through a variety of hands, had become enormously dear; which, operating with a real scarcity of many things, occasioned by the war, had excited universal ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... when we mean To taste of Bacchus' blessings now and then, And drink by stealth A cup or two to noble Barkley's health, I'll take my pipe and try The Phrygian melody; Which he that hears, Lets through his ears A madness to distemper all the brain: Then I another pipe will take And Doric music make, To civilize with graver notes ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... ex-convict, to whom Jonathan's kindness had been as water on a lame duck's back—had to bear the brunt of Hegner's distemper. He stood it as long as he could; which ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller

... is 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 as Fools that have lost ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... 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 ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... The Nature of any Distemper once found has generally been the immediate Step to a Cure. Shakespeare's Case has in a great Measure resembled That of a corrupt Classic; and, consequently, the Method of Cure was likewise to bear a Resemblance. ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald

... the trophy-house," says he to me, "and that over there is the hospital, where you have to go if you get distemper, and the vet gives ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis

... concern at this, and began to be alarmed all over the town, and the more, because in the last week in December 1664 another man died in the same house, and of the same distemper. And then we were easy again for about six weeks, when none having died with any marks of infection, it was said the distemper was gone; but after that, I think it was about the 12th of February, another died in another house, but ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe

... of Hingham, having been long in a sad melancholic distemper near to phrensy, and having formerly attempted to drown her child, but prevented by God's gracious providence, did now again take an opportunity.... And threw it into the water and mud ... She carried the child again, and threw ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... the latter end of April there were but few on board who were not in some degree afflicted with it; and in that month no less than forty-three died of it on board the Centurion. But though we thought that the distemper had then risen to an extraordinary height, and were willing to hope that as we advanced to the northward its malignant would abate, yet we found, on the contrary, that in the month of May we lost nearly double that number. ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter

... This distemper of remedy, grown habitual, relaxes and wears out, by a vulgar and prostituted use, the spring of that spirit which is to be exerted on great occasions. It was in the most patient period of Roman servitude that themes of tyrannicide made the ordinary exercise of boys ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... Diodorus Siculus, however (xv. c. 20), tells us that Dionysius "was so 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

... that old Aimes wishes to put a sly indignity upon me by misusing one who has been entertained at my house. That's the point, sir. He heard that I had given you countenance at my board, and what his sister afterward told him was an excuse for the exercise, sir, of his distemper. But, by—I came within one of swearing, sir. I used to curse like an overseer, but I joined the church not long ago, and I've been walking a tight rope ever since. But as I was about to say, you are not going to ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read

... 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! ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart

... of this establishment has a more commonplace name for the distemper. She calls it "scirocco." And certainly this pest of the south blows incessantly; the mountain-line of Gargano is veiled, the sea's horizon veiled, the coast-lands of Apulia veiled by its tepid and unwholesome ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... like a round of hung beef - without so much as ruffling the paper, wet as it was? Then (says the plate), was not the paper washed away with a sponge, and didn't there appear, set off upon the plate, THIS identical piece of Pre-Raphaelite blue distemper which you now behold? Not to be denied! I had seen all this - and more. I had been shown, at Copeland's, patterns of beautiful design, in faultless perspective, which are causing the ugly old willow to wither out of public favour; ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... a woman named Dorothy Durent, deposed that she had quarrelled with one Amy Duny, immediately after which her infant child was seized with fits. 'And the said examinant further stated that she being troubled at her child's distemper did go to a certain person named Doctor Job Jacob, who lived at Yarmouth, who had the reputation in the country to help children that were bewitched; who advised her to hang up the child's blanket in the chimney-corner all day, and at night when she put the child to bed to put it into the said ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams

... here a 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

... boxes were made. In the Stuart and later periods ladies worked the exterior ornament in silks and satins and embroidery. Among the workboxes in the Victoria and Albert Museum there is a painted box in distemper and gilding, the subject chosen for the ornamentation of the lid being the story of David and Bathsheba, round the sides being floral devices. This decorative workbox has drawers and compartments, a sliding ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess

... performers in this ingenious theatre, it is the unaccustomed stranger who is forced into the position of actor. As he toils up the steep and slovenly streets, faced with shabby buildings that crack and blacken behind their ill-adjusted fronts of stucco and distemper, he cheapens rapidly in his own view: he feels painfully like the hapless supernumerary whom he has seen mounting an obvious step-ladder behind a screen of rock-work on his way to a wedding in the chapel or a coronation in the Capitol. The difference is, that here the permission ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... 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 ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... 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 ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding

... cavaliere? 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 ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... counterbalanced by the introduction of a numerous class of nervous aliments, in a greater measure, unknown to our ancestors, but which now prevail universally, and are complicated with almost every other distemper. The bodies of men are enfeebled and enervated; and it is not uncommon to observe very high degrees of irritability under the external appearance of great strength and robustness. The hypochondriac, palsies, cachexies, dropsies, and all those diseases which arise from laxity ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith

... led him to make this choice. "Thus, acting under the reasons aforesaid (the family associations), I resolved to go to Gallarate, in order that I might have the enjoyment of four separate advantages which it offered. Firstly, that in the most healthy air of the place I might shake off entirely the distemper which I had contracted in Milan. Secondly, that I might earn something by my profession, seeing that then I should be free to practise. Thirdly, that there would be no need for me to pine away while ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... Spaniards to fortify all the entrances against us. If we perish, it shall be no gain for his Majesty to lose, among many other, one hundred as valiant gentlemen as England hath in it.' But he was not disheartened. Walter was never so well, having had 'no distemper in all the heat under the Line.' He found good faith in Indian hearts, if not at King James's Court. 'To tell you I might here be King of the Indians were a vanity; but my name hath still lived ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... fleet, joined with General Wentworth, who had a considerable number of forces under his command, made an unsuccessful attempt on Carthagena [sic]; the greater part of the land forces being either killed or cut off by an epidemical distemper. In 1742, Captain Middleton made a fruitless attempt to discover the North West passage into the South Seas. The year following the battle of Dettingen was fought. There was also this year a bloody engagement before Toulon, ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown

... were the conditions under which the men were habitually carried, and so slight was the effort made to ameliorate them, that few tenders reached their destination without a more or less serious outbreak of fever, small-pox or some other equally malignant distemper. Upon the fleet the effect was appalling. Sickly tenders could not but ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... to all those alterations, one fact is undoubted,—that under them the state of America has been kept in continual agitation. 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 terms of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... to Joseph and begged him to look at the sheep. He was afraid something was the matter with some of them. Joseph examined narrowly all those which Mat thought were sick. There was no doubt that they had the distemper. It had not spread far yet. A stop must be put to it. He at once sent off Ben on horseback to acquaint Mr Ramsay, and to bring back tobacco and other stuff for making washes. Meantime he separated the diseased animals from the ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston

... to ancient times, Nature's choice gift, whose acrimonious fume Extracts superfluous juices, and refines The blood distemper'd from its noxious salts; Friend to the spirit, which with vapours bland It gently mitigates—companion fit Of a ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... struggling victim tear From the lost object of her keen despair: The swelling pang unable to sustain, Distraction throbb'd in every beating vein: Its sudden tumults seize her yielding soul, 85 And in her eye distemper'd glances roll— "They come! (the mourner cried, with panting breath,) "To give the lost Alzira rest in death! "One moment more, ye bloody forms, bestow, "One moment more for ever cures my woe— 90 "Lo where the purple evening sheds her light "On blest ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams

... disease, especially under 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 were ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... I who now imagin'd myself brought To my last trial, in a serious thought Calm'd the disorders of my youthful breast And to my martyrdom prepared rest. Only this frail ambition did remain, The last distemper of the sober brain, That there had been some present to assure The future ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... "is the frozen edge. I'm getting used to the distemper which is brought me in lieu of soup, and, although I prefer salmon cooked to raw, you may have noticed that I consumed my portion without a word. But this...." Contemptuously he indicated the severed tournedos upon ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... was no need of entreating these people; the lashes were repeated, for which Fox thanked them very cordially, and began to preach. At first the spectators fell a-laughing, but they afterwards listened to him; and as enthusiasm is an epidemical distemper, many were persuaded, and those who scourged him became his first disciples. Being set at liberty, he ran up and down the country with a dozen proselytes at his heels, still declaiming against the clergy, ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire

... contend who should be first to command the rest, the common sort, as is ever seen in such cases grew factious and disordered out of measure, in so much as the poor colony seemed (like the Colledge of English fugitives in Rome) as a hostile camp within itself; in which distemper that envious man stept in, sowing plentiful tares in the hearts of all, which grew to such speedy confusion, that in few months ambition, sloth and idleness had devoured the fruit of former labours, planting and sowing ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... over 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 ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith

... the term to which I allude, we fellows in the upper Fifth and lower Sixth took to writing poetry! I don't know how the distemper broke out, or who brought it to G—. Certain it is we all took it, some worse than others; and had not the Christmas holidays happily intervened to scatter us and so reduce the perils of the contagion, the results might have been worse even than ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... the 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 is the foedum ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... rusty black snorted as scenting godlessness, and conducted Saxham down a cream-washed, brown-distemper-dadoed passage, smelling of kippered haddocks and incense, to a sitting-room at the rear. It was a severe apartment, commanding a view of mews, and had a parquet-patterned linoleum on the floor, and a washable paper of a popular ecclesiastical ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... learned ladies. "Look here, Miss May," he said, after the usual formulas, while he turned and walked a few paces by her side, "do you remember the fox-terrier puppy I was to have got for you and your sister Rose, in the spring? Well, he died of distemper, poor little brute; but I have heard of another of the same kind that has had the complaint. I could get him for you if ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... produce—unaware of its peculiar properties. Those soldiers who ate little of it were like men greatly intoxicated with wine; those who ate much, were seized with the most violent vomiting and diarrhoea, lying down like madmen in a state of delirium. From this terrible distemper some recovered on the ensuing day, others two or three days afterwards. It does not appear that ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... love; Heine's demonstrate that mere love sickness is not Weltschmerz. The fact is that Heine frequently destroys what would have been a certain impression of Weltschmerz by forcing upon us the immediate cause of his distemper,—it may be a real injury, or merely a passing annoyance. What a strange mixture of acrimonious, sarcastic protest and Weltschmerz elements we find in the poem "Ruhelechzend"[214] of which a few stanzas will serve to illustrate. Again he strikes ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun

... the citadel of his heart. In short, they have, by the mere force of stink-pots, hand-granades, and pop-guns, driven the slow-working pioneer quite out of the trunk into the extremities; and there it lies nibbling and gnawing upon his great toe; when I had a fair end of the distemper and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... the image of God, and was perfectly happy; but, not attending faithfully and perseveringly to this his spiritual monitor, he fell into the snares of Satan, or gave way to the temptations of sin. From this moment his condition became changed. For in the same manner as distemper occasions animal life to droop, and to lose its powers, and finally to cease, so unrighteousness, or his rebellion against the divine light of the spirit that was within him, occasioned a dissolution of his spiritual feelings and perceptions; for he became dead as it were, in consequence, ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... that time nine years of age], and unfortunately I knew neither my corruption nor my weakness, nor did I know where to gain strength. The longing to invent stories grew with violence; everything I heard or read became food for my distemper. The simplicity of truth was not sufficient for me; I must needs embroider imagination upon it, and the folly, vanity and wickedness which disgraced my heart are more than I am able to express. Even now [at the age of ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... plainly told as words That life had neither health nor hope for him; An old man tottering from a hovel came, Frail, haggard, palsied, leaning on a staff, Whose eyes, dull, glazed and meaningless, proclaim The body lingers when the mind has fled; One seized with sudden hot distemper of the blood, Writhing with anguish, by the wayside sunk. The purple plague-spot on his pallid cheek, Cold drops of perspiration on his brow, With wildly rolling eyes and livid lips, Gasping for breath and feebly asking help— But ere the prince ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles

... and culture, whose ambition is to figure in politics. He is in Congress and can command the ear of the House at any time. His great trouble is his Free-soil record. He took Free-soilism like a distemper and mounted the Buffalo platform. He is well over it now, however, with the exception of a single heresy—the homestead law. He is for giving homesteads to the actual ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... of their design, that I could obtain no satisfactory information, until I met an old schoolmaster in the neighbourhood, from whom I had obtained much insight into the manners and customs of that district. He informed me that there is a distemper occasioned by want of water, which cattle are subject to, called in the Gaelic language shag dubh, which in English signifies 'black haunch.' It is a very infectious disease, and, if not taken in time, would carry off most of the cattle ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... and young, throughout the whole country, barked like dogs, and the children like whelps. This plague continued, with some eighteen days, with others a month, and with some for two years; and, like a contagious distemper, at last infected the neighboring counties, and set them ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... or A Dialogue concerning Government: wherein, by Observations drawn from other Kingdoms and States both ancient and modern, an Endeavour is used to discover the politick Distemper of our own; with the Causes and Remedies. The Second Edition, with Additions. In Octavo. Price 2s. 6d. Printed for S. I. and sold by R. Dew. The Term Catalogues (Arber), 1.443—the issue for May, 1681. The initials S. I. do not again occur in the Catalogues, and R. Dew is credited ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville

... punish the vicious only." "I would your honour would punish Gilbert then," cried the squire, "for 't is the most vicious tuoad that ever I laid a leg over—but as to that same seafaring man, what may his distemper be?" ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... fatal disease as existed in his, become, it may be said, superstitious respecting its fatal effects, and ascribe to place, circumstance, and individual care, much more perhaps than these can in any case contribute to avert the fatality of constitutional distemper. Lady Peveril was aware that this was peculiarly the impression of her neighbour; that the depression of his spirits, the excess of his care, the feverishness of his apprehensions, the restraint and gloom of the solitude in which he dwelt, were really calculated to ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... whether I was so or not, and that was it which made me look so thoughtful. Ber. Is it then so hard a matter to decide? I thought all people were acquainted with their own bodies, though few people know their own minds. Love. What if the distemper I suspect be in the mind? Ber. Why then I'll undertake to prescribe you a cure. Love. Alas! you undertake you know not what. Ber. So far at least, then, you allow me to be a physician. Love. Nay, I'll allow you to be so yet further: for I have reason to believe, ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan

... glass, quoth Rondibilis, grope her pulse, and see the disposition of her hypogaster, together with her umbilicary parts—according to the prescript rule of Hippocrates, 2. Aph. 35—before I proceed any further in the cure of her distemper. No, no, quoth Panurge, that will be but to little purpose. Such a feat is for the practice of us that are lawyers, who have the rubric, De ventre inspiciendo. Do not therefore trouble yourself about it, master doctor; I will provide ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... town, the bay, Cap Matifou, and the distant range of the Atlas. Moorish tiles decorated the walls to a height of some three feet, tiles purple, white, and a watery green. Above them was a cream-colored distemper. At the back of the room, opposite to the French window which opened on to the roof, was an arched recess some four feet narrower than the rest of the room, ornamented with plaques of tiles, and delicate lacelike plaster-work ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... infantry, which marched behind the Carthaginians 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 ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... singular, is, that the person who has been thus affected is for ever after secure from the infection of the Small Pox; neither exposure to the variolous effluvia, nor the insertion of the matter into the skin, producing this distemper. ...
— An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae • Edward Jenner

... the Confessor to Queen Anne, the monarchs of England were in the habit of touching those who were brought to them suffering with the scrofula, for the cure of that distemper. William the Third had good sense enough to discontinue the practice, but Anne resumed it, and, among her other patients, performed the royal operation upon a child, who, in spite of his, disease, grew up at last into Samuel Johnson. After laying his hand upon the sufferers, it was customary ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... is said to occasion from its 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 entirely ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus

... welcoming him. So he established himself impregnably in a Boston club, and came out every day to dine with Longfellow in Cambridge, beginning with his return from Nahant in October and continuing far into December. That was the year of the great horse-distemper, when the plague disabled the transportation in Boston, and cut off all intercourse between the suburb and the city on the street railways. "I did think," Longfellow pathetically lamented, "that when the horse-cars stopped running, I should have a little ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... journeyman carpenter, and the painter, who was informed that he was a bad paymaster, thought proper to devise a mode of being revenged should Achilles play him any trick; he therefore painted the figure in oil, the shield excepted, which was in distemper. The likeness was acknowledged to be great; but the actor, that he might pay as little as possible, pretended to find many faults, and declared 'he would only pay half the sum agreed upon. "Well," replied the painter, "I must be content; however, I will give you a secret for making ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various

... am just now hastening thither, with a resolution to forget myself, and everything that is past, to engage myself, as far as is possible, in that course of life, and to toss about the world from one pole to the other, till I leave this distemper behind me."[3] ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley

... immediately fell sick with the violence of it, and all the Court was concern'd at this Misfortune: Don Pedro was truly afflicted at it, but Agnes more than all the World beside. Constantia's Coldness towards her, made her continually sigh; and her Distemper created merely by fancy, caus'd her to reflect on every thing that offer'd it self to her Memory: so that at last she began even to fear her self, and to reproach her self ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... back to Turin, he fell once more into his old life of mere vacancy, varied before long by a most unworthy amour, of which he tells us that he finally cured himself by causing his servant to tie him in his chair, and so keep him a prisoner in his own house. A violent distemper followed this treatment, which the light-moraled gossip of the town said Alfieri had invented exclusively for his own use; many days he lay in bed tormented by this anguish; but when he rose he was no longer a slave to his passion. Shortly after, he wrote a tragedy, or a tragic ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... wine, which thou Dost rather pour forth, than allow By cruse and measure; thus devoting wine, As the Canary isles were thine; But with that wisdom and that method, as No one that's there his guilty glass Drinks of distemper, or has cause to cry Repentance to his liberty. No, thou know'st orders, ethics, and hast read All oeconomics, know'st to lead A house-dance neatly, and canst truly show How far a figure ought to go, Forward or backward, side-ward, and what pace Can ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick

... reflected the more was my mind disturbed. I walked about the chamber unable to rid myself either of my sickly qualms, the feverish distemper of my blood, or the still more fevered distemperature of my mind. It was a violent but I suspect it was a useful lesson. After a while, cold water, washing, cleaning, and shifting my dress, gave me a ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... the former the hand is relatively more important to progress than the head, and the man of work than the man of thought. In colonies men of great natural parts, if ambitious, can usually take good positions even if but little educated. At Home this is hardly possible, and the consequent social distemper is there a danger to the State—a danger, however, which our Education Acts since 1870 must be ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth

... Man: And 'tis no ways inconsistent with this Character to suppose, that he may entertain a natural Antipathy against an ugly Face, or a bad Voice; but our Author represents him as labourirg under this Distemper to such a Degree of Excess, as, I believe, has never been observ'd in any Man. I do not know by what Name it may be call'd. Troilus conceives an immediate Aversion against a Person that enters the Room where he is; he shuns him, flies from him, and will throw ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally

... familiarity with him, at a man resolute in their ends, and best able to promote them; and it may be, they believed his reputation at court so good, that he would be no ill evidence there of other men's zeal and affection; so all men spoke their minds freely to him, both of the general distemper, and of the passions and ambition of particular persons, all men knowing him to be of too good a fortune, and too wary a nature, to engage himself ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... attached to the court of Roussillon; she is represented as a rich heiress, who rejects many suitors of worth and rank, in consequence of her secret attachment to the young Bertram de Roussillon. She cures the King of France of a grievous distemper, by one of her fathers prescriptions; and she asks and receives as her reward the young Count of Roussillon as her wedded husband. He forsakes her on their wedding day, and she retires, by his order, to his territory of Roussillon. There she is received ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... sad and darksome cell, Or from the deepe abysse of Hell, Mad Tom is come into the world againe, To see if he can cure his distemper'd braine." ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... sweet friends and followers! These lords perhaps do scorn our estimates, And think we prattle with distemper'd spirits: But, since they measure our deserts so mean, That in conceit [36] bear empires on our spears, Affecting thoughts coequal with the clouds, They shall be kept our forced followers Till with their eyes ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe

... agitations of the body with which they were attended, naturally unhinge the whole frame. When by fasting and darkness the brain is distempered, they fancy they see spectres and hear voices. Thus they take pains to confirm the distemper which ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant

... means the first to account him a fool, but she was certainly the first to call him one to his face; and whilst to the general it might have proved her extreme sanity, to him it was no more than the culminating proof of her mental distemper. ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... circumstance for any person to have a house-dog with him in the streets. It would be necessary to carry the creature continually, and even then a number of these unbidden guests would follow, barking and howling incessantly. Neither distemper nor madness is to be feared from these dogs, though no one cares for their wants. They live on carrion and offal, which is to be found in abundance in every street, as every description of filth is thrown out ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer

... them, the more so owing to the fact that as mothers they do not shine, being very difficult to manage, and generally manifesting a strong dislike to rearing their own offspring. In other respects they are quite hardy little dogs, and—one great advantage—they seldom have distemper. Cold and damp they particularly dislike, especially when puppies, and the greatest care should be taken to keep them thoroughly dry and warm. When very young indeed they can stand, and are the better for, an extraordinary ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... creatures in the bilboes, or run the chance of their escaping every day in the week. Thus it came to pass, even, that they were tried in Fetters, and sometimes could not hold up their hands (weakened besides by the Gaol Distemper), at the bidding of the Clerk of the Arraigns, for the weight of the Manacles that were upon them. And it is to the famous and admirable Mr. John Howard that we owe the putting down of this ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... is a sickness Which puts some of us in distemper; but I cannot name the disease; and it is caught Of you that ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare

... of little wit arraign; He first by his dispatches lets him ween, That thither he Jocundo brings with pain: Saying, that of his beauteous air and mien Some secret cause of grief had been the bane, Accompanied by a distemper sore: So that he seemed not what he ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... fellow-Quaker, poor James Nayler. Next day, Saturday, Aug. 21, when Fox went to Hampton Court Palace to keep his appointment, he could not be admitted. Harvey, the groom of the bedchamber, told him that his Highness was very ill, with his physicians about him, and must be kept quiet. That morning his distemper had developed itself distinctly into "an ague"; which ague proved, within the next few days, to be of the kind called by the physicians "a bastard tertian," i.e. an ague with the cold and hot shivering fits recurring ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... strength of the kennel. From sixty to eighty couples is the complement for a four days a-week pack, which will require the breeding of a hundred couples of puppies every year, allowing for accidents and distemper." [14] ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... good-morrow to you all (my Lords:) Haue you read o're the Letters that I sent you? War. We haue (my Liege.) King. Then you perceiue the Body of our Kingdome, How foule it is: what ranke Diseases grow, And with what danger, neere the Heart of it? War. It is but as a Body, yet distemper'd, Which to his former strength may be restor'd, With good aduice, and little Medicine: My Lord Northumberland will soone ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... what they represented as the judgment of the universities in favor of the divorce; but they faced boldly the event of its rejection. "Our condition," they ended, "will not be wholly irremediable. Extreme remedies are ever harsh of application; but he that is sick will by all means be rid of his distemper." In the summer the banishment of Catherine from the King's palace to a house at Ampthill showed the firmness of Henry's resolve. Each of these acts was no doubt intended to tell on the Pope's decision, for Henry still clung to the hope of extorting from Clement a favorable answer; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... of what he saw in Mindanao fits here: "This Distemper runs with a dry Scurf all over their Bodies, and causeth great itching in those that have it, making them frequently scratch and scrub themselves, which raiseth the outer skin in small whitish flakes, like the scales of little Fish, when they are raised on ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... of Mr. Falkland: but his disposition was extremely unequal. The distemper which afflicted him with incessant gloom had its paroxysms. Sometimes he was hasty, peevish, and tyrannical; but this proceeded rather from the torment of his mind than an unfeeling disposition; and when reflection recurred, he appeared willing that the weight ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... perished deplorably by the diseases of that unhealthy climate, and his ships were totally rained by the worms. This brave officer, being restricted by his orders from obeying the dictates of his courage, seeing his best officers and men daily swept off by an outrageous distemper, and his ships exposed to inevitable destruction, is said to have died of a broken heart; while the people of England loudly clamoured against this unfortunate expedition, in which so many lives were thrown away, and so much money expended, without the least advantage ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... fire at the other. "But that ain't tellin' us what ails the black," he went on, dropping the subject of the white and taking up with the symptoms of the black, evidently through perverseness. "He's solemn and dumpish," he declared, thoughtfully, "like he might have distemper. But he 'ain't got distemper. And his teeth ain't sharp, yet he don't eat at all. And I can't see anything ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton

... the room, and was supported by decorated pilasters, which divided the walls into compartments. A coved ceiling sprang from the cornice, and both ceiling and walls were decorated with paintings, in distemper, of mythological subjects; the lower portion of the wall, however, having what is, I believe, termed a dado, ornamented with a diaper pattern, each square of which contained a conventional ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood



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



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