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Distemper   /dɪstˈɛmpər/   Listen
Distemper

verb
(past & past part. distempered; pres. part. distempering)
1.
Paint with distemper.



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"Distemper" Quotes from Famous Books



... in the following year; an event that, for the first time, really introduced him to the public at large. To 1857, again, belongs Rossetti's Blue Closet and Damsel of the Sangrael, both painted for Mr. W. Morris. And in 1857 and 1858, the famous and hapless distemper pictures on the walls of the Union Debating Society's room at Oxford, were engaging Rossetti and his associates, including Burne-Jones, William Morris, Mr. Val. Prinsep, Mr. Arthur Hughes, and Mr. ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys

... Dartmouth College were at 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 ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... on deck all was quiet. The cool fresh air had an instantaneous effect on my shattered nerves, the violent throbbing in my head ceased, and I began to hug myself with the notion that my distemper, whatever it might have been, had ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... He is a fair type of the fast man of intellect 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 settlers upon the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... not contented? Wherefore reach At things which, but for thee, O Latmian! Had been my dreary death? Fool! I began To feel distemper'd longings: to desire The utmost privilege that ocean's sire Could grant in benediction: to be free Of all his kingdom. Long in misery 380 I wasted, ere in one extremest fit I plung'd for life or death. To interknit One's senses ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats

... 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 you cared to ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... favourable opinion of me, and to believe me to be innocent from those foul aspersions, until the contrary shall be proved: which I am sure can never be by any man worthy to be believed. And since the distemper of the time, and the difference between the two Houses in the present debate, with the power and malice of my enemies, who give out that I shall prevail with his Majesty to prorogue or dissolve this Parliament in displeasure, and threaten ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... ever infected. I am persuaded, that it would be as easy a matter 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 are ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... 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

... afflicted him to the last 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

... wrongfully deprived of the crown. With subtle dissimulation, disguised and unknown, he hangs about the Court. Against the ladies especially, whom he all holds to be adulteresses, he entertains the greatest mistrust. He watches every one; but most closely women. He is the image of mental distemper; and Pietro, the ruling Duke, describes him in act i. sc. 2 by saying that 'the elements struggle within him; his own soule is at variance within her selfe;' he is 'more discontent than Lucifer.' In short, he confers upon him all the qualities of ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... favour, Captain Cook, with a company of an hundred and eighteen men*, performed a voyage of three years and eighteen days, throughout all the climates, from fifty-two degrees north, to seventy-one degrees south, with the loss of only one man by a distemper**. What must enhance to us the value of these salutary observations, is to see the practice hath been no less ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook

... opinion strong. A fiery inflammation seiz'd his eyes, Which could not well be temper'd any wise: For they were bloud-shot, and so prone to ill, As basiliske-like, where'ere they look, they kill. No laws but Draco's with his humour stood, For they were writ in characters of bloud. His stomacke was distemper'd in such sort Nought would digest; nor could he relish sport. His dreames were full of melancholy feare, Bolts, halters, gibbets, halloo'd in his eare: Fury fed nature with a little food, Which, ill-concocted, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... 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 of Flaubert's ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett

... subordinate. 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 murmurings and inquietude. The ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... of proper and seasonable remedies, is now so advanced, 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

... 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 ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... that a few months before some travellers who had guested at our house gave Suzanne a little rough-haired dog bred of parents which had been brought from England. Of this dog Suzanne grew very fond, and when it fell sick of the distemper she was in much distress. So it came about that one afternoon Suzanne put the dog in a basket, and taking with her an old Hottentot to carry it, set out upon her grey mare for the valley where Sihamba lived. Now Sihamba had her hut and the huts of the few people in her service ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard

... words mocked him, dancing in great red letters on the pale green distemper, and he shook his feet at ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... doubted whether the meat is equally good and nutricious. If calves be taken with the scouring, which often happens in a few days after being cast, make a medicine of powdered chalk and wheat meal, wrought into a ball with some gin; and it will afford relief. The shoote is another distemper to which they are liable, and is attended with a violent cholic and the loathing of food. The general remedy in this case is milk, well mulled with eggs; or eggs and flour mixed with oil, melted ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... Klaus's out o' 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... the 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 among them. All offer ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... 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 necessary body-breadth. The result was a demonstration of a simple theorem in dynamics. ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... merry nonsense about gifts and gayety and lovers. She was very well, with the very underscored, and two engagements for every evening. She had not heard from Louie, "but I should have if her little finger had ached; she would have been afraid of some distemper. And I hope you are ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... advice of Dr. Nepier; a minister came to her, and severely repremanded her, for making use of a diabolical help, and told her, she was in danger of damnation for it, and commanded her to burn it. She did so, and her distemper returned severely; insomuch that she was importunate with the Doctor to use the same again; she used it, and had ease. But the parson hearing of it, came to her again, and thundered hell and damnation, and frighted her so, that she burnt it again. Whereupon she fell extremely ill, and ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey

... 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: ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan

... lurking vice. When they stray, they go immense distances; and it is almost beyond the power of a man on foot to tend them in a wild country: he can neither overtake them easily, nor, when overtaken, catch them. The female is, in most breeds, much the more docile. They suffer from African distemper, but in a less degree than horses. The following descriptions of mule caravans are exceedingly graphic and instructive:—"The madrina (or godmother) is a most important personage. She is an old steady mare, with ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... 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 as the frescoes ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... a voyage, the first part of which was enlivened and rendered important by discoveries; the next involved in gloom through the virulent attacks of distemper, and the frequent inroads of death. Much was certainly performed, and very much was suffered, but from the whole we are authorized to conclude, that the settlement of our countrymen on the new southern continent, must powerfully tend to the improvement of navigation, and the extension ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip

... knows some one in his circle of acquaintance who, though always active, has this want of energy. The distemper, if we may call it such, exhibits itself in various ways. In some cases, the man has merely an executive faculty when he should have a directing one; in other words, he makes a capital clerk for himself, ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... Faustina should be glad to escape from the solemn conclaves of the palazzo Siviano to a house where life went as gaily as in that villa above Florence where Boccaccio's careless story-tellers took refuge from the plague. But meanwhile the political distemper was rapidly spreading, and in spite of Gemma's Austrian affiliations it was no longer possible for her to receive the enemy openly. It was whispered that her door was still ajar to her old friends; but the rumor may have risen from the fact that one ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton

... 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 in the same ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe

... made as great a fool of me as she had ever done of any woman whatsoever: under pretence of giving me leave to enjoy, she drew me to suffer the company of my little ones, during eight hours; and I doubt not whether, in that time, I did not undergo more than in all my distemper. ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... was attacked with sudden illness, 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; and from this attack ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... 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 ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... no skilfully contrasted shades of grey or green, no dado, no distemper on the walls; the woodwork was grained and varnished after the manner of the Philistines, the walls papered in dark crimson, with heavy curtains of the same colour, and the sideboard, dinner-waggon, and ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... since 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 ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... house is always in an uproar. All abuse each other's vices, yet take no pains to cure their own faults. The servants hate them, the neighbours despise them, and the house is shunned as though it had some dreadful distemper within. They live without friends; for no prudent persons will suffer their children to visit where they can learn nothing but wickedness ...
— The Bad Family and Other Stories • Mrs. Fenwick

... universal love and veneration, by a most affable and courteous behaviour to all men. A few months after his return he went to Dover, to have an interview with the Earl of Flanders;[43] where, after a short sickness, he died of the iliac passion, together with his old distemper the hemorrhoids, upon the twenty-fifth day of October, in the forty-ninth year of his age, and the nineteenth of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... 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, ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... 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 ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... 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

... affected; could you speak any? could you fix your thoughts upon anything but the dreary way you was in? and would not the sight of me have made you very miserable? I have lately had the epidemical distemper; I don't mean poverty, but that cold which they call the influenza, and which made its first appearance in London;[52] whether it came to Scotland in the wagon, or travelled with a companion in a post-chaise, ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell

... aisle, and paused about the middle. Something in the scene gave him a new sensation. The church was old, dilapidated; but the timbered roof, the Norman and Early English arches incongruously side by side, with patches of ancient distemper and paintings, and, more than all, the marble figures on the tombs, with hands folded so foolishly,—yet impressively too, brought him up with a quick throb of the heart. It was his first real contact with England; for he had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... body, stretched out towards the west—and though alarmed at the omen, which seemed as if the Fates were preparing his end, he went on more resolutely, and came to Tarsus, where he caught a slight fever; and thinking that the motion of his journey would remove the distemper, he went on by bad roads; directing his course by Mopsucrenae, the farthest station in Cilicia for those who travel from hence, at the foot ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... indefinable; I was going to say indefensible. Perhaps it is an attitude—a mental attitude that finds physical expression in the voice, the gesture, the behaviour. Oxford, not conduct, is three-fourths of life to those who acquire the distemper. Without becoming personal it is not easy to discuss purely social aspects, and we must seek chiefly in literature for manifestations of the phenomenon: in the prose of Matthew Arnold for instance—in the poems of Mr. Laurence Binyon, typical examples where every thought seems ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... visible. The outside door is next to the window. Door left. As regards furniture the room is very bare. The suggestion is not of an empty room, but a stripped room. For example, there are several square patches where the distemper of the walls is of a darker shade than the rest, indicating the places once occupied by pictures. There is an uncovered deal the left wall is a dresser and a plate-rack above it containing a few pots. The dresser has also one or two utensils upon it. A blackened kettle rests on the top of the ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... jargon," said De Lacy; "if my nephew was lightheaded enough to attempt to come hither in the heat of a delirious distemper, you should have had sense to prevent him, had it been ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... that we should paper our ceilings like our walls, but I can't think that it will do. Theoretically, a paper- hanging is so much distemper colour applied to a surface by being printed on paper instead of being painted on plaster by the hand; but practically, we never forget that it is paper, and a room papered all over would be like a box to live in. Besides, the covering a room all over with cheap recurring patterns ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris

... But there is a civil, a moral, a federal 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 their ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... goodness of God, well recovered of his distemper, went abroad this day, and was shown the Town-house, which is a fair and handsome building, of the like fashion, but more large and beautiful, than that at Luebeck, and much better furnished. Here are many chambers for public councils and tribunals; some of them have their ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke

... novel, I would have you know that Lady Polden was inoculated, together with all her family, for the smallpox two months since, excepting only Miss Jenny, that none could persuade from fear of the lancet. All recovered after a day or two's disagreeables, but poor Miss Jenny catching the distemper, supposedly at a masquerade, fell a victim at the age of eighteen, and was buried a week last Monday in all the forms. 'Tis certain there are those would sooner die with the approval of the doctors than live to dance ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington

... in Louisa's room. Louisa was recovering from the measles. Everyone 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 from being so constantly useful as Cecilia. Cecilia, on the contrary, ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth

... 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

... Structure in Ruins, and turned into a Prison, and a Lazar-house, or Hospital; wherein lie Millions of Criminals, and Rebels against their Creator, under Condemnation to Misery and Death, who are at the same time sick of a mortal Distemper, and disorder'd in their Minds, even to Distraction: Hence proceed those infinite Follies, which are continually practised here; and the righteous Anger of an offended God is visible in ten thousand Instances: yet there are Proclamations of Divine ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch

... King was but one symptom of a distemper widely prevalent. Its causes were manifold. Chief among them was a feeling of disgust at the many failures of the war. The defection of Prussia and Spain, the fruitless waste of British troops in the West Indies, the insane follies of the French emigres, the ghastly scenes at Quiberon, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... bills of indictments, the three persons fell into strange and violent fits, shrieking out in a most sad manner, so that they could not in any wise give any instructions in the court who were the cause of their distemper. And although they did after some certain space recover out of their fits, yet they were every one of them struck dumb, so that none of them could speak, neither at the time, nor during the Assizes, until the conviction of the ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various

... duration or good in prospect. Unless the King of Prussia will take our affairs at home as well as abroad to nurse, I see no possible recovery for us—and you may believe, when a doctor like him is necessary, I should be full as willing to die of the distemper. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... morning, however, Pierre's distemper had crystallized into a great contempt for his companion. Of all trials, the most detestable is to hit the trail with half a man, a pale, anemic weakling like ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various

... friend's chamber a phial full of this liquor, which I had given that friend, and having never heard anything of the experiment, nor having anybody near him who could tell him what this strange liquor might be, was a great while apprehensive, as he presently afterwards told me, that some strange new distemper was invading his eyes. And I confess that the unusualness of the phenomenon made me very solicitous to find out the cause of this experiment; and though I am far from pretending to have found it, yet my enquiries have, I suppose, enabled me to give such hints as may lead your greater sagacity ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... with a violent fever, that brought her very low in a little time, and great was her exercise of spirit, as to her condition and state with God, many times weeping when she was alone.... She said, 'If this distemper do not abate, I must die, but my soul shall go to Eternal Joy, Eternal, Eternal and Everlasting Life and Peace with my God for ever: Oh! praises, praises to Thy Majesty, Oh, my God! who helpeth me to go through with patience, what I ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... "that you did not divert yourself by walking up and down and playing some merry tricks with the murderer." "Oh, sir," returned he, "I had not that privilege, I was lawfully put to death. In short, a physician set me on fire, by giving me medicines to throw out my distemper. I died of a hot regimen, as they call it, in ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding

... scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down on his beard." He probably pretended to be attacked with epileptic fits. In fact, after due examination, there seems little doubt that it was a common notion with the ancients that the distemper was ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus

... that the life of Napoleon Bonaparte will be endangered by a longer residence in such a climate as that of St. Helena, especially if that residence be aggravated by a continuance of those disturbances and irritations to which he has hitherto been subjected, and of which it is the nature of his distemper to render him peculiarly susceptible.—(Signed) BARRY E. O'MEARA, Surgeon R.N. To John Wilson Croker, ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... this Caution, that in my Receipt, you may adde Mellon seeds, and seeds of Pompions of Valencia, dryed, and beaten into powder, where there is any heat of the Liver or Kidnyes. And if there be any obstructions of the Liver, or Spleene, with any cold distemper, you may mixe the powder of Ceterach; to which you may adde Amber, or ...
— Chocolate: or, An Indian Drinke • Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma

... solitary candle burned dim in that garret, more than fifteen feet high, and filled with a confused jumble of things whose big shadows showed fantastically on the walls, which were painted in grey distemper. No, she did not distinguish anything. She mechanically raised her eyes to the large studio-window, against which the rain was beating with a deafening roll like that of a drum, but at that moment another flash of lightning illumined ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... I shut mine eyes to so much racking pain, Still I could hear his groaning and his moaning. "Oh, Channa," said I to the charioteer: "Why does this happen? How deserves this man The wretchedness of his great agonies?" "How do I know?" said Channa, "for we all Are subject to distemper and disease. Sometimes the best are stricken—and must die!" "Must die?" cried I, "What does that word portend?" For, you must know, I never heard of death. My father had forbidden, at his court To speak ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus

... working classes, gathered in hundreds around the mushroom establishment, and then thrown adrift among the other wrecks of its overthrow, in utter helplessness and destitution on society. This frenzy of men hasting to be rich, like fever in the body natural, is a truly sore distemper in the body politic. No doubt they are also sufferers themselves, piercing their own hearts through with many sorrows; but it is the contemplation of this suffering in masses, which the sons and daughters of industry in humble life so often earn ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott

... this afterwards and was but ill-pleased with the result of her experiment. She pointed out to me that lines and blotches of gold ran for an inch or more down the substance of the steel, which she feared that they might weaken or distemper, whereas it had been her purpose that the hilt only should ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... your Honor's presence," and said he was sorry for it. Sir William's reply makes it probable that Bacon had suffered some losses from neighboring Indians, and had retaliated. "This sudden business of the Indians," Berkeley said, had raised in him "high distemper." And he asked Bacon to consider that relations between the whites and the Indians was his responsibility, so that it was important that he be advised of all dealings with them. Should there be serious trouble he would be criticised both in England ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker

... physician. My other possessions, too, are a constant care. A man comes in, one day, and brings me sheep that have been torn by the wolves; and, on another day, tells me of oxen that have fallen from a precipice, or of a distemper which has broken out among the flocks or herds. My wealth, therefore, brings me only an increase of anxiety and trouble, without any ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... were to be found intimations of the future. But Plato is careful to observe that although such knowledge is given to the inferior parts of man, it requires to be interpreted by the superior. Reason, and not enthusiasm, is the true guide of man; he is only inspired when he is demented by some distemper or possession. The ancient saying, that 'only a man in his senses can judge of his own actions,' is approved by modern philosophy too. The same irony which appears in Plato's remark, that 'the men of old time must surely have known the gods who were their ancestors, and ...
— Timaeus • Plato

... miserable waiting Susannah had thought of many things that might occur, and nerved herself to meet them, but this distemper of soul, this failure of will in the man who had been undaunted through years of persecuting torture, was so wholly unexpected that she ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... carried off by the small-pox, within a few days of each other; my father dying first, and thereby by hastening the death of my mother: so that I was now left an unhappy friendless orphan (for my father's coming to settle there, was accidental, he being originally a Kentisrman). That cruel distemper which had proved so fatal to them, had indeed seized me, but with such mild and favourable symptoms, that I was presently out of danger, and what then I did not know the value of, was entirely unmarked I skip over here an account of the natural grief and affliction which I felt on this melancholy ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... continual dampness. By its presence chemical action and decay are set up in many substances which would remain in a quiescent state so long as they continued dry. Wood will rot; so will wall papers, the paste used in hanging them, and the size in distemper, however good they have been in the first instance; then it is that injurious exhalations are thrown off, and the evil is doubtless very greatly increased if the materials are bad in themselves. Quickly grown and sappy timber, sour paste, stale size, and wall papers containing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various

... make a change, so I was fain to hope that easy journeys at first, and a light weight on his back, might gradually bring the ungainly beast into better form. It appeared that he was just recovering from the distemper and "sore tongue," which had followed each other in rapid succession. These two diseases are the terror and bane of Virginian and Maryland stables. An animal who has once surmounted them is supposed to be seasoned, and acquires ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... and the swan, the lake and the greyhound, painted on the curtain, this picture vanished by degrees, with an exhilarating creaking of the rollers, and was succeeded by the representation of a room in a cottage. The scenery, painted in distemper and not susceptible to wind or weather, had manifold uses, reappearing later in the performance as a nobleman's palace, supplemented, it is true, by a well-worn carpet to indicate ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... griefs, doubts, or fears, Distemper so my mind; But cast on God thy thoughtful cares, And comfort thou ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... consequences of a scrutiny; for if I am rightly informed, a jury of old women can no more judge accurately whether a woman has yielded her virginity, than they can by examining a dead body, know of what distemper the deceased died; but be that as it may, the whole affair is unfavourable to her modesty; it shews her a woman of irregular passions, which poor Sir Thomas Overbury dearly experienced; for even after the Countess was happy in the embraces of the Earl of Somerset, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... that, a month after Miss Sichliffe took him, the dog Harvey developed distemper. Miss Sichliffe had nursed him herself for some time; then she carried him in her arms the two miles to Mittleham, and wept—actually wept—at Attley's feet, saying that Harvey was all she had or expected to have in this world, and Attley must cure him. Attley, being by wealth, position, ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... play with them, and throwing them into the fire; and, if she did evil in it, she was very sorry for it, and desired he would be friends with her, or forgive her. This was the very day before she died." That night her distemper returned, and, in a paroxysm of ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... head of their faction, entered on the civil wars; wherein, after much blood had been spilt, and after many changes of fortune, they got the better of their adversaries. But afterwards, in the time of Caesar and Pompey, the distemper broke out afresh; for Caesar heading the Marian party, and Pompey, that of Sylla, and war ensuing, the victory remained with Caesar, who was the first tyrant in Rome; after whose time that city was never again free. ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli

... are underwritten, do certify the miraculous cure of a girl of this town, about twenty, by name Elizabeth Parcet, a poor widow's daughter, who hath languished under sad affliction from that distemper of the king's evil termed the joint evil, being said to be the worst evil. For about ten or twelve years' time she had in her right hand four running wounds, one on the inside, three on the back of her hand, as well as two more in the same arm, one above her hand-wrist, the other above the bending ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... former desires returned, I entirely forgot the vows and promises that I made in my distress. I found, indeed, some intervals of reflection, and the 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 ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... night elsewhere exiled, Was absent, whether some distemper'd spleen Kept him and his fair mate unreconciled, Or warfare with the Gnome (whose race had been Sometime obnoxious), kept him from his queen, And made her now peruse the starry skies Prophetical, with such an absent mien; Howbeit, the tears stole often to her eyes, And oft the Moon ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... public, which was promptly accepted, and the execution of which was confided into Fielding's hands. "I had delayed my Bath-journey for some time," he proceeds, "contrary to the repeated advice of my physical acquaintance, and to the ardent desire of my warmest friends, tho' my distemper was now turned to a deep jaundice; in which case the Bath-waters are generally reputed to be almost infallible. But I had the most eager desire of demolishing this gang of villains and cut-throats." After some weeks the requisite funds were placed at Fielding's disposal; and ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... experiences in England, Scotland, Ireland, and France, it must have given him heartfelt pleasure to visit the prisons in Belgium, which, with scarcely an exception, were 'all fresh and clean, no gaol distemper, no prisoners in irons.' The bread allowance 'far exceeds that of any of our gaols. Two pounds of bread a day, soup once, with a pound of meat on Sunday.' This was in Brussels, but when he went on to Ghent, things were ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang

... (incomplete) series of plates for Young's 'Night Thoughts'; the drawings for Hayley's 'Life of Cowper,' and for the same feeble author's 'Ballads on Anecdotes relating to Animals'; the 'Dante' designs: the 'Job' series of prints; a vast store of aquarelle and distemper paintings and plates, and a whole gallery of "portraits" derived from sitters of distinction in past universal history. These sitters, it is needless to say, were wholly invisible to other eyes than Blake's. The subjects vary from likenesses of Saint Joseph ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... symptoms of the distemper which had come upon him so suddenly. He had always been remarkable for a certain towsiness of appearance and carelessness of dress which harmonized with his Bohemian habits. All this he suddenly abjured. One fine morning he paid successive visits to his tailor, his ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... 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, was living with him. She was first aware of Theseus, whom as yet Aegeus did not know, and he being in years, full of jealousies and suspicions, and fearing everything by reason of the faction that was then in the city, she easily persuaded him to kill ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... Grenadiers—so limited, that they must needs put the poor 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 ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... in this sad distemper, The Doctor's self could [21] hardly spare: Unworthy things she talked, and wild; Even he, of cattle the most mild, 240 The ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... he had not been able to ascertain, so various were the reports, whether it was the plague or not. The emperor's army, a division of which passed through this country, and encamped at the river, about two miles south of this port, had the distemper with it. We have been assured, that the soldiers who died, were immediately buried within the tents, so that, by this stratagem, the mortality was not perceived by the public; it was apprehended that, ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... alterations were made. A new choir screen and pulpit were erected, the floor of the choir laid in marble mosaic, the choir stalls returned to their original positions, and the walls of the church scraped in order to clear them from the many coats of lime and distemper which lay on them. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate

... correcting the proposition—the Bastile is not an evil to be despised; but strip it of its towers, fill the fosse, unbarricade the doors, call it simply a confinement, and suppose it is some tyrant of a distemper, and not a man which holds you in it, the evil vanishes, and you bear the other half without complaint. I was interrupted in the heyday of this soliloquy, with a voice which I took to be of a child, which complained "It could not get out." I looked up and down the passage, ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... an example of all these observations. She had not been many times in the captain's company before she was seized with this passion. Nor did she go pining and moping about the house, like a puny, foolish girl, ignorant of her distemper: she felt, she knew, and she enjoyed, the pleasing sensation, of which, as she was certain it was not only innocent but laudable, she was ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... ceaseless deglutition of mankind in this part of the world is equaled only by the answering and enormous activity of the human male kidneys. This latter was too astonishing and too public a fact to go unmentioned. At Dieppe, by the reeking tubs standing about, I suspected some local distemper; but when I got to Paris, and saw how fully and openly the wants of the male citizen in this respect were recognized by the sanitary and municipal regulations, and that the urinals were thicker than the lamp-posts, I concluded it must be a national trait; and at once abandoned ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... a setled resolution, to effect some mischieuous proiects and designes against them. The diuell who is skilfull, and reioyceth of such an occasion offered and knoweth how to stirre vp the euill affected humours of corrupt mindes (she becomming now a fitte subject, through this her distemper, to worke vpon, hauing the vnderstanding darkened with a cloude of passionate, and reuengefull affections) appeared vnto her amiddes these discontentments, [Sidenote: Proposition 4.] in the shape of a blacke man, and willed that the she should ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts

... 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

... workers did not always come through such an ordeal unscathed; and Dr. Langton and John Clarke sickened of the distemper almost at the same time. Neither was grievously ill; but both were forced to give up all work, and lie quietly in bed, suffering themselves to be tended ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green

... respecting your wants; you are, besides, invited to partake of our table, all the time we shall pass together: the Major, and all the officers, beg you to remain here, and not to go to the pestilential camp at Deccard, where a mortal distemper would carry you off in a few days." It would be ungrateful not to name these two young officers: one bears the name of Beurthonne, without being a relation of the Governors; the name ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard

... she saw, and she would not too 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, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... moment, the men and women, old 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

... 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 ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... an account of the excessive sufferings he had passed through, with a weak voice, but spirited. He next told me he had ended his domestic affairs through such difficulties from the law that gave him as much torment of mind as his distemper had done of body, to do right to the person to whom he had obligations beyond expression (Anastasia Robinson). That he had found it necessary not only to declare his marriage to all his relations, but since ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... first distemper of learning, when men study words and not matter; whereof, though I have represented an example of late times, yet it hath been and will be secundum majus et minus in all time. And how is it possible but this ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... runway, and that's 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

... occasioned its spreading to such a degree, that there were but few on board, by the latter end of April, that were not afflicted with it in some degree; and in that month no less than forty-three died of it in the Centurion. Although we thought the distemper had then risen to an extraordinary height, and were willing to hope that its malignity might abate as we advanced to the northward, we yet found, on the contrary, that we lost near double that number ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... 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

... with ethereal flame Kindled he was, and blasted; for to be Thus, and enamor'd, were in him the same. But his was not the love of living dame, Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams, But of ideal beauty, which became In him existence, and o'erflowing teems Along his burning page, distemper'd though it seems.'" "Childe ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... 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 twenty-nine], tho' watched, ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... a word about the technique of this work, we should remark that Botticelli always painted in fresco or distemper, and that he did not seek the supple modelling that painting in oil affords; and, on the other hand, he submitted profoundly to the influence of Pollaiolo; he observed Nature with the eyes of a goldsmith; and he painted his works as ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... she would get the Doctrix to send a new dose to the patient she knows of, for there was a little too much of one of the ingredients in the last, which toke away the effect of the whole. It is the ingredient that has the postponeing quality in it; and the patient's greatest distemper is the apprehentions he has of a perfect cure being long of comeing, and that it is not to be til he get the air of another country. The dose must be carefully made up, and no appearance of its comeing from any other hand but the Doctrix' ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson

... been so much the more wretched, that we have so long laboured fruitlessly and in vain. But it will not be wholly irremediable; extreme remedies are ever harsh of application; but he that is sick will by any means be rid of his distemper; and there is hope in the exchange of miseries, when, if we cannot obtain what is good, we may obtain a lesser evil, and trust that time may enable ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... bestows most of his epistle against this distemper, and clearly and largely proves that the rest of Sabbaths and Canaan should teach men to look for further rest, which indeed is their happiness. What more welcome to men under personal afflictions, tiring duty, successions of sufferings, than rest? What more ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... lawfulness of telling a lie to a sick man for fear of alarming him. You have no business with consequences; you are to tell the truth. Besides, you are not sure what effect your telling him that he is in danger may have; it may bring his distemper to a crisis, and that may cure him. Of all lying I have the greatest abhorrence of this, because I believe it has been frequently practised on myself."—Boswell's Life, vol. ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... he said, "to bless him with three sons, the finest lads in all Germany; but having in one week lost two 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 ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... 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 of the fancy only. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... who, with that humanity for which he is distinguished, cured both the boy and girl of a confluent small-pox, which swept off hundreds of the natives in the winter of 1788. This dreadful disorder, which, there is no doubt, is a distemper natural to the country, together with the difficulty of procuring a subsistance, renders the situtation of these poor ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter

... the cup's brim the sweets have kiss'd your lips. But, madam, like some weak, distemper'd child, You've yet to taste the nauseous dreaded draught Which is to ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... mortification, he tells a thousand falsehoods to clear up one. All this preys upon his inmost vitals, while perhaps with another, whom he has slandered, he is involved in a quarrel, and it terminates in a settled hatred; and a third case becomes an incurable distemper of rancour and revenge. Here is a man who by slander has rendered his existence wretched. He is like the troubled ocean ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods



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