Definition of "distemper"

O perplex'd discomposition, O ridling distemper, O miserable condition of Man!

1624, John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation I., in The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne, ed. Charles M. Coffin, New York: Modern Library (1952), pp. 415-416

[…] my spirits began to sink under the Burden of a strong Distemper, and Nature was exhausted with the Violence of the Fever […]

1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], 3rd edition, London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], published 1719, page 105

Guildenstern. The King, sir—Hamlet. Ay, sir, what of him?Guildenstern. Is in his retirement, marvellous distemper’d.Hamlet. With drink, sir?Guildenstern. No, my lord; rather with choler.

c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act III, scene ii]

The imagination, when completely distempered, is the most incurable of all disordered faculties.

1814, Joseph Stevens Buckminster, Sermons‎, Boston: John Eliot, Sermon XVI, p. 267

To some extent the Nore Mutiny may be regarded as analogous to the distempering irruption of contagious fever in a frame constitutionally sound, and which anon throws it off.

1888–1891, Herman Melville, “[Billy Budd, Foretopman.] Chapter III.”, in Billy Budd and Other Stories, London: John Lehmann, published 1951

I have been long accustomed to defend you, / To heal and pacify distempered spirits.

1799-1800, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (translator), The Piccolomini by Friedrich Schiller, Boston: Francis A. Niccolls & Co., 1902, p. 37

For the Courtiers reeling,And the Duke himselfe, (I dare not say distemperd,But kind, and in his tottering chaire carousing)They doe the countrie service.

1623, Philip Massinger, The Duke of Milan‎, act I, scene 1

He looked round the poor room, at the distempered walls, and the bad engravings in meretricious frames, the crinkly paper and wax flowers on the chiffonier; and he thought of a room like Father Bryan's, with panelling, with cut glass, with tulips in silver pots, such a room as he had hoped to have for his own.

1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter X, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company

We cleaned out the cellars, fixed the shelves, distempered the walls, polished the woodwork, whitewashed the ceiling, stained the floor;

1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter XIX, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz […]