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<DIV>One slang use of jug is for 'jail or prison'. Distempers were any
disease condition, including mental "derangement". Distempers also were
rather toxic paint mixtures with lead and lime in them (though also referred to
a type of milk paint).</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I'd lean towards something related to alcohol. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Wonder if it could refer to a death from drinking a bad batch of
homemade alcohol. Home stills were still the more common source of
whiskey in that period, and what killed people wasn't the whiskey itself, but
other things in the still itself that got into the 'brew'. Or what was
added to the mix. Such whiskey was commonly stored in jugs, 'jug of
whiskey'. And given the use of the term distemper to refer to mental
derangement, which probably would be a symptom of a poisoning resulting from
drinking a contaminated, homemade product...</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Larry</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=raybeere@yahoo.com href="mailto:raybeere@yahoo.com">Ray Beere Johnson
II</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=apgpubliclist@apgen.org
href="mailto:apgpubliclist@apgen.org">APG Posting</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Monday, October 04, 2010 9:55
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [APG Public List] "jug
distemper"</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>On Oct 4, 2010, at 1:19 PM, Maria Hopper wrote:<BR><BR>>
Anyone ever hear of "Jug distemper" listed as a cause of death in an <BR>>
1836 NJ diary? Couldn't find in in the archaic medical terms sights.
Ree<BR><BR> I'm not sure if I've run across this exact
term before. I certainly don't have a source and am too rushed to hunt one
down. (I got two different results - four total - for "jug distemper" - all in
Google Books - and neither of these results offered any hint of a meaning,
even in context.)<BR> But, if I were reading a diary
from this period, and read the term "jug distemper", in the context of a cause
of death, my working assumption would be that the person "drank themselves to
death". However, I don't think this is a medical term, or suggests a precise
medical cause. It would be more colloquial in nature, I think. That assumption
is borne out by the fact it only appears in Google Books four times - three of
those being duplicated _and_ an obvious list of colloquialisms, and the
additional hit including "jug, distemper" is clearly not using this
phrase.<BR> Of course, a careful reading of the diary
may reveal previous entries which state _or suggest_ this person was drinking
or drunk on various occasions. Or it might not, depending on how important the
individual was in the life of the diarist, or how circumspect they usually
tended to
be.<BR>
Ray Beere Johnson II<BR><BR><BR><BR></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>