salicylic acids. Of the physical agents heat and cold, the latter, though a powerful natural disinfectant, is not practically available by artificial means; heat is a power chiefly relied on for purifying and disinfecting clothes, bedding and textile substances generally. Different degrees of temperature are required for the destruction of the virus of various diseases; but as clothing, &c., can be exposed to a heat of about 250° Fahr. without injury, provision is made for submitting articles to nearly that temperature. For the thorough disinfection of a sick-room the employment of all three classes of disinfectants, for purifying the air, for destroying the virus at its point of origin, and for cleansing clothing, &c., may be required.
DISMAL, an adjective meaning dreary, gloomy, and so a name given to stretches of swampy land on the east coast of the United States, as the Dismal Swamp in Virginia and North Carolina. The derivation has been much discussed. In the early examples of the use the word is a substantive, especially in the expression “in the dismal,” i.e. in the dismal time or days. Later it became adjectival, especially in combination with “days.” It has been connected with “decimal,” med. Latin decimalis, belonging to a tithe or tenth, and thus the “dismal days” are the unpleasant days connected with the extortion and oppression of exacting payment of tithes. According to the New English Dictionary, quoting Professor W. W. Skeat, “dismal” is derived, through an Anglo-Fr. dis mal, from the Lat. dies mali, evil or unpropitious days. This Anglo-French expression, explained as les mal jours, is found in a MS. of Rauf de Linham’s Art de Kalender, 1256. These days of evil omen were known as Dies Aegyptiaci (Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v.) or Egyptian days, either as having been instituted by Egyptian astrologers or with reference to the “ten plagues”; so Chaucer, “I trowe hit was in the dismal, That were the ten woundes of Egipte” (Book of the Duchesse, 1206). There were two such days in each month.
See Skeat, Trans. Philol. Soc. (1888), p. 2, and note on the line in the “Book of the Duchesse,” The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, vol. i. (1894).
DISORDERLY HOUSE, in law, a house in which the conduct of its inmates is such as to become a public nuisance, or a house where persons congregate to the probable disturbance of the public peace or other commission of crime. In England, by the Disorderly Houses Act 1751, the term includes common bawdy houses or brothels,[1] common gaming houses, common betting houses and disorderly places of entertainment. The keeping of such is a misdemeanour punishable by fine or imprisonment, and in the case of a brothel also punishable on summary conviction by the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885; the letting out for gain for indiscriminate prostitution of a room or rooms in a house will make it as much a brothel in law as if the whole house were let out for the purpose. Where, however, a woman occupies a house or room which is frequented by men for the purpose of committing fornication with her, she cannot be convicted of keeping a disorderly house. See also Prostitution.
DISPATCH, or Despatch, to send off immediately, or by express; particularly in the case of the sending of official messages, or of the immediate sending of troops to their destination, or the like. The word is thus used as a substantive of written official reports of events, battles and the like, sent by ambassadors, generals, &c., by means of a special messenger, or of express correspondence generally. From the primary meaning of the prompt sending of a message, &c., the word is used of the quick disposal of business, or of the disposal of a person by violence; hence the word means to execute or murder. The etymology of the word has been obscured by the connexion with the Fr. dépêcher, and dépêche, which are in meaning the equivalents of the Eng. verb and substantive. The Fr. word is made up of the prefix de-, Lat. dis-, and the root which appears in empêcher, to embarrass, and means literally to disentangle. The Lat. origin of dépêcher and empêcher is a Low Lat. pedicare, pedica, a fetter. The Fr. word came into Eng. as depeach, which was in use from the 15th century until “despatch” was introduced. This word is certainly direct from the Ital. dispacciare, or Span, despachar, which must be derived from the Lat. root appearing in pactus, fixed, fastened, from pangere. The New English Dictionary finds the earliest instance of “dispatch” in a letter to Henry VIII. from Bishop Tunstall, commissioner to Spain in 1516–1517.
DISPENSATION, a term with two main applications, (1) to the action of administering, arranging or dealing out, and (2) to the action of allowing certain things, rules, &c., to be done away with, relaxed. Of these two meanings the first is to be derived from the classical Latin use of dispensare, literally, to weigh out, hence to distribute, especially of the orderly arrangement of a household by a steward; thus dispensatio was, in theology, the word chosen to translate the Greek οἰκονομία, economy, i.e. divine or religious systems, as in the Jewish, Mosaic, Christian dispensations. Dispensation in law is, strictly speaking, the suspension by competent authority of general rules of law in particular cases. Its object is to modify the hardships often arising from the rigorous application of general laws to particular cases, and its essence is to preserve the law by suspending its operation, i.e. making it non-existent, in such cases. It follows, then, that dispensation, in its strict sense, is anticipative, i.e. it does not absolve from the consequences of a legal obligation already contracted, but avoids a breach of the law by suspending the obligation to conform to it, e.g. a dispensation or licence to marry within the prohibited degrees, or to hold benefices in plurality. The term is, however, frequently used of the power claimed and exercised by the supreme legislative authority of altering or abrogating in particular cases conditions established under the existing law and of releasing individuals from obligations incurred under it, e.g. dispensations granted by the pope ex plenitudine potestatis from the obligation of celibacy, from religious and other vows, from matrimonium ratum, non consummatum, &c.
1. Ecclesiastical Law.—In the theory of the canon law the dispensing power is the corollary of the legislative, the authority that makes laws, and no other, having power to suspend them. It follows that the law of nature (jus naturae) and a fortiori the law of God (jus divinum) are not subject to dispensation of any earthly authority, and that it is only the disciplinary laws made by the Church that the Church is empowered to suspend or to abrogate. Thus, not even the pope could grant a dispensation for a marriage between persons related in the direct line of ascent or descent, e.g. father and daughter, or between brother and sister, while dispensations are granted for marriages within other prohibited degrees, e.g. uncle and niece.
The dispensing power, like the legislative authority, was formerly invested in general councils and even in provincial synods; but in the West, with the gradual centralization of authority at Rome, it became ultimately vested in the pope as the supreme lawgiver of the Church. Subject, however, to the supreme jurisdiction of the pope, the power of dispensation continued to reside in the other organs of the Church in exact proportion to their legislative capacities, i.e. in provincial synods in respect of regional rules laid down by them, and in bishops in respect of rules laid down by them for their dioceses. According to Du Cange, the earliest record of the use of the word dispensatio in this connexion is in the letter of Pope Gelasius I. of the 11th of March 494, to the bishops of Lucania (in Jaffé, Reg. Pont. Rom., ed. 2, tom. i. no. 636): necessaria rerum Dispensatione constringimur, . . . sic canonum paternorum decreta librare, . . . ut quae praesentium necessitas temporum restaurandis Ecclesiis relaxanda deposcit, adhibita consideratione diligenti, quantum fieri potest temperemus.[2] Dispensations from the observance
- ↑ The etymology of this word has been confused by the early adoption into English usage of the O. Fr. bordel. The two words are in origin quite distinct. Brothel is an O. Eng. word for a person, not a place. It meant an abandoned vagabond, one who had gone to ruin (abréothan). Bordel, on the contrary, is a place, literally a small hut or shelter, especially for fornication, Med. Lat. bordellum, diminutive of the Late Lat. borda, board. The words were early confused, and brothel-house, bordel-house, bordel or brothel, are all used for a disorderly house, while bordel was similarly misused, and, like brothel in its proper meaning, was applied to a disorderly person.
- ↑ In this quotation the word dispensatio still has its meaning of “economy”: “we are bound by the necessary economy of things.” Possibly its use by the pope in this connexion may have led to the technical meaning of the word dispensatio in the medieval canon law.
