The symptoms of this disease are, that the soft feathers under the tail and round the vent are soiled by the mutes; that when muting the hawk raises her tail higher than usual, mutes with difficulty, and is unable to cast the mutes clear to a distance.
Treatment: feed the hawk for some days on the flesh of a cockerel, sprinkling the flesh with the juice of the marsh-mallow;[694] feed her thus twice a day. Further, anoint the vent with almond or with olive oil. Item: vary her food, giving her pigeons and sparrows, and the larks called by the Arabs quṃburah. Apply the clyster-stick as already described, dipping the cotton-wool in oil of peach kernels, apricot kernels, and almonds; administer it before feeding her: give her also a pill of powdered sugar-candy[695] mixed in a pat of cow’s butter the size of two filberts. She will, please God, be cured. Keep water ever near her, that she may drink her fill. Item: take oil of apricot kernels, and powdered cummin seed,[696] a quantity equal to the size of a walnut. Sprinkle the powdered cummin seed on the vent; then anoint the vent and adjacent parts with the oil. Do this for three days in succession, and she shall be whole. This is the practice of the ancient falconers. Item: anoint her vent a few times with a mixture of oil of jasmine, white wax, and pitch.[697] Item: take marrow of the shin-bone of a goat and mix it with her food for a few days. If the goat be an old female, so much the better.
FOOTNOTES:
[693] Apparently the “Stoone in the fundement” of the Boke of St. Albans.
[694] K͟hat̤mī, the “Persian Hollyhock,” and the “Marsh-Mallow.” It is the latter that is used in medicine.
[695] Powdered sugar-candy is a simple and harmless purge for hawks. About eighty grains’ weight is a suitable dose for a female peregrine in good condition.
[696] There are two kinds of cummin seed, the black and the white: the former is used in cooking, the latter in medicine.
[697] Zift, “pitch,” and also a kind of ointment said to be made of black damar.
CHAPTER L
HECTIC FEVER OR PHTHISIS[698]
As mentioned in a previous chapter, the pulse of a human being in sound health has seventy-five beats to the minute, while a hawk in good health has a pulse of a hundred-and-twenty or a hundred-and-thirty. The pulse of all hawks is, however, not alike; for instance, as the shāhīn is faster and more powerful than any hawk, short-winged or long-winged, so, too, it has a faster pulse.