In the Diet of Hawks, they allowed of divers Meats which we should hardly commend. For beside the Flesh of Beef, they admitted of Goat, Hog, Deer, Whelp and Bear. And how you will approve the quantity and measure thereof, I make some doubt; while by weight they allowed half a pound of Beef, seven ounces of Swines Flesh, five of Hare, eight ounces of Whelp, as much of Deer, and ten ounces of He-Goats Flesh.
In the time of Demetrius they were not without the practice of Phlebotomy or Bleeding, which they used in the Thigh and Pounces; they plucked away the Feathers on the Thigh, and rubbed the part, but if the Vein appeared not in that part, they opened the Vein of the fore Talon.
In the days of Albertus, they made use of Cauteries in divers places: to advantage their sight they seared them under the inward angle of the eye; above the eye in distillations and diseases of the Head; in upward pains they seared above the Joint of the Wing, and at the bottom of the Foot, against the Gout; and the chief time for these cauteries they made to be the month of March.
In great coldness of Hawks they made use of Fomentations, some of the steam or vapour of artificial and natural Baths, some wrapt them up in hot Blankets, giving them Nettle Seeds and Butter.
No Clysters are mention’d, nor can they be so profitably used; but they made use of many purging Medicines. They purged with Aloe, which, unto larger Hawks, they gave in the bigness of a Great Bean; unto less, in the quantity of a Cicer, which notwithstanding I should rather give washed, and with a few drops of Oil of Almonds: for the Guts of flying Fowls are tender and easily scratched by it; and upon the use of Aloe both in Hawks and Cormorants I have sometimes observed bloody excretions.
In phlegmatick causes they seldom omitted Stave-saker, but they purged sometimes with a Mouse, and the Food of boiled Chickens, sometimes with good Oil and Honey.
They used also the Ink of Cuttle Fishes, with Smallage, Betony, Wine and Honey. They made use of stronger Medicines than present practice doth allow. For they were not afraid to give Coccus Baphicus; beating up eleven of its Grains unto a Lentor, which they made up into five Pills wrapt up with Honey and Pepper: and, in some of their old Medicines, we meet with Scammony and Euphorbium. Whether, in the tender Bowels of Birds, infusions of Rhubarb, Agaric and Mechoachan be not of safer use, as to take of Agary two Drachms, of Cinnamon half a Drachm, of Liquorish a Scruple, and, infusing them in Wine, to express a part into the mouth of the Hawk, may be considered by present practice.
Few Mineral Medicines were of inward use among them: yet sometimes we observe they gave filings of Iron in the straitness of the Chest, as also Lime in some of their pectoral Medicines.
But they commended Unguents of Quick-silver against the Scab: and I have safely given six or eight Grains of Mercurius Dulcis unto Kestrils and Owls, as also crude and current Quick-silver, giving the next day small Pellets of Silver or Lead till they came away uncoloured: and this, if any, may probably destroy that obstinate Disease of the Filander or Back-worm.
A peculiar remedy they had against the Consumption of Hawks. For, filling a Chicken with Vinegar, they closed up the Bill, and hanging it up untill the Flesh grew tender, they fed the Hawk therewith: and to restore and well Flesh them, they commonly gave them Hogs Flesh, with Oil, Butter and Honey; and a decoction of Cumfory to bouze.