ON PALPITATION[682]
This disease is of three kinds. One arises from smoke and dust and
dirt. The symptoms of all three are the same: if the hawk make the
slightest exertion, she draws her breath with difficulty, and her body
is agitated from the crop to the far end of the “keel bone.”[683] When
she breathes, her tail and the feathers under the tail[684] heave, and
the wings are carried loose and drooping.
_Treatment_: put the hawk in a dark room and keep her quiet, and
fatten her up as much as possible. Give her three doses of castor
oil,[685] on three alternate days, before feeding her. Keep water in
front of her, that she may bathe and drink. Feed her daily on larks,
with the bones and feathers, and on young pigeons. (On no account
feed her on pigeons reared on millet, for millet is poison to hawks).
Fatten her up till the disease leaves her.
One variety of palpitation arises from moisture of temperament: the
hawk pants with the slightest exertion and there is a watery discharge
from the mouth, eyes, and nostrils, and she is continually wiping her
eyes on her shoulders to clean them; probably she is costive[686] as
well. Observe her when she mutes; if she mutes in small quantities at
a time, the soft feathers in the region of the vent getting soiled
with the mutes, it is a sign that her disease is complicated by
costiveness. _Treatment_: make her as fat as you can, feeding her on
good meats. Once, or twice, in the manner previously described, give
her oil and manna and the whitened droppings of a dog. On alternate
days, mix with her food either butter, or almond oil. If she still
mute in patches, then:—_Treatment_: take oil of peach-kernels, with
oil of filberts, and oil of blanched almonds, and mix a quantity
equal to a _sunjad_;[687] then dip the cotton-wool end of the
clyster-stick[688] in these three oils, and by its means give her an
enema twice a day, once in the morning, once in the afternoon. Feed
her, too, on young pigeons, and on larks, and on the flesh of the wild
boar and of eagles, and, if it please God, she will recover. _Item_:
get some sheep’s wool, and removing all burrs, etc., etc. from it,
tease it out like carded cotton. Round about the middle or “waist” of
this wool, tie a piece of silk of two or three strands in thickness,
and about two spans in length. Wash the wool in warm water and bind
a little meat to one end of it. Holding the end of the silk, induce
the hawk to swallow the wool thus garnished with the meat. As soon
as she has swallowed it, show her other meat to excite her cupidity
and induce her to “put over” the wool now in her crop. As soon as you
have ascertained by touch,[689] that the wool has reached the lower
stomach, pull the silk and withdraw it, and it will bring up with it
any impurity there may be in the stomach.
If the hawk be a goshawk, or indeed any short-winged hawk, substitute
cotton-wool for the sheep’s wool.
If the cotton-wool, or the sheep’s wool, be washed in warm water, or
in the milk of a young girl or of a donkey, and then given to the hawk
soaked with the milk, so much the better.
The third form of palpitation is due to a blow, and those skilled
in Avian Pathology have named this, “Contusional and Incurable
Palpitation.” This disease is probably due to the ill-temper of
your falconer. Perhaps the weather has been cold and there has been
snow[690] about: the hawk, suffering from the cold, has bated[691]
incessantly till the ill-tempered falconer has, in his irritation,
buffeted her and boxed her, and then “mailed” her in the skirt of his
filthy coat. The result is that some ribs, or small bones, have got
broken or injured. Or it may be that the hawk was low in condition
and maddened by hunger, and in pursuit of her quarry dashed herself
against a stone, or against a branch, and so broke a rib. _Remedy_:
send for the falconer and show him the hawk; let him have thirty or
forty cuffs over the head;[692] kick him out of your service and see
that he does not get a place elsewhere, and set about procuring a new
hawk for yourself. For “Contusional Palpitation” there is no treatment
but this.
FOOTNOTES:
[682] _K͟hafaqān_, properly “palpitation of the heart.” The disease
described under this name appears to be identical with the “Teyne”
of the _Boke of St. Albans_ and with the “Pantas” of other writers.
Markham describes the latter as “A dangerous disease in hawks whereof
few escape that are afflicted therewith; it proceeds from the lungs
being as it were baked by excessive heat, that the hawk cannot draw
her breath and when drawn cannot emit it again; and you may judge of
the beginning of this evil by the hawk’s labouring much in the pannel,
moving her train often up and down at each motion of her pannel, and
many times she cannot mute nor slice off; if she does, she drops
it fast by her. The same distemper is also perceived by the hawk’s
frequent opening her clap and beak.”
[683] _ʿAz̤m-i zawraqī_, “the sternum.”
[684] _Dum-līza_: I do not know whether this is the “Pope’s nose,” or
the feathers under the tail, the “brayles or brayle federis” of the
_Boke of St. Albans_.
[685] _Rūg͟han-i karchak_ is in m.c. “castor oil;” _vide_ note 729, page
171.
[686] _Marẓ-i k͟huskī_, “dryness,” _i.e_, “costiveness.”
[687] _Sunjad_ or _sinjid_, a sort of red wild plum, oblong in shape
like the _ʿunnab_ or jujube.
[688] _Shāf_ or _Shāfa_ is a stick with cotton-wool at the end; this
is dipped in oil and used as an enema for children.
[689] By feeling the stomach and bowel with the fore-finger it is easy
to tell whether the stomach is full or empty. Indian falconers, who
have a hawk on the fist for many hours every day, can frequently tell
by touch whether the hawk has “cast” or not. The “casting” apparently
forms only a short time before being ejected and can be distinctly
felt by an educated finger.
[690] _Būrān_, “a snow-storm,” a word not in the dictionaries.
[691] _Parīdan_, “to fly, _i.e._, to bate.”
[692] The usual punishment would, in Persia, be the bastinado. The
author probably wrote in Baghdad where the bastinado is not used.