CHAPTER XLIX

THE SICKNESS CALLED _KARAJ_,[693] WHICH IS COSTIVENESS

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.