CHAPTER XIII 



OF SICKNESSES OF HOUNDS AND OF THEIR 

 CORRUPTIONS 



The hounds have many divers sicknesses and 

 their greatest sickness is the rage whereof there 

 be nine manners, of the which I shall tell you a 

 part. The first is called furious madness. The 

 hounds that be mad of that madness cry and 

 howl with a loud voice, and not in the way that 

 they were wont to when they were in health. 

 When they escape they go everywhere biting 

 both men and women and all that they find be- 

 fore them. And they have a wonderful perilous 

 biting, for if they bite anything, with great pain 

 it shall escape thereof if they draw blood, that it 

 shall go mad whatever thing it be. A token for 

 to know at the beginning, is this, that they eat 

 not so well as they were wont to, and they bite 

 the other hounds, making them cheer with the 

 tail ^ first, smelleth ^ upon them and licketh ^ them 



1 Cherish, "wagging their tayles and seeming to cherish 

 them," Turbervile, p. 223. See Appendix : Madness. 



2 It should read " smelleth," as it is in Shirley MS. and in 

 G. de F., p. 87. 



^ The friendly licking of other dogs has often been noticed 

 as an early symptom of rabies in a pack of hounds. 



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