Pips (illness)

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Pips , also pipp , (from ahd . Pfipfiz to lat . Pituita , "mucus") is a popular name for the shortness of breath in severe inflammation of the beak cavity in poultry , such as occurs with birdpox . Until the beginning of the 20th century, pips, which was regarded as an independent disease , primarily affected chickens and geese.

Symptoms

In addition to mucus and thus clogging of the nostrils, a hardened tongue was also considered an indication of a disease with pips. In the 19th century, pips were considered to be an "often mentioned universal disease" in poultry.

Around 1800 the effects of the pip on chickens were described: "If a chicken drops its wings and does not eat, is sad, stands to one side, one must examine its head carefully." Since the animals cannot breathe freely, they would also "open your beak, cough, gasp and sometimes fall to the ground exhausted".

Historical approaches to treatment

The cause of the pips was, among other things, worms that could be killed with oil, for example. Pills made from soot and butter were recommended as further treatment. Geese should also be able to be cured with pimpinella decoction.

Herder's Conversations-Lexikon from 1856 said that the disease "develops when the weather changes rapidly, with a lot of warm food and poor water". Diseased poultry should therefore be kept in a dry environment and provided with clean feed and greenery.

Another method of treatment was the so-called “piss piercing”: Chickens should be cured of the pips by “tearing off the tender skin on the tip of the tongue with a pin and letting it swallow with bread, butter and a little pepper, too smeared the tongue with unsalted butter, or wine vinegar and salt, and stuck a small quill through the blocked nostrils ”.

Contemporaries probably expressed themselves critically with regard to the archaic piss pricking: "... once show a farmer's wife a sick chicken, whether she doesn't immediately tear open its beak and pull the cartilage away from the underside of the tongue with a needle, which she then shows to prove the chicken had the pips! When will the luminaire of science finally succeed in banishing such absurdities? ” Meyer's Großes Konversations-Lexikon of 1908 also writes that“ often a whitish coating of the tongue [arises], which has led to the futile and cruel use of the bird to tear off the (allegedly hardened) epidermis of the tongue ”.

reception

In his work, The Broken Jug, Heinrich von Kleist had the village judge Adam justify his absent-mindedness in court with a sick guinea fowl : “To honor! Sorry, a guinea fowl gave me / that I bought from an Indian driver / the pips… ”The medieval adage“ The chicken scratches until it gets its pips ”expresses that someone cannot get away from misfortune.

literature

  • Konrad Schwenck: Dictionary of the German language: in relation to descent . P. 490.
  • Iris Därmann : Philosophical and cultural studies approaches . P. 159.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b The diseases of poultry . In: Henry Stephens: Book of land and housekeeping . Volume 1. Hoffmannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1855, p. 919.
  2. ↑ a b Vom Pips . In: The art of prolonging the life of the animals that are useful and indispensable in economics and of keeping them healthy . Hesseland, Magdeburg 1803, p. 317.
  3. ↑ a b “Pips” in Meyer's Large Conversation Lexicon from 1908, accessed on zeno.org on June 12, 2014
  4. ↑ pips . In: Friedrich Benedict Weber: General German terminological economic lexicon and idioticon . Second part. Engelmann, Leipzig 1838, p. 419.
  5. ^ “Pips” in Herder's Conversations-Lexikon from 1856, accessed on zeno.org on June 12, 2014
  6. ↑ Pipssting . In: Friedrich Benedict Weber: General German terminological economic lexicon and idioticon . Second part. Engelmann, Leipzig 1838, p. 419.
  7. ↑ Heinrich von Kleist: The broken jug . In: Deutsche Schaubühne or Dramatic Library of the latest pleasure, drama, singing and tragedy games . 1st volume. Stagesche Buchhandlung , Augsburg 1814, pp. 33–34.
  8. ^ Singer Board of Trustees of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences: Thesaurus proverbiorum medii aevi: Lexicon of proverbs of the Romano-Germanic Middle Ages . De Gruyter, Berlin and New York 1995, p. 207.