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By Jennifer Sherman RobertsClose your eyes and imagine a chicken. Now a duck. Now a turkey.Now a pigeon.If this little experiment has worked the way I envisioned, when you thought of a pigeon you didn't just think of a different bird but of a different environment. You likely pictured chickens and ducks and turkeys on a farm or in a natural setting (if not on your table).We think of pigeons, however, as urban birds, mobbing together wherever large numbers of people congregate. Some even see them as “flying rats,” nuisances that spread pestilence wherever they go (see this article for an example of the lengths cities will go to in order to control pigeon populations).It was not always thus, however. In the early modern period and before, pigeons were highly valued birds. They were good for carrying messages and for eating, but the pigeon was also highly symbolic, representing grace, lightness, and spiritual flight. The pigeon does, after all, belong to the same family (Columbidae) as the dove, symbol of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, pigeons were so prized that the right to keep them was reserved for monasteries and estates .Pigeons were also often used in medieval and early modern medical recipes. The recipes usually involved pigeon dung, but I have also found a sub-strata of recipes utilizing pigeon blood to treat something called the “stroke of the eye.” Given the description in these recipes, I conjecture that the “stroke” referenced is subconjuctival hemorrhage or, put simply, a broken blood vessel in the eye.This sort of ocular bleeding can occur from trauma or just simply from sneezing or coughing too hard. It is seldom painful.While a broken blood vessel may sound like a relatively simple problem, the physical presentation of the condition is startling. (In fact, I would recommend NOT doing a Google Image search of this condition before going to bed. Yes, that’s from personal experience.)[caption id="attachment_3564" align="aligncenter" width="298"] James Heilman, MD. Wikimedia Commons[/caption]However disturbing the sight of this condition, however, the remedy was sure to be worse.In this anonymous medical manuscript of 1663 (Wellcome Collection MS.6812/26), for example, we are instructed to slit the vein on the wing of a pigeon and allow the blood to spurt into the patient's eye.For a stroke or pricke if it causeth payne:Take a pidgeon and let hi[m] blood in one of the winges in the vein &#38; let the blood spinne out of the veine into the eye &#38; it will helpe you yf you use it 5 or 6 tymes.A recipe for the same affliction from the recipe book of Lady Anne Fanshawe (Wellcome MS7113/25) is almost identical:For a stroke or Bruise in the Eye:Take a Pigeon, &#38; let her blood in the great Veine of the Wing, &#38; let the Blood Springe out of the Veine into the Patients Eye. You must dresse it 6 or 7 times.And again, from Lady Ayscough’s recipe book of 1692 (MS.1026/30):For A stroke in the Eyes if there Grow pain thereby or if you be pricked in ye Eyes by any thing. Take of pigion &#38; let her blood in one of the veins of ye wing and let ye blood spin out of ye vein into ye eyes and it will by gods grace cure it this must be done 5 or 6 nights, at gooing to bed.In humoral medicine, birds were associated with blood, a sanguine temperament (hot, wet) and the element of air. Because of this, we might surmise that a broken blood vessel—and the ensuing red eye—would signal an excess of blood to an early modern physician. The treatment, then, would be oppositional: the patient would need something cold, dry and earthy... like tree roots, leaves, or plants.Since the eye itself was considered to be a phlegmatic organ (cold and wet), the blood of the pigeon would balance the humors. Buttressing this idea is the recipes’ insistence that the blood be let from the wing of the bird: the seat of airy flight would be the perfect counterbalance to the watery mucus of the eye.The idea that a pigeon would be salutary to somebody suffering an excess of phlegm or black bile, because of its choleric and sanguine properties, is reinforced in this direction from Sir Thomas Elyot's Castel of Helth (1541):PygeonsBe easily digested, and ar very holsom to them, which are fleumatike, or pure melancoly.*But whatever the theoretical underpinnings of the use of pigeon's blood to treat subconjunctival hemorrhage, the lived experience of having bird blood spurting into your eye must have been horrible. And, according to the recipes, it also would have been frequent: the directions, though short, are consistent in directing the patient to undergo the treatment between 5-7 times. By that time, the white of the eye would have returned to its healthy appearance.Of course, the eye would have returned to normal in about that time without the treatment, too.Which leads me to the conclusion that (c'mon, you know you were expecting this) . . . this treatment is for the birds.&#160;&#160;*I was pointed to this reference by a note by Michael Robinson in the online version of The Diary of Samuel Pepys.