Ailing

cudgel \KUH-juhl\, noun:

1. A short heavy stick used as a weapon; a club.
2. To beat with or as if with a cudgel. 

Whatever had been making her dogs uneasy, she'd have to handle it on her own. Rosie Bowe took a heavy piece of firewood as a cudgel and followed them.
-- Jim Crace, Signals of Distress

The Grand Vizier Kuprili of Constantinople, for example, . . . closed the city's coffeehouses. Anyone caught drinking coffee was soundly cudgeled.
-- Mark Pendergrast, Uncommon Grounds

Cudgel derives from Old English cycgel.