“Oh! it ain't anything about symptoms, Doc, and there ain't anything the matter with me. It's only just to ask ye if ye happened to know anything about the medical practice of these yer Chinamen?”
“I don't know,” said the doctor bluntly, “and I don't know ANYBODY who does.”
There was a sudden silence in the bar, and the doctor, putting down his glass, continued with slight professional precision:—
“You see, the Chinese know nothing of anatomy from personal observation. Autopsies and dissection are against their superstitions, which declare the human body sacred, and are consequently never practiced.”
There was a slight movement of inquiring interest among the party, and Cy Parker, after a meaning glance at the others, went on half aggressively, half apologetically:—
“In course, they ain't surgeons like you, Doc, but that don't keep them from having their own little medicines, just as dogs eat grass, you know. Now I want to put it to you, as a fa'r-minded man, if you mean ter say that, jest because those old women who sarve out yarbs and spring medicines in families don't know anything of anatomy, they ain't fit to give us their simple and nat'ral medicines?”
“But the Chinese medicines are not simple or natural,” said the doctor coolly.
“Not simple?” echoed the party, closing round him.
“I don't mean to say,” continued the doctor, glancing around at their eager, excited faces with an appearance of wonder, “that they are positively noxious, unless taken in large quantities, for they are not drugs at all, but I certainly should not call them 'simple.' Do YOU know what they principally are?”
“Well, no,” said Parker cautiously, “perhaps not EXACTLY.”