Iöh Uong Chû Sü is the god of medicine. It is said that he was a distinguished physician who was deified after his death. He is now generally worshipped by dealers in drugs and by their assistants. On the third day of the third month, they make a feast in his honour, and burn candles and incense before his image at his temple. Practising physicians do not usually take any part in these proceedings.[297]
The Chinese have goddesses of small-pox and measles, which are extremely popular divinities. Should it thunder after the pustules of small-pox have appeared, a drum is beaten, to prevent them breaking. On the fourteenth day ceremonies are performed before the goddess, to induce her to cause the pustules to dry up.[298]
Mediums are often employed to prescribe for the sick. They behave precisely as our spiritualists do, and pretend that the divinity invoked casts himself into the medium for the time being, and dictates the medicine which the sick person requires.[299]
In the “Texts of Táoism”[300] we are informed that “In the body there are seven precious organs, which serve to enrich the state, to give rest to the people, and to make the vital force of the system full to overflowing. Hence we have the heart, the kidneys, the breath, the blood, the brains, the semen, and the marrow. These are the seven precious organs. They are not dispersed when the body returns (to the dust). Refined by the use of the Great Medicine, the myriad spirits all ascend among the Immortals.”
Anatomy and physiology have made no progress in China, because there has never been any dissection of the body. The only books on the subject in the Chinese language are Jesuit translations of European works. Briefly stated, Chinese ideas on the subject are as follows:—In the human body there are six chief organs in which “moisture” is located—the heart, liver, two kidneys, spleen, and lungs. There are six others in which “warmth” abides—the small and large intestine, the gall bladder, the stomach, and the urinary apparatus. They reckon 365 bones in the whole body, eight in the male and six in the female skull, twelve ribs in men and fourteen in women. They term the bile the seat of courage; the spleen, the seat of reason; the liver, the granary of the soul; the stomach, the resting-place of the mind.
A familiar drug in Chinese materia medica, which is sold in all the drug-shops, is the Kou-Kouo, or bean of St. Ignatius. The horny vegetable is used, after bruising and macerating, in cold water, to which it communicates a strong bitter taste. “This water,” says M. Huc,[301] “taken inwardly, modifies the heat of the blood, and extinguishes internal inflammation. It is an excellent specific for all sorts of wounds and contusions.... The veterinary doctors also apply it with great success to the internal diseases of cattle and sheep. In the north of China we have often witnessed the salutary effects of the Kou-Kouo.”
This bean is the seed of Strychnos Ignatia, and the plant is indigenous to the Philippine Islands. The action and uses of ignatia are identical, says Stillé, with those of nux vomica.[302]
The medical profession is a very crowded one in China, as it is perfectly free to any who choose to practise it. No diploma or certificate of any kind is necessary in order to practise medicine in China. The majority of the regular practitioners, if such they can be called, are men who have failed to pass their examinations as literates. There is one, and apparently only one, check on quackery. The Chinese have a special place in their second hell which is reserved for ignorant physicians who will persist in doctoring sick folk. In the fourth hell are found physicians who have used bad drugs, and in the seventh hell are tortured those who have taken human bones from cemeteries to make into medicines. In the very lowest hell are physicians who have misused their art for criminal purposes. These evil persons are ceaselessly gored by sows.[303]
Naturally, the sciences of anatomy and physiology are entirely neglected by these self-constituted native doctors. All the learning they require is the ability to copy out prescriptions from a medical book. Dr. Gould, a physician of long experience in China, tells us that the native physician is depicted in Chinese primers as a person between the heathen priest and the fortune-teller—his profession is looked upon as a combination of superstition and legerdemain.[304]
The court physicians at Pekin are of a much superior class, and are compelled to pass examinations before their appointment.