Dr. Macgowan reminds us that men capable of these atrocities have been found in other civilized lands. He says:—
“It was in a model Occidental city, not inaptly styled the ‘Modern Athens,’ that subjects were procured for the dissecting-room through murder, at about the same amount of money as that paid in China for sets of eyes and hearts for medicine. A remedy was found which promptly suppressed that exceptional crime in the West. In China murder of this nature can also be prevented, but not speedily. Time is an indispensable factor in effecting the suppression of homicide, which is the outcome of medical superstition. That superstition is strongly intrenched in an official work, the most common book, after the classics, in the empire. So long as the concluding chapter is retained in the materia medica, it will be futile to undertake the abolition of murder for medical purposes; and so long as these abhorrent crimes prevail in China, so long will fomenters of riots against foreigners aim to make it appear that the men and women from afar are addicted to that form of murder, and thus precious lives will continue to be exposed to forfeiture.”
The most celebrated drug in Chinese Materia Medica is ginseng, the root of a species of Panax, belonging to the natural order Araliacæ. The most esteemed variety is found in Corea; an inferior kind comes from the United States, the Panax quinquefolium, and is often substituted for the real article. All the Chinese ginseng is Imperial property, and is sold at its weight in gold. The peculiar shape of the root, like the body of man—a peculiarity which it shares with mandrake and some other plants—led to its employment in cases where virile power fails, as in the aged and debilitated. Special kinds have been sold at the enormous sum of 300 to 400 dollars the ounce. Europeans have hitherto failed, says the Encyclopædia Britannica, to discover any wonderful properties in the drug. It is no doubt a remarkable instance of the doctrine of signatures (q.v.). In all cases of severe disease, debility, etc., the Chinese fly to this remedy, so that enormous quantities are used. The Hon. H. N. Shore, R.N., says that the export from New-Chang in Manchuria to the Chinese ports of this article for one year alone reached the value of £51,000. It seems to be simply a mild tonic, very much like gentian root. Some of the pharmacies are on a very large scale; six hundred and fifty various kinds of leaves are commonly kept for medicinal purposes.
When a Chinese physician is not able to procure the medicines he needs, he writes the names of the drugs he desires to employ on a piece of paper, and makes the patient swallow it; the effect is supposed to be quite as good as that of the remedy itself, and certainly in many cases it would be infinitely more pleasant to take! This custom of swallowing charms is seen again in the sick-room, some of the charms which are stuck round it being occasionally taken down, burned, and mixed with water, which the patient has to drink. Gongs are beaten and fire-crackers let off to frighten away the demons which are supposed to be tormenting the sick person.
“The superstition as to the powers of the ‘evil eye,’” says Denny,[311] “may almost be deemed fundamental to humanity, as I have yet to read of a people amongst whom it does not find some degree of credence.” In China a pregnant woman, or a man whose wife is pregnant, is called “four-eyed”; and children are guarded against being looked at by either, as it would probably cause sickness to attack them.
One of the commonest diagrams to be met with in China is the mystic svastika, or “Thor’s Hammer” 卍. It is found on the wrappers of medicines, and is accepted as the accumulation of lucky signs possessing ten thousand virtues.[312]
The physicians of Thibet, says M. Huc,[313] assign to the human body four hundred and forty diseases, neither more nor less. Lamas who practise medicine have to learn by heart the books which treat of these diseases, their symptoms, and the method of curing them. The books are a mere hotch-potch of aphorisms and recipes. The Lama doctors have less horror of blood than the Chinese, and practise bleeding and cupping. They pay great attention to the examination of a patient’s water. A thoroughly competent Lama physician must be able to diagnose the disease and treat the patient without seeing him. It is sufficient that he make a careful examination of the water. This he does not by chemical tests, as in Western nations, but by whipping it up with a wooden knife and listening to the noise made by the bubbles. A patient’s water is mute or crackling according to his state of health. Much of Chinese and Tartar medicine is mere superstition. “Yet,” says M. Huc very judiciously, “notwithstanding all this quackery, there is no doubt that they possess an infinite number of very valuable recipes, the result of long experience. It were perhaps rash to imagine that medical science has nothing to learn from the Tartar, Thibetian, and Chinese physicians, on the pretext that they are not acquainted with the structure and mechanism of the human body. They may, nevertheless, be in possession of very important secrets, which science alone, no doubt, is capable of explaining, but which, very possibly, science itself may never discover. Without being scientific, a man may very well light upon extremely scientific results.” The fact that everybody in China and Tartary can make gunpowder, while probably none of the makers can chemically explain its composition and action is a proof of this fact.
M. Huc says that every Mongol knows the name and position of all the bones which compose the frame of animals. They are exceedingly skilful anatomists, and are well acquainted with the diseases of animals, and the best means of curing them. They administer medicines to beasts by means of a cow-horn used as a funnel, and even employ enemas in their diseases. The cow-horn serves for the pipe, and a bladder fixed on the wide end acts as a pump when squeezed. They make punctures and incisions in various parts of the body of animals. Although their skill as anatomists and veterinary surgeons is so great, they have only the simplest and rudest tools wherewith to exercise this art.
“Medicine in Tartary,” says M. Huc,[314] “is exclusively practised by the Lamas. When illness attacks any one, his friends run to the nearest monastery for a Lama, whose first proceeding, upon visiting the patient, is to run his fingers over the pulse of both wrists simultaneously, as the fingers of a musician run over the strings of an instrument. The Chinese physicians feel both pulses also, but in succession. After due deliberation, the Lama pronounces his opinion as to the particular nature of the malady. According to the religious belief of the Tartars, all illness is owing to the visitation of a Tchutgour, or demon; but the expulsion of the demon is first a matter of medicine. The Lama physician next proceeds, as Lama apothecary, to give the specific befitting the case; the Tartar pharmacopœia rejecting all mineral chemistry, the Lama remedies consist entirely of vegetables pulverised, and either infused in water or made up into pills. If the Lama doctor happens not to have any medicine with him, he is by no means disconcerted; he writes the names of the remedies upon little scraps of paper, moistens the paper with his saliva, and rolls them up into pills, which the patient tosses down with the same perfect confidence as though they were genuine medicaments. To swallow the name of a remedy, or the remedy itself, say the Tartars, comes to precisely the same thing.
“The medical assault of the usurping demon being applied, the Lama next proceeds to spiritual artillery, in the form of prayers, adapted to the quality of the demon who has to be dislodged. If the patient is poor, the Tchutgour visiting him can evidently only be an inferior Tchutgour, requiring merely a brief, offhand prayer, sometimes merely an interjectional exorcism. If the patient is very poor, the Lama troubles himself with neither prayer nor pill, but goes away, recommending the friends to wait with patience until the sick patient gets better or dies, according to the decree of Hormoustha. But where the patient is rich, the possessor of large flocks, the proceedings are altogether different. First it is obvious that a devil who presumes to visit so eminent a personage must be a potent devil, one of the chiefs of the lower world; and it would not be decent for a great Tchutgour to travel like a mere sprite; the family, accordingly, are directed to prepare for him a handsome suit of clothes, a pair of rich boots, a fine horse, ready saddled and bridled, otherwise the devil will never think of going, physic or exorcise him how you may. It is even possible, indeed, that one horse will not suffice; for the demon, in very rich cases, may turn out upon inquiry to be so high and mighty a prince, that he has with him a number of courtiers and attendants, all of whom have to be provided with horses.