A History of Chinese Literature

by Herbert Allen Giles

At the close of the Sung dynasty there was published a curious book on Medical Jurisprudence, which is interesting, in spite of its manifold absurdities, as being the recognised handbook for official use at the present day. No magistrate ever thinks of proceeding to discharge the duties of coroner without taking a copy of these instructions along with him. The present work was compiled by a judge named Sung Tz’ŭ, from pre-existing works of a similar kind, and we are told in the preface of a fine edition, dated 1842, that “being subjected for many generations to practical tests by the officers of the Board of Punishments, it became daily more and more exact.” A few extracts will be sufficient to determine its real value:—

(1.) “Man has three hundred and sixty-five bones, corresponding to the number of days it takes the heavens to revolve.

“The skull of a male, from the nape of the neck to the top of the head, consists of eight pieces—of a Ts‘ai-chou man, nine. There is a horizontal suture across the back of the skull, and a perpendicular one down the middle. Female skulls are of six pieces, and have the horizontal but not the perpendicular suture.

“Teeth are twenty-four, twenty-eight, thirty-two, or thirty-six in number. There are three long-shaped breast-bones.

“There is one bone belonging to the heart of the shape and size of a cash.

“There is one ‘shoulder-well’ bone and one ‘rice-spoon’ bone on each side.

“Males have twelve ribs on each side, eight long and four short. Females have fourteen on each side.”

(2.) “Wounds inflicted on the bone leave a red mark and a slight appearance of saturation, and where the bone is broken there will be at each end a halo-like trace of blood. Take a bone on which there are marks of a wound, and hold it up to the light; if these are of a fresh-looking red, the wound was inflicted before death and penetrated to the bone; but if there is no trace of saturation from blood, although there is a wound, it was inflicted after death.”

(3.) “The bones of parents may be identified by their children in the following manner. Let the experimenter cut himself or herself with a knife, and cause the blood to drip on to the bones; then if the relationship is an actual fact, the blood will sink into the bone, otherwise it will not. N.B.—Should the bones have been washed with salt water, even though the relationship exists, yet the blood will not soak in. This is a trick to be guarded against beforehand.

“It is also said that if parent and child, or husband and wife, each cut themselves and let the blood drip into a basin of water, the two bloods will mix, whereas that of two people not thus related will not mix.