To alleviate the afflictions of mankind, and to assuage the pains which the human frame is liable to suffer, must have been among the earliest studies of civilized society; and accordingly, in the history of ancient kingdoms, we find the practitioners of the healing art regarded even to adoration. Chiron, the preceptor of Achilles, and the master of Æsculapius, was transferred to the heavens, where he still shines under the name of Sagittarius. Among these nations, indeed, which we call savage, there is usually shewn a more than ordinary respect for such of their countrymen as are most skilled in removing obstructions, allaying tumours, healing bruises, and, generally speaking, who can apply relief to misery. But the Chinese, who seem to differ in their opinions from all the rest of mankind, whether civilized or savage, pay little respect to the therapeutick art. They have established no public schools for the study of medicine, nor does the pursuit of it lead to honours, rank, or fortune. Such as take up the profession are generally of an inferior class; and the eunuchs about the palace are considered among their best physicians. According to their own account, the books on medicine escaped the fire, by which they pretend the works of learning were consumed, in the reign of Shee-whang-tee, two hundred years before the Christian era; and yet the best of their medical books of the present day are little better than mere herbals, specifying the names and enumerating the qualities of certain plants. The knowledge of these plants and of their supposed virtues goes a great way towards constituting a physician. Those most commonly employed are Gin-sing, rhubarb, and China-root. A few preparations are also found in their pharmacopœia from the animal and the mineral kingdoms. In the former they employ snakes, beetles, centipedes, and the aureliæ of the silk worm and other insects; the meloe and the bee are used for blisters. In the latter, saltpetre, sulphur, native cinnabar, and a few other articles are occasionally prescribed. Opium is taken as a medicine, but more generally as a cordial to exhilarate the spirits. Though the importation of this drug is strictly prohibited, yet, as I have before observed, vast quantities are annually smuggled into the country from Bengal and from Europe, through the connivance of the custom-house officers.
The physiology of the human body, or the doctrine which explains the constitution of man, is neither understood, nor considered as necessary to be known; and their skill in pathology, or in the causes and effects of diseases, is extremely limited, very often absurd, and generally erroneous. The seat of most diseases are, in fact, supposed to be discoverable by feeling the pulse, agreeably to a system built upon principles the most wild and extravagant. Having no knowledge whatsoever of the circulation of the blood, notwithstanding the Jesuits have made no scruple in asserting it was well known to them long before Europeans had any idea of it, they imagine, that every particular part of the human body has a particular pulse assigned to it, and that these have all a corresponding and sympathetic pulse in the arm; thus, they suppose one pulse to be situated in the heart, another in the lungs, a third in the kidneys, and so forth; and the skill of the doctor consists in discovering the prevailing pulse in the body, by its sympathetic pulsations in the arm; and the mummery made use of on such occasions is highly ludicrous.
By eating too freely of unripe fruit at Chu-san I had a violent attack of cholera morbus, and on application being made to the governor for a little opium and rhubarb, he immediately dispatched to me one of his physicians. With a countenance as grave and a solemnity as settled, as ever was exhibited in a consultation over a doubtful case in London or Edinburgh, he fixed his eyes upon the ceiling, while he held my hand, beginning at the wrist, and proceeding towards the bending of the elbow, pressing sometimes hard with one finger, and then light with another, as if he was running over the keys of a harpsicord. This performance continued about ten minutes in solemn silence, after which he let go my hand and pronounced my complaint to have arisen from eating something that had disagreed with the stomach. I shall not take upon me to decide whether this conclusion was drawn from his skill in the pulse, or from a conjecture of the nature of the complaint from the medicines that had been demanded, and which met with his entire approbation, or from a knowledge of the fact.
Le Compte, who had less reason to be cautious, from his having left the country, than other missionaries who are doomed to remain there for life, positively says, that the physicians always endeavour to make themselves secretly acquainted with the case of the patient, before they pronounce upon it, as their reputation depends more on their assigning the true cause of the disorder than on the cure. He then proceeds to tell a story of a friend of his who, being troubled with a swelling, sent for a Chinese physician. This gentleman told him very gravely, that it was occasioned by a small worm which, unless extracted by his skill, would ultimately produce gangrene and certain death. Accordingly one day after the tumour, by the application of a few poultices, was getting better, the doctor contrived to drop upon the removed poultice a little maggot, for the extraction of which he assumed to himself no small degree of merit. Le Compte's stories, however, are not always to be depended on.
The priests are also a kind of doctors, and make plaisters for a variety of purposes, some to draw out the disease to the part applied, some as charms against the evil spirit, and others which they pretend to be aphrodisiac; all of which, and the last in particular, are in great demand among the wealthy. In this respect the Chinese agree with most nations of antiquity, whose priests were generally employed as physicians. The number of quacks and venders of nostrums is immense in every city who gain a livelihood by the credulity of the multitude. One of this description exhibited in the public streets of Canton a powder for sale as a specific for the bite of a snake; and to convince the crowd of its immediate efficacy, he carried with him a species of this reptile, whose bite was known to be extremely venemous. He applied the mouth of the animal to the tip of his tongue, which began to swell so very rapidly, that in a few minutes the mouth was no longer able to contain it. The intumescence continued till it seemed to burst, and exhibited a shocking sight of foam and blood, during which the quack appeared in extreme agonies, and excited the commiseration of all the bye-standers. In the height of the paroxysm he applied a little of his powder to the nose and the inflamed member, after which it gradually subsided, and the disorder disappeared. Though the probability in the city of any one person being bit with a snake was not less perhaps than a hundred thousand to one, yet every person present bought of the miraculous powder, till a sly fellow maliciously suggested that the whole of this scene might probably have been performed by means of a bladder concealed in the mouth.
But the usual remedy for the bite of a snake is a topical application of sulphur, or the bruised head of the same animal that gave the wound. The coincidence of such an extravagant idea among nations as remote from each other as the equator from the pole is sufficiently remarkable. A Roman poet observes,
"Quum nocuit serpens, fertur caput illius apte
Vulneribus jungi: sanat quem sauciat ipsa."
Q. Serenus de Medicina.
If to a serpent's bite its head be laid,
'Twill heal the wound which by itself was made.
The naked legs of the Hottentots are frequently stung by scorpions, and they invariably endeavour to catch the animal, which they bruise and apply to the wound, being confident of the cure; the Javanese, or inhabitants of Java, are fully persuaded of the efficacy of such application; and the author above quoted observes with regard to the sting of this insect,
"Vulneribusque aptus, fertur revocare venenum."
Being applied to the wound, it is said to draw out the poison.
As it is a violation of good morals for a gentleman to be seen in company with ladies, much more so to touch the hands of the fair, the faculty rather than lose a fee, though it commonly amounts only to fifty tchen, or the twentieth part of six shillings and eight-pence, have contrived an ingenious way of feeling a lady's pulse: a silken cord being made fast to the wrist of the patient is passed through a hole in the wainscot into another apartment where the doctor, applying his hand to the cord, after a due observance of solemn mockery, decides upon the case and prescribes accordingly. About court, however, a particular class of eunuchs only are entrusted with feeling the pulse of the ladies.