wound, and if it appear that the injury done was unintentional, the practitioner shall then be treated according to the statute for accidental homicides, and shall not be any longer allowed to practise medicine. But if designedly he depart from the established forms, and deceives in his attempt to cure the malady, in order to obtain property, then, according to its amount, he shall be treated as a thief; and if death ensue from his mal-practice, then, for having used medicine and practised his art with intent to kill, he shall be beheaded."

These instruments are used for the purposes of scarification and acupuncture, which is adopted most successfully in the treatment of tumours, to which the Chinese are especially liable. If the patient does not bear the operation of the needle, it is at once withdrawn, but if he does, and the disease proves obstinate, it is introduced two, three, or more times. The more severe the affection, the deeper must be the puncture.

There is one practice of the Chinese surgeons which entails too frequently severe suffering upon the

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patient; we allude to the application of powerful caustics: the sufferers have continually applied to our medical men for relief, cases presenting themselves where small sores originally, by the injudicious use of escharotics, have extended, until a portion of the tissue, and occasionally some important organ, has been either seriously injured or partially destroyed. One of the most powerful irritants used is called the moxa, or burning the flowers of the amaranthus upon the skin.

! Bleeding is seldom resorted to, but leeches and cupping are employed when local blood-taking is necessary: venesection is highly disapproved of in fevers, the Chinese practitioners arguing in this wise, "A fever is like a cauldron boiling; it is requisite to reduce the fire, and not diminish the liquid in the vessel, if we wish to cure the patient."

The practice of midwifery is entirely in the hand of females, many of whom understand the practical part of their art, most thoroughly; some extraordinary theories, however, are maintained on this subject, one of them being, that the pulse of a pregnant woman will indicate the sex of the unborn infant.

The drugs used by the Chinese practitioners are numerous, and the efficacy of some of them extraordinary, in their estimation. In a druggist's shop stags' horns embellish and ornament the walls; these are frequently reduced to a powder, and prescribed for all pulmonary complaints. Although the number and use of mineral medicines are circumscribed, calomel, which they term fluid silver, is extensively prescribed by the Chinese physicians.

Orpiment, sulphur, musk, camphor, alum, true frankincense, oxides of copper, and other metals,* have been used from time immemorial, in the treatment of diseases, that make their appearance upon the surface of the human body.

In the materia medica, a variety of roots and woods are used, which are not ground, as with us, but are pared into thin laminæ, gentian and rhubarb being thus prepared; but many drugs are pounded in a mortar, or triturated in a slender iron vessel, to which a wheel is attached, that is provided with a projecting axle, on either side, which is worked by the feet or hands of a lad.

Ginseng, combined with rhubarb, is administered in almost every disease, whilst decoctions and pills are made from numberless barks, seeds, leaves, and roots. Many filthy and disgusting substances are prescribed for poultices; but the most extraordinary cataplasm and prescription that ever we heard of was the following:—a Chinaman injured his eye by a fall, and the native practitioner ordered half a newly killed chicken to be laid upon the cheek; the remaining portion to be masticated, whilst the patient remained in a recumbent posture.

Pitch-plasters are much in vogue with Chinese practitioners, and as the people are peculiarly subject to rheumatic pains, they are employed beneficially. Powders of different kinds are also made into plasters, and used for the same purpose.

The Chinese understand perfectly the preparation and use of styptics, as the following will testify:

*These active remedies were much used by the Arabian physicians, and the prescriptions of Celsus abound with them,

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Dr. Parker of Canton was requested to visit a Chinaman, who had attempted to cut his tongue off; he found the young man exceedingly ill, and examining his mouth, found it partially filled with extraneous matter, that adhered to the remaining portion of the tongue. The doctor did not think it advisable to remove the extraneous matter, as the wounded member appeared healing. Within twenty-four hours the mass detached itself, leaving the surface covered with an extemporaneous skin, as if collodium had been applied to it. The detached mass was a styptic that a native doctor had applied to stanch the bleeding, and had perfectly answered the purpose for which it had been applied, not quitting the wound until a new skin had been formed. The Chinese believe that when the tongue is cut out death must ensue immediately, and the wretched sufferer had attempted to end his life in that painful manner.

Among the higher classes of the medical profession in China, there is a regular class of fees, but many of an inferior grade make agreements with their patients to cure them for a certain sum within a given time. Quack-doctors are numerous, and the walls of every city are placarded with bills, which duly set forth the efficacy of certain nostrums which are to cure every known disease; the details and particulars that are entered into being frequently of the most indelicate

nature.

The medical work most in repute is the "Pun Tsau, or Herbal of Li Shi-chin," who lived in the Ming dynasty; in this book is a list of two hundred and

seventy works which furnished the compiler with materials, and of four hundred and eighty-five miscellaneous works, which supplied descriptions of the localities and habits of the plants and animals therein mentioned. In some Chinese works a disease called the purpura is mentioned, the symptoms of which consist in sanguineous tumours, and wheals, appearing all over the person : "This disease is certain," says the author, "to terminate fatally, unless these sores can be cut up root and branch." Lay remarks upon a disease resembling the smallpox, which has attracted much attention in China from the general fatal character of the complaint:-" It attacks children, and seems confined to them, and this leads me to believe that the disease is not the same as that which creates such frightful havoc among us." The native writers of former ages direct that the room should be kept thoroughly clean, no light admitted, and frankincense to be used in fumigation. Should the eyes become closed by the disease, the blood of an eel must be dropped into them, or the juice which is extracted from the root of the musa coccinea, a species of plantain. Should the patient become tormented by spectral apparitions, then a man's tooth must be inclosed in paper, and burnt; the ashes must afterwards be pounded, and mixed with wine; and to insure the efficacy of this pleasant mixture, the potion should be swallowed before the patient has broken his fast.

Some of the medicines which are prescribed are most extraordinary; large sums being expended in procuring tigers' bones, bears' paws, scales of pangolins, orthoceras, and bezoar of cows, as the efficacy of