Traditional Chinese medicine

“ Surgery, even of an elementary kind, has never had a chance; for the Chinese are extremely loath to suffer any interference with their bodies, believing, in accordance with Confucian dogma, that as they received them from their parents, so they should carry them into the presence of their ancestors in the next world. Medicine, as still practised in China, may be compared with the European art of a couple of centuries ago, and its exceedingly doubtful results are fully appreciated by patients at large. "No medicine," says one proverb, "is better than a middling doctor;" ”

“ The Medicine-gods The chief gods of medicine are the mythical kings P’an Ku, Fu Hsi, Shên Nung, and Huang Ti. The first two, being by different writers regarded as the first progenitor or creator of the Chinese people, are alternatives, so that Fu Hsi, Shên Nung, and Huang Ti may be said to be a sort of ancestral triad of medicine-gods, superior to the actual God or King of Medicine, Yao Wang. ”

“ Chinese books tell us that their system of medicine is exceedingly old, in fact, nearly as old as the monarchy, and it is attributed to a husbandman, whose name was Shin-nung. He studied what plants were the best food for the body, and what would cure it when 'out of sorts.' By him, or by some one soon after him, a list was prepared of the different complaints, and the proper medicine for each, with the dose to be given, so that any one can start upon being a doctor if he follows the instruction given. But should he try giving medicine on a plan of his own, he is likely to get into trouble. ”

“ To the science of medicine the Chinese have paid some attention; but, as usual, were more celebrated for it in former than in latter times. The systems of their earliest physicians have mostly died with their inventors, and posterity have scarcely been able to equal, much less to exceed, the ancients. Some allusion has been made above to the "Divine Husbandman," who discovered the noxious and healing qualities of various plants, and laid the foundation of the Chinese pharmacopoeia. About the same time lived a statesman, to whom the invention of the puncture is attributed ”

“ CHINESE medicine illustrates the condition at which a highly intellectual people may arrive, among whom thought and speculation were restricted by religious prohibitions. Perhaps the chief interest in its study lies in the fact that we may see today the persistence of views about disease similar to those which prevailed in ancient Egypt and Babylonia. The Chinese believe in a universal animism, all parts being animated by gods and spectres, and devils swarm everywhere in numbers incalculable. ”

“ Chinese tradition ascribes to him special knowledge of herbs, of astrology, of alchemy and of medicine. Two medical treatises, one on prescriptions in general, the other on the treatment of eye-disease, are said, by Chinese writers, to be by him. ”

“ The Chinaman dreads the knife as he dreads nothing else; and yet of recent years China has made great strides in surgery. The Chinese pharmacopœia is, I fancy, exceptionally rich, and includes many potent, efficacious herbs of which we know nothing. ”

“ What a contrast to their minds must be the plain forcible teaching and the simple effective remedies and medicines of the Christians to the incantations and nauseous compounds of their native doctors. There is a great doubt as to what is the nature of many of the Chinese drugs. They always prescribe a vast number, many of which are apparently innocuous in their effect; they always give them in large quantities, and do not in any way attempt to isolate and extract the active properties of the things they use. ”

“ Chinese medical literature is on a very voluminous scale, medicine having always occupied a high place in the estimation of the people, in spite of the fact that its practice has always been left to any one who might choose to take it up. ”

“ No other nation, says Neuburger, has at its command such a large number of remedial drugs; and it is also a fact, he adds, that the department of therapeutics is that in which Chinese medicine has reached its highest development. The steadfast belief that in nature there exists a remedy for every human ill led the physicians of that country to search diligently in all possible directions for vegetable and animal and also, to some extent, mineral substances which might possess remedial virtues. ”

“ CHINESE MEDICAL MEN.
THE practice of medicine in China dates from a very early period. We find the Emperor Woo-ting, who reigned 1300 B.C., noticing the effect of medicine upon a patient, and counselling Yue, one of his ministers, in the following words : " Be you like medicine, which, if it do not distress the patient, will not cure the sickness." ”

“ The inhabitants of the Celestial Empire can vaunt a most ancient civilization; which is, however, altogether stationary; neither has their medicine made any progress, and its actual state represents with sufficient exactness what it was in primitive ages.
In Europe, various works have been written about the medicine of the Chinese, one of the best being that of Dabry,25 taken from the most celebrated medical books of China,26 and which may be considered as a compendium of the medical science of this people. ”

“ For a rough list of the medicaments in common use in China one has only to study the ordinary Customs returns, which will be quite sufficient to show the very extraordinary character of the articles which go to make up the Chinese pharmacopoeia. Some of these medicines are, no doubt, useful enough. The Chinese are known to have a wide knowledge of herbs and simples, and their primitive ideas of surgery are in many instances founded upon true principles. A case in point is the practice of pinching and scraping the skin with a view to drawing out internal inflammation. ”

“ When I was at Peking, I saw a Chinese physician prescribe a decoction of three scorpions for a child struck down with fever; and on another occasion a groom of mine, suffering from dysentery, was treated with acupuncture of the tongue. The art of medicine would appear to be at the present time in China much in the state in which it existed in Europe in the sixteenth century, when the excretions and secretions of all manner of animals, saurians, and venomous snakes and insects, and even live bugs, were administered to patients. ”

“ We alluded in the last Sketch to a work in eight small volumes called "New Collection of Tried Prescriptions," a book which answers to our "Domestic Medicine," and professes to supply well-authenticated remedies for some of the most common ills that flesh is heir to. This book gives a fair idea of the principles and practice of medical science in China. ”

“ Altogether the Chinese make a considerable claim to efficiency in their methods, and though there is a substratum of practitioners employing witchcraft and the black arts, doctors of the better class aver that their percentage of cures is very high. In the case of small-pox, for instance, they guarantee 90 per cent, of cures — the European percentage is barely as high as 70. The outstanding name on the medical roll is that of Wa To, who lived in the Han dynasty. ”

“ Of these forty volumes, seven are devoted to nosology, eight to pharmacy, five to pathology, six to surgery, and the remainder to children’s and women’s diseases.
Anatomy, it appears, has never played other than a very insignificant part in the Chinese system of medicine. This is not to be wondered at when we remember that their religion makes the dissection of a human body a sin worthy of punishment. ”

“ As far as Chinese remedies are concerned, better be without them. It is almost impossible to believe the amount of ignorance which exists in China about medicine and surgery. Native doctors, who never dissect, are utterly ignorant for the most part of the position of the heart, the lungs, and the other principal organs. They are ignorant of the difference between arteries and veins, nor do they understand the circulation, looking upon the several pulses of the body as the effects of separate causes. ”

“ The medical profession in China is one for which neither law nor custom demands that a man shall be specially trained. Any one who chooses to do so can practise as a doctor without registration of any kind. He reads one or two standard Chinese works on medicine, and gains a knowledge of certain drugs, which he combines in so-called prescriptions, charging his patients from ten cents to one dollar. ”

“ Macgowan, a gentleman who has lived for many years in China, has published a statement showing that from the point of view of Chinese medicine these accusations are far from preposterous. It is one of the medical superstitions of China that various portions of the human frame and all its secretions possess therapeutic properties. He refers to a popular voluminous Materia Medica—the only authoritative work of the kind in the Chinese language—which gives thirty-seven anthropophagous remedies of native medicine. Human blood taken into the system from another is believed to strengthen it ”

“ The Chinese appear to have been far behind the Hindus in their knowledge of medicine and surgery, notwithstanding Chinese. that China profited at the same time as Tibet by the missionary propagation of Buddhism. Surgery in particular had hardly developed among them beyond the merest rudiments, owing to their religious respect for dead bodies and their unwillingness to draw blood or otherwise interfere with the living structure. Their anatomy and physiology have been from the earliest times unusually fanciful, and their surgical practice has consisted almost entirely of external applications. ”

“ I have often wondered that more of them do not die in coming to a climate so different from their own, and adopting such new modes of life as most of them are obliged to do. But236 they all seem to have been taught the rudiments of medicine. A young American boy, if he is sick, has not the remotest idea what to do for himself; but the Chinese boys know in most cases. We have often seen them steeping their little tin cups of seeds, roots, or leaves on the kitchen stove, which they said was medicine for some ailment or other, but "Melican man no sabbe Chinaman medicine;" ”

“ 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. ”

“ Just around the corner from the well equipped hospital manned by Americans and English, the Chinese medicine-shops continue to sell powdered fossils for curing diseased eyes, dried frog’s liver for kidney troubles, deer horns ground up into remedies for other ailments, and to send inquirers to native medicine-men who know the hundred and some spots on the human body where sickness can be let out by puncturing with a needle. ”

“ In most instances the medicine prescribed is of a very cheap and often very nasty description; there are, however, drugs highly prized among the faculty in China which are extremely precious. Diamond-dust is looked upon as a dangerous poison in India and the West; yet there are other precious stones, rare indeed in China, which are said to have a wonderful efficacy in curing certain disorders. A detailed description of one of these peculiar and certainly very expensive remedies lies before us. ”

“ The Chinese attribute to Huang-ti (B.C. 2637) a work on medicine, which is still extant, entitled Nuy-kin, which is probably not older than the Christian era. They also attribute to the Emperor Chin-nung (B.C. 2699) a catalogue of medicinal herbs.290
The demon theory of disease universally obtains throughout the Chinese empire. All bodily and mental disorders spring either from the air or spirits. They are sent by the gods as punishments for sins committed in a previous state of existence. ”

“ The ancient Chinese used metal models to exhibit 267 man's inner structure; and everything that is most rare and dear they think must be useful for a medicine,—snakes, scorpions, the velvet off a deer's horns, a dead caterpillar with grass growing out of its head, tigers' bones, beautiful orchids, of which last whole boatloads float down from Chungking to Ichang. A Chinaman loves medicine ”

“ 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. ”

“ Having felt the sick man’s pulse, looked at his tongue, and otherwise observed him, he is supposed to have completed his diagnosis, and must prescribe accordingly. Some of the Chinese prescriptions are very costly; precious stones and jewels are often powdered up with musk and made into pills, which are considered specifics for small-pox and fevers. Another remedy is Kiuchiu, a bitter wine made of spirit, aloes, myrrh, frankincense, and saffron, which is said to be a powerful tonic. The profession of medicine is hereditary, receiving very few recruits from outside ”

“ Some of the medicines of standard Chinese works are selected purely on account of their loathsomeness, such as the ordure of all sorts of animals, from man down to goats, rabbits, and silk-worm, dried leeches, human blood, dried toads, shed skins of snakes, centipedes, tiger’s blood, and other horrors innumerable hold a conspicuous place in the Chinese pharmacopœia. ”