XVI. I am well aware, that this will appear incredible to our physicians; but the various accounts we have of China, some of which, have been written by men of most exemplary and unexceptionable characters, all agree in vouching the truth of these particulars, so that our refusing to give credit to them, would seem rash and unreasonable. But if I could possibly have entertained any doubt of this matter, our illustrious Don Joseph Manuel de Andaya y Hara, the worthy Prelate of Oviedo, would have removed them, who confirmed these relations to me, upon his own experience of a Chinese physician that practised in Manila, the capital of the Philippine Islands, of whom he told me wonderful things, both with respect to his prognostics and methods of cure. I am persuaded that some of our physicians about the court, have got the Book of Andrew Cleyer, the first physician of Batavia, intituled _Medicina Chinensium_, which was printed at Augsburgh. The diary of the learned of Paris in the year 1682, makes mention of it; and in that may be seen more at large, many of these accounts. XVII. But, skilful as the Chinese physicians are in the practice of their art, the Chinese people are not behind them, in their skilful and wise regulations for the government of the physicians. If the physician, after having examined the pulse and the tongue, does not hit upon the distemper and the symptoms of it, which rarely happens, he is dismissed as unskilful, and another called in. If he does hit upon the foregoing particulars, which is most commonly the case, they confide the cure to him, and he immediately goes home, and fetches from his house a bag of simples, which he gives directions for the using of, pointing out the manner in which, and the quantity of each that should be applied or taken. When he has compleated the cure, he is paid amply for his time and attendance, and also for the medicines he has expended; but if the patient does not recover, the physician is not paid, either for the one or the other; so that the money of the sick person, is saved if he does not get well; and the physician, loses both his time and his medicines if he does nor cure him. It is much to be wished, that such a regulation subsisted among us; for although Quevedo some time ago complained of the want of it, he did not know it was established in China. It is true, that he made the complaint in a bantering way, but I believe he felt the want of the regulation very sensibly. XVIII. We may say in general of Asia, that this was the country in which arts and sciences originated; letters owed their birth to Phenicia; and were from thence transported into Egypt and Greece; and the knowledge of astronomy came from Chaldea, and from thence was circulated into various other countries. SECT. V.