The best evidence, however, of the civilization of a people is found in their social condition. To learn the true culture of a nation it is necessary to study their education and literature, their laws and system of government, and their morals and religion. In some of these particulars it is still difficult to obtain an adequate knowledge of Japan. But gradually they are being revealed to us. The laws and legal precedents(259) which prevailed during the Tokugawa period have been unearthed from the archives of the Department of Justice and are being published in the _Transactions of the Asiatic Society_. The medical and scientific advancement of Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was not co-ordinate with her progress in the arts. They were hampered with the old Chinese notions about a male principle and a female principle which were conceived to prevail in nature, and with the five elements to which the human organs were supposed to correspond. Fortunately nature has ways of healing diseases in spite of theories and drugs. To this benign principle must be assigned the fact that the human race has survived the surgery and medicaments of mediæval Europe as well as mediæval China and Japan. In one particular the medical art of Japan seems to have been differently, perhaps better, conducted than in Europe. It is narrated by the Japanese annalists,(260) that if a physican made a mistake in his prescription or in his directions for taking the medicine he was punished by three years’ imprisonment and a heavy fine; and if there should be any impurity in the medicine prescribed or any mistake in the preparation, sixty lashes were inflicted besides a heavy fine. [Illustration] Oban. Gold Coin, 1727. Three peculiar modes of medical practice deserve notice. The first was acupuncture, which consisted in inserting a thin needle through the skin into the muscles beneath. A second was the cauterization by _moxa_(261) (Japanese _mogusa_). This was effected by placing over the spot a small conical wad of the fibrous blossoms of mugwort (_Artemisia vulgaris latifolia_). The cone was kindled at the top and slowly burned till it was consumed. A painful blister was produced on the spot, which was believed to have a wholesome effect in the case of many complaints. A third mode of treatment is the practice of _massage_ (_amma_), which western nations have borrowed, and which in Japan it has long been the exclusive privilege of the blind to apply. [Illustration] Cauterizing With Moxa. Many of the improved notions of western medicine were introduced by the Dutch, and this accounts for the unprecedentedly rapid advance which this science has made since the opening of the country. CHAPTER XIII. COMMODORE PERRY AND WHAT FOLLOWED.