"When I was in California recently a friend mentioned that an intelligent relative of his was being treated by a celebrated Chinese doctor. The relative claimed that Chinese physicians were better than our own; that they had devoted 5,000 years to medicine and had thus become so learned and skillful that they could tell all diseases without asking a single question, simply by feeling the pulse. Out of curiosity I visited this physician, ostensibly as a patient. Without so declaring myself, he knew intuitively that I came to consult him. Without asking any questions he placed his finger upon my right wrist, communed with himself for a few moments, and then gravely informed me that I had _thirty-seven diseases_; some in the blood, some in the brain, some in the kidneys, some in the liver, and many others in the heart and lungs. He said it would take _sixteen different herbs_ to cure me. He volunteered the statement that he could detect 6,000 diseases by the pulse alone, and that he used 400 herbs in the treatment of the various diseases. Upon his request, I examined his portfolio containing 350 testimonials of marvellous cures, wrought upon American residents of California during his seventeen years' practice on the coast. Many of them were from parties of intelligence and eminence, and were so extraordinary that nothing short of their being attested by numerous witnesses of unimpeachable veracity, could satisfy one of their truth. Now, permit me to say that I have no pulse in the right wrist, the pulse being congenitally absent; but through it he made the pretense of locating so many diseases. This doubtless is the form and character of medical practice in China among the native Chinamen, and probably has been for many centuries among a population of 400,000,000. Is not the logic from the above facts irresistible, that in China the native physician cannot tell one disease from another, and that all his work is simply nonsense and guess work? There can be no escape from this conclusion--it follows as lucidly as a demonstrated problem in Euclid--_that_ any benefit that may ever accrue from their treatment is wholly due to the dynamic force of the brain upon the functions of the body."