The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864: Devoted To Literature And National PolicyVarious
History
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864: Devoted To Literature And National Policy
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- 19th century -- Periodicals
It is not uncommon to see their dentists wandering through the streets
with rows of old fangs suspended from their necks like necklaces,
trophies of their skill; and every dead wall in the city has its
vermilion posters, advertising some great quack medicine, so that it is
quite evident that the science of medicine has reached that pitch of
refinement where a host of quacks can ply their arts with as much
success as among the western barbarians.
Heaven save us, though, from a Chinese doctor! Mechanical surgery is his
forte; for a stomach ache he will pinch your neck; for a broken rib he
will nearly crack the bones of your arm, and if you faint under this he
will hang you up by your heels to restore the circulation.
According to the diagrams published in the books on medicine, the
knowledge of anatomy possessed by the faculty in China is very slight,
and entirely erroneous; and in all their cures it is very probable that
nature, unassisted except by rest and fasting for a season, does the
work. They certainly are able to give her very little help.
It is noticeable, however, as a proof of the high esteem in which the
people hold the science, that the shops of the chemists and apothecaries
are kept by a superior class of people, more intelligent in appearance
than their neighbors, and holding a higher rank.
Of the lower trades there are innumerable shops, the variety of which is
almost bewildering. Every art and manufacture has its minute
subdivisions, and one meets, at every step, signs of the superior
civilization of the people in their admirable division of labor. Silk
looms are working in the open streets, shoemakers and tailors are each
plying their art in their narrow shops. In one they manufacture little
paper offerings for the gods, in another the gods themselves, in the
next their worshippers are supplied with joss-sticks or gayly colored
candles of tallow, mounted on slim sticks, that they may be stuck in the
sand before the divinity. Here you will find a printer hard at work
taking impressions on their delicate paper; next a bookbinder, who sews
the leaves with withes of paper, while in the next shop you can procure
the almanac for the year, months before it is required. In August, 1863,
they were selling copies of the almanac for 1864. Probably this work has
the largest circulation of any in the world, hanging, as it does, in
every house. The only exception may be the Bible, which, it is to be
hoped, will yet be as widely circulated in China as it is among the
other nations of the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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