The Origin and Growth of the Healing Art: A Popular History of Medicine in All Ages and CountriesBerdoe, Edward
History
The Origin and Growth of the Healing Art: A Popular History of Medicine in All Ages and Countries
Berdoe, Edward
Medicine -- History
The Emperor _Fuh-Hi_, who invented the eight diagrams, was the first
physician whose name has come down to modern times. He is one of the
_Sang Huông_, or “Three Emperors,” and is the deity of doctors.
_I Kuang Tāi Uông_ is the god of surgery. The people say he was a
foreigner, of the Loochoo Islands, who came to the middle kingdom and
practised surgery. As he was deaf whilst in the flesh, his worshippers
consider he is thus afflicted now that he is a deity, so they pray into
his ear, as well as offer him incense and candles.[295]
_Ling Chui Nä_ is the goddess of midwifery and children. If children
are sick, their parents employ Tauist priests in some of her temples to
perform a ceremony for their cure.[296]
_Iöh Uong Chû Sü_ is the god of medicine. It is said that he was a
distinguished physician who was deified after his death. He is now
generally worshipped by dealers in drugs and by their assistants. On
the third day of the third month, they make a feast in his honour, and
burn candles and incense before his image at his temple. Practising
physicians do not usually take any part in these proceedings.[297]
The Chinese have goddesses of small-pox and measles, which are
extremely popular divinities. Should it thunder after the pustules of
small-pox have appeared, a drum is beaten, to prevent them breaking.
On the fourteenth day ceremonies are performed before the goddess, to
induce her to cause the pustules to dry up.[298]
Mediums are often employed to prescribe for the sick. They behave
precisely as our spiritualists do, and pretend that the divinity
invoked casts himself into the medium for the time being, and dictates
the medicine which the sick person requires.[299]
In the “Texts of Táoism”[300] we are informed that “In the body there
are seven precious organs, which serve to enrich the state, to give
rest to the people, and to make the vital force of the system full to
overflowing. Hence we have the heart, the kidneys, the breath, the
blood, the brains, the semen, and the marrow. These are the seven
precious organs. They are not dispersed when the body returns (to the
dust). Refined by the use of the Great Medicine, the myriad spirits all
ascend among the Immortals.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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