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
Anatomy and physiology have made no progress in China, because there
has never been any dissection of the body. The only books on the
subject in the Chinese language are Jesuit translations of European
works. Briefly stated, Chinese ideas on the subject are as follows:—In
the human body there are six chief organs in which “moisture” is
located—the heart, liver, two kidneys, spleen, and lungs. There are
six others in which “warmth” abides—the small and large intestine, the
gall bladder, the stomach, and the urinary apparatus. They reckon 365
bones in the whole body, eight in the male and six in the female skull,
twelve ribs in men and fourteen in women. They term the bile the seat
of courage; the spleen, the seat of reason; the liver, the granary of
the soul; the stomach, the resting-place of the mind.
A familiar drug in Chinese materia medica, which is sold in all the
drug-shops, is the Kou-Kouo, or bean of St. Ignatius. The horny
vegetable is used, after bruising and macerating, in cold water,
to which it communicates a strong bitter taste. “This water,” says
M. Huc,[301] “taken inwardly, modifies the heat of the blood, and
extinguishes internal inflammation. It is an excellent specific for all
sorts of wounds and contusions.... The veterinary doctors also apply
it with great success to the internal diseases of cattle and sheep. In
the north of China we have often witnessed the salutary effects of the
Kou-Kouo.”
This bean is the seed of _Strychnos Ignatia_, and the plant is
indigenous to the Philippine Islands. The action and uses of ignatia
are identical, says Stillé, with those of nux vomica.[302]
The medical profession is a very crowded one in China, as it is
perfectly free to any who choose to practise it. No diploma or
certificate of any kind is necessary in order to practise medicine
in China. The majority of the regular practitioners, if such they
can be called, are men who have failed to pass their examinations as
literates. There is one, and apparently only one, check on quackery.
The Chinese have a special place in their second hell which is reserved
for ignorant physicians who will persist in doctoring sick folk. In
the fourth hell are found physicians who have used bad drugs, and
in the seventh hell are tortured those who have taken human bones
from cemeteries to make into medicines. In the very lowest hell are
physicians who have misused their art for criminal purposes. These evil
persons are ceaselessly gored by sows.[303]
Naturally, the sciences of anatomy and physiology are entirely
neglected by these self-constituted native doctors. All the learning
they require is the ability to copy out prescriptions from a medical
book. Dr. Gould, a physician of long experience in China, tells us that
the native physician is depicted in Chinese primers as a person between
the heathen priest and the fortune-teller—his profession is looked upon
as a combination of superstition and legerdemain.[304]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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