“It was in a model Occidental city, not inaptly styled the ‘Modern Athens,’ that subjects were procured for the dissecting-room through murder, at about the same amount of money as that paid in China for sets of eyes and hearts for medicine. A remedy was found which promptly suppressed that exceptional crime in the West. In China murder of this nature can also be prevented, but not speedily. Time is an indispensable factor in effecting the suppression of homicide, which is the outcome of medical superstition. That superstition is strongly intrenched in an official work, the most common book, after the classics, in the empire. So long as the concluding chapter is retained in the materia medica, it will be futile to undertake the abolition of murder for medical purposes; and so long as these abhorrent crimes prevail in China, so long will fomenters of riots against foreigners aim to make it appear that the men and women from afar are addicted to that form of murder, and thus precious lives will continue to be exposed to forfeiture.” The most celebrated drug in Chinese Materia Medica is ginseng, the root of a species of _Panax_, belonging to the natural order _Araliacæ_. The most esteemed variety is found in Corea; an inferior kind comes from the United States, the _Panax quinquefolium_, and is often substituted for the real article. All the Chinese ginseng is Imperial property, and is sold at its weight in gold. The peculiar shape of the root, like the body of man—a peculiarity which it shares with mandrake and some other plants—led to its employment in cases where virile power fails, as in the aged and debilitated. Special kinds have been sold at the enormous sum of 300 to 400 dollars the ounce. Europeans have hitherto failed, says the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, to discover any wonderful properties in the drug. It is no doubt a remarkable instance of the doctrine of signatures (_q.v._). In all cases of severe disease, debility, etc., the Chinese fly to this remedy, so that enormous quantities are used. The Hon. H. N. Shore, R.N., says that the export from New-Chang in Manchuria to the Chinese ports of this article for one year alone reached the value of £51,000. It seems to be simply a mild tonic, very much like gentian root. Some of the pharmacies are on a very large scale; six hundred and fifty various kinds of leaves are commonly kept for medicinal purposes.