As Greece had Galen and Hippoerates, so China has her Ssu Wen and Ling Shu, two books which contain the foundation of the native system of medicine. China never had a Svcrates or a Francis Bacon, and therefore she never knew how to originate inductive science, Hence these classics of the Chinese physicians are really collections of empirical observations, counceted together by means of the logical not-work of a false philosophy. These books profess to be conversations held by the Emperor Huang li with Che-po, and one other physician, who instructed bim in the art of healing. But they are evidently from the hand of some writer of the Han dynasty, who has chosen to ornament his work with these well-known and honoured names. Justas Chuang Chou, the Taoist sage, was foud of inventing imaginary conversations between celebrated men to be the vebielo of his own ideas, so the Han writers of these two bouks did the same thing. These books constitute a development of Taoism. Thus they represent the Ht J. or Divine Mav as holding up Heaven and Earth, and as grasping the principles of Light and Darkness. He stands alone, prevents his soul (fif]) from becoming dissipated, and maintains the identity of his material body with its original constitution and oneness. He is therefore able to dio only with Heaven and Earth, and be without any real end. Ho is in harmony with the four seasons. He leaves the world with its customs, accumulates the pare principle of life, and perfects his soul, He wanders through Heaven and Earth, seeing and hearing what exists beyond the eight points of the Universe. This is fall-blownTaoista, and we need not hesitate to ascribe these famous books to some Taoist physician or physicians. That their names are swvanting may be explained with some probability as caused by the book-barning of the Emperor Ch'in Shik Huang. Works on medicine, divination, and agriculture were expressly exempted from destruction, When litorature became popular and old books were sought for, there was a teraptation to say that newly composed works had been preserved from the fire and sero really old, Choir price might be raised to any fancy height, if it could be asserted that they belonged to the time of Huang Ti, say 2,500 years before Christ.
The anatomy of these books is wondrously systematic, Ev@ty part of the known frame is under the fluence of the elements, Five is the favourite number. The five upper viscera correspond to the five tastes, the five kinds of grain used for food, the five chief fruits, and the five chief vegetables. The two opposing powers of Light and Darkness permeate all parts of the human body in varying proper. tions. There is no glimmering of the idea that the brain is the centre of mental action. So the three kinds of souls, shen, p'0, and Iwun, occupy the heart, the lungs, and the liver respec. tively, while thought and will are relegated to the spleen and kidneys. Man is a microcosm, a picture of what is found in the outer Universe. We find the nambers 19, 5, 3, 9, in Heaven and Earth; therefore they inst be found in the human body. The stone needle, the predecessor of the metallic needle, was extensively used at that time. There were celebrated physicians in the Chen dynasty, especially Pien-clitia, who lived in the 6th century B. From the account in the Shih-chi of these physicians we learn that the medicine of the Han dynasty was certainly based on that of five hundred years earlier. It is not too great an assumption to make that Szoma Ts'ien made use of Chou dynasty documents when compiling the biography of Pien-ch'io and his fellow physicians. Taking this for granted, the curious old numerical nomenclature of the Han medicine may be referred to the Chen period s its chief source with no small show of probability.
The circulation of the blood is des. cribed in a peculiar way. The blood flows a distance of six inches during each respiration, and in the course of a day it travels round the body fifty times, The account of this may be seen in the appendix following the life of Pien-ch'io in the Shih-chi. The appendix is by a Commentator of the Tang dynasty in the eighth century, But the doctrine of the pulse is ascribed to Pien-ch'io in the first instance, A little thinking deduces the motion of blood from the phenomena of pulsation and of wounds, and from the structure of blood-vessels, course, the ancient Chinese might know this as the Jews did in the time when the Book of Ecclesiastes was written, but they know nothing of the mechanical laws by which the blood is propelled round the body. The pulse led them to acupuncture. The Chinese doctor is called "a pulse-fooler," and his medical practice consists in pricking blood-vessels. This has been the case from six hundred years before Christ, What was trae then is true now. At least we find that if stone needles have given way, they have boon replaced by steel, The cantorising process was used in the Chou dynasty, and it is till in vogue. Medicine was administered in warm draughts just as it is now, and 80 also pills, made up probably of many of the same familiar drugs as now, formed a part of the physician's apparatus medicus two thousand years ago, Hippocrates said that, when medicine will not do, the knife must be tried, and when the knife fails, fire must be employed. It is carious that in the old Chinese medicine the needle and the application of fire should be the established means of medical treatment in the oldest books. The artemisia was the favourite plant for burning as maza. The stone needle was the favourite instrament, and corresponds to the knife, The Greek idea of the causes of disease was in the want of proportion in the four chief liquids of the body viz., blood, phlegm, and black and yellow bile, The old Chinese notion as given in these books is that diseases come in the air, or in other words that wind is the main source of illness.
The view of Hippocrates, who flourished in Greece about a century after Pion-chia in China, in regard to climate, was that its effect on the human body was immense, and that the four elements had n powerful influence on the body in a state of health or disenso, and on the respective organs individually, and in their relationship to each other, both in a normal and an abnormal condition, This mode of treating the subject exactly suits the Chinese physician, who derives his opinions from those old books. The origin of rheumatism, for example, is wind or air, two words for one thing. The cold thus caused has to be expelled. This is to be done by burning artemisia on the spot. The combustion expels cold and pain censes. The operator never doubts that the elements control the human body, and
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.